Walking sticks and canes - a gentleman's fashion accesory

Walking sticks and canes

Sometime in the seventeenth century walking sticks or canes became a fashionable accessory for gentlemen. It did not replace the sword or rapier, in most of the images listed below gentlemen have both. [Figure 1, image 3 on the list] This is just going to look at sticks as a fashion accessory. Some images have not been included as the “stick” is more obviously a staff of office, for example the c.1620 portrait by Paul van Somer of Ludovick Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox and Duke of Richmond, where he is seen carrying the white wand of the Steward.  Another set of images not included are those where the sitter is carrying a military baton, for example Robert Walker’s 1649 portrait of Oliver Cromwell. The final group not included are those images of invalids, the very poor, and beggars, such as Rembrandt’s Beggar leaning on a stick.

Fig. 1: Savery Officer with a Walking Stick. Rijksmuseum

These accessory canes came at a range of prices. When Thomas Ledgingham, labourer, assaulted and robbed one Thomas Johnson in 1652, the long list of what was stolen included “one cane worth six pence.” His stolen cloth [wool] coat was worth three shillings, his gloves, one shilling, and two handkerchiefs one shilling. (1) The rector of Horsed Keyes in Sussex, when he bought a new cane in London in 1676 paid two shillings. (2 p. 132) In 1694 when a gentleman, Richard Stapley, purchased a new cane it cost ten shillings, but it had an “ivory studded head, and a purple and gold string to it.” (3 p. 119)

While ivory was a common head for a cane, silver was another option. Samuel Pepys in 1667 was presented with “a Japan cane, with a silver head.” (4) In 1697 Michael Acton, a Hampshire rector, left in his will, “my silver headed cane and a guinea ring,” to James Chudleigh of Basingstoke. (5) Occasionally seventeenth century canes survive, figure 2 shows a stick in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.  The stick, as many were in the seventeenth century, is over a metre long. The wood may be ash or pearwood, and it is inlaid with piqué work of metal wire and mother-of-pearl.

Fig 2: Walking stick. Victoria & Albert Museum

In probate inventories canes are often listed with rapiers, reinforcing the idea from the images that they were worn at the same time. The owners were not necessarily gentlemen, though they may have aspired to be so as they usually have an estate worth over £150. In 1681 the probate of Henry Eustace, a yeoman, includes “one muskett, two gunns and two walking canes £2,” he was worth £270 6s 4d (6 p. 158) In 1683 Edward Sweeper, a brazier, owned “Two Rapiers & a Cane with a Silver heade 15s.” He was worth £178 7s 1d. (7 p. 132) Those who were gentlemen often had a much larger estate. James Sale in 1681, who is described as a gentleman, owned “two halberds, one musketoon, one birding peece, a pocket pistoll, three swords and two canes £6 13s 6d,” his estate was worth over one thousand pounds. (6 p. 165)

By the second half of the century men with canes are appearing in broadside ballads such as Mark Noble’s Frollick. [Figure 3] Note that this image shows the short-lived fashion for vertical pockets on the coat.

 

Fig 3. Mark Noble's Frollick. Bristish Library

Images of men with a cane or walking stick

1. 1629. Abraham Bosse.  Man with a Cane, seen from behind, from The Garden of French Nobility

2. 1633. Dutch School. Boy with a walking stick.

3. c.1640. Salomon Savery. Standing Officer with Walking Stick. Rijksmuseum.

4. c.1645. Gerrit Dou. Portrait of a Gentleman with a Walking Stick 

5. c.1659. John Michael Wright. George Vernon. National Trust, Sudbury Hall

6. 1660-90. Broadside Ballad - The Unconscionable Batchelors of Darby. British Library, Roxburghe

7. 1675-90. Mark Noble's Frollick. British Library, Roxburghe

8. 1682. John Michael Wright (circle of). Edward Southwell, Standing with a Cane in an Embroidered Buff Tunic, Rye Town Hall

9. 1686. Alain Manesson Mallet. Anglais in Description de l'Univers

10. 1688. Marcellus Laroon. Squire of Alsatia in the Cries of London

11. 1690-1700. Man with a Cane Dummy Board, Victoria and Albert Museum

References

1. Middlesex Sessions Rolls. Middlesex County Records: Volume 3, 1625-67. London : Middlesex County Record Society, 1888.

2. Bird, Ruth, ed. The Journal of Giles Moore of Horsted Keynes, 1655-1679. Lewes : Sussex Record Society, 1971.

3. Turner, E. Extracts from the Diary of Richard Stapley, Gent. of Hickstead Place, in Twineham, from 1682 to 1724. . Sussex Archaeological Collections. 1849, Vol. 2.

