Early modern straw hats in England

 

Are straw hats just straw? Straw when used as a term for hats is not just cereal (wheat, barley, rye, etc.) straw, it covers a whole variety of fibres from bast, (rag) paper, horsehair, ramie, etc. One of the earliest fibres used was wood chip, this is shaved wood, usually from poplar or willow, hence chip hats. The mottled straw used nowadays is very easily discerned and comes from China. Although it has much earlier origins for example the ancient Greek  petasos could be made of straw, this post starts with the fifteenth century.

Figure 1: Pisanello. Detail from St George with Virgin and Child,  National Gallery

 Fifteenth century

One painting showing a straw hat is Pisanello’s mid fifteenth St George with Virgin and Child, figure 1 shows a detail from the painting which is in the National Gallery. As far as textual references are concerned, the chronicle of Robert Bale (c.1410-c.1473) reporting on Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 describes “the seid capitaigne cam riding wth his peple on foot from Suthwerk thurgh the citee to powles in a blewe gown of velvet wth sables furred and a strawe hat upon his heed and a sewerd drawen in his hand.” (1 p. 133) Sharp’s work on the Coventry mystery plays, shows that the Dyers’s accounts included “iiij surplis & iiij stre hats,” this would be in 1453. (2 p. 190) The inventory of Sir John Fastolfe in 1459 shows that he owned two straw hats. (3 p. 389)

Sixteenth century

In Francis Thynne’s(c.1545-1608) poem, The Debate between Pride and Lowliness, the husbandman has, “A strawen; hatte he had upon his head, The which his chinne was fastened underneath.” (4 p. 33) Shakespeare has more than one reference. In the Tempest he suggests the “sicklemen of August” should “Make holyday: your rye straw hats put on.” (5 pp. Act 4, Sc. 1) Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s Hay makers of 1565 depicts a man sharpening his scythe whilst wearing a straw hat. Figure 2 shows a detail from this painting, including three women with rakes who wear, or carry, straw hats, echoing Thomas Deloney (c.1543-1600) comment that, “faire Margaret with many others of her Masters folkes, went a hay-making attired in a red stammell peticoate, and a broad strawne hatte vpon her head, she had also a hay-forke.” (6 p. 67) Edmund Spenser in the Fairy Queen refers to the plaiting of the straws to make hats, “Some  plaid  with  strawes,  some  ydly  satt.”

 

Figure 2: Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Hay Harvest 1565.

Seventeenth century

Florio in his 1611 work writes of “a broad straw hat that harvest folkes use to keepe them from the sun. (7) |These references are mainly to straw hats being worn by working people. In the period headwear designed to keep off the sun was sometimes referred to as a bonegrace. By 1617 Moryson thought them unfashionable, “our Gentlewomen of old borrowed of the French, and called them Bonegraces, now altogether out of use with us.” (8 p. 170) The ones Moryson refers to were of velvet, but in 1636 James Evans in Bristol had in stock, “1 doz. of strawe bonegrace 1s.” so these were only worth one penny each. (9 p. 99)

Straw hats may have been worn above the level of the working classes. A surviving cane hat at Hatfield House was supposedly owned by Queen Elizabeth I. It is one of a few survivals of this type of hat, the one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York is at Figure 3. There is further information on the one in  in the Luton Museum on the BBC website.  This style of hat may be of the type Pepys, in his diary on a visit to Hatfield (15 miles from Luton), refers to saying “being come back to our inne, there the women had pleasure in putting on some straw hats, which are much worn in this country, and did become them mightily” (10 p. 11th August 1667)

 

Figure 3. Cane and straw hat. 17th century. Metropolitan Museum, New York

 

By the 1680s straw hats appear in several shop inventories. In 1680 John Thornton in Buckingham had in stock, “hatts of severall sorts both casters and felts, straw hatts, linings, hatbands, brushes, hat cases...£47 12s 0d.” (11 p. 150) The Bristol haberdasher Edward Cooke in 1687 had in stock “tenn straw hatts 6s 0d,” and “Eighteene splitt & straw Childrens Single hatts 2s 0d.” (12 p. 160) In 1689 Christopher Eastgate, who was described as a feltmaker but was obviously dealing in hats,  had ”one and twenty straw hats £1 7s 6d.” (13)               

Further information

Veronica Main is the historian of the English straw hat, and her website is full of good information.  Straw hat making is now considered an endangered heritage craft, and there are very few manufacturers.

References

1. Flenley, Ralph. Six town chronicles of England. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1911.

2. Sharpe, Thomas. A dissertation on the pageants or dramatic mysteries anciently performed at Coventry. Coventry : Merridew and Sons, 1825.

3. Gairdner, James. The Paston Letters, 1422-1509, Volume 3. London : Chatto & Windus, 1904.

4. Thynne, Francis. The Debate Between Pride and Lowliness . London : Shakespeare Society, 1841.

5. Shakespeare, William. The Tempest.

6. Deloney, Thomas. The history of Thomas of Reading. London : Pickering, 1827.

7. Florio, John. Queen Anna's New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues. London : Printed by Melch. Bradwood, for Edw. Blount and William Barret, 1611.

8. Moryson, Fynes. An itinerary. London : Printed by John Beale, dwelling in Aldersgate Street, 1617.

9. George, E. and S. eds. Bristol probate inventories, Part 1: 1542-1650. Bristol Records Society publication. 2002, Vol. 54.

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

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

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

13. Hampshire Record Office. Probate of Christopher Eastgate. s.l. : Hants. RO 1689AD/053, 1689.