4. Pepys, Samuel. Diary. [Online] https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary.

5. National Archives. Will of Michael Acton 1697. TNA PROB 11/439/26.

6. Reed, M. Buckinghamshire probate inventories 1661-1714. Buckinghamshire Record Society. 1988, Vol. 24, 258-9.

7. George, E. and George, S. Bristol probate inventories, Part 2: 1657-1689. Bristol : Bristol Records Society publication 57, 2005.

 

Mid seventeenth century lace: cost versus income

This has been written because someone said in a Facebook group, I want to use lace, but I want it to be relevant to my station. This was something that worried people at the time. Samuel Pepys at one point in 1669 wrote he did not wear a particular suit “because it was too fine with the gold lace at the hands, that I was afeard to be seen in it.” When he did get around to wearing it he wrote “Povy told me of my gold-lace sleeves in the Park yesterday, which vexed me also, so as to resolve never to appear in Court with them, but presently to have them taken off, as it is fit I should, and so to my wife at Unthanke’s, and coach, and so called at my tailor’s to that purpose.” (1)

Below are images from a letter from Elizabeth Isham (1609-1654) to her father, with samples of ten penny, seven penny, six penny and tuppenny lace. (2) These are simple cheap laces, the type that caused Margaret Spufford to write that “lace represented perhaps, the most straightforward index of cheap luxury.” (3 p. 99) They are compared to the values set for a day’s work by the Suffolk Sessions in 1630, these rates were found – that is the employer provided food and drink during the day. (4 pp. 307-11)

Tuppenny lace – This maybe the type of lace that poor children were set to making when they were learning to make lace so that “no child be suffered to beg,” but that they should learn “as soon as ever they be capable of instruction.” (5 p. 89) The rate set in 1630 for “women and such impotent persons that weed corn,” was 2d a day.

Sixpenny lace - There are two laces at this rate. In 1630 6d was the day rate for a tailor, a hedger or a dawber. A dawber is a man who covers the walls of a building with daub, as in wattle and daub. This type of lace is also bought by the gentry, the Shuttleworth accounts have twelve yards of six pence a yard lace being bought “for my Mris” in 1613. (6 p. 206)

Sevenpenny and ten penny laces – You are now into the wages paid to skilled men. A master joiner or master carpenter, or a thatcher might be paid 8d a day. This is also the rate for mowers and reapers of corn, who are paid more than mowers of hay.

As can be seen the above are all very simple laces, and all white linen. Black lace was usually made of silk, and purchased for mourning. In 1626 the Howards of Naworth Castle purchased “13 yeards of black bone lace for my Lady 13s.” (7 p. 239)

How much were more expensive, deeper, more complex linen bone [bobbin] laces in the Civil War period? The chapman William Mackerell in 1642 had bone laces in his stock ranging from 5d to 3s 8d a yard. (3 pp. 186-90) The most expensive laces where those purchased by the aristocracy. In 1641 the Marquis of Hertford’s accounts have “paid by my Hon Ladie for 4 yards of bone lace at 15s a yard, 2 yards of bone lace at 10s per yard, for making 4 laced round handkerchers.” (8 p. 19)

What about metal laces? They were valued by the ounce because of the value of the metal. When Elizabeth le Strange got married in 1635 she bought for two gowns for her wedding, silver bone lace (22.25 ounces equaling 28 yards) for six shillings a yard. (8 p. 126)

References

1. Pepys, Samuel. Diary. [Online] https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary.

2. Levey, Santina. Lace: a history. London : Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983.

3. Spufford, Margaret. The great reclothing of rural England: petty chapman and their wares in the seventeenth century. London : Hambledon Press, 1984.

4. Archbold, W.A.J. An Assessment of wages for 1630. English Historical Review. 1897, Vol. 12.

5. Slack, Paul. Poverty in Early Stuart Salibury. Devizes : Wiltshire Record Society, 1975.

6. Harland, John (ed.). The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths ...1582-1621, Part 1. Lancaster : Chetham Society, 1856.

7. Ornsby, G. ed. Selections from the Household Books of the Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle. Publications of the Surtees Society. 1878, Vol. 68.

8. Morgan, F. C. Private Purse Accounts of the Marquis of Hertford, Michaelmas 1641-2. Antiquaries Journal. 1945, Vols. 25, 12-42, pp. 12-42.

9. Whittle, Jane and Griffiths, Elizabeth. Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household. Oxford : OUP, 2012.