What is a rail or a night rail

Rail, is a word that is Anglo-Saxon in origin, and seems originally to have meant any type of clothing that hung loose from the shoulders, so that a rail-thegn was the person in charge of robes in the wardrobe of a household or religious institution. In the Middle Ages it became a term that was used specifically for something that was worn over the shoulders or the head. In 1482 sumptuary legislation forbad the wives of any “servant of husbandrie, or common labourer,” etc. “to weare any reile called a kercheffe, whose price exceedeth twentie pence.” (1)

This connection between a rail and a kerchief continues into the sixteenth century. Palsgrave equates “a rayle for a woman’s neck” with the French “crevechief en quattre doubles.” (2) Florio in 1598 has it specifically as  “anything worne about the neck, as a neck-kercher, a partlet, a raile.” (3) However sometimes it appears to have covered the head. A 1588 manuscript has, “for mendinge, washinge and starchinge of a heade raille of fine white sipers edged round aboute with white thread bone lace.” (4 p. 170) Sipers is another spelling of cypress and indicates a very fine linen.

In her letter to Thomas Cromwell, after the execution of Anne Boleyn, rails were one of the items of clothing that Lady Margaret Bryan complained that the Princess Elizabeth lacked. (5 p. 3) The use of the term rail, without the adjective night, continues well into the seventeenth century. Bishop Richard Corbet (1582-1635), wrote a poem entitled, “To the ladyes of the new dresse, that weare their gorgets and rayles downe to their wastes,” in which rails are referred to as being of linen. (6) What might these rails have looked like? They do not appear in formal portraits, but perhaps the very informal portrait of Elizabeth Vernon, Countessof Southampton (1572-1655), may show a rail.

The term night rail appears to start in the middle of the sixteenth century. One of the earliest references is in the Willoughby Accounts in 1552 which has a purchase of “too ells of hollan cloth for Mistris Margett [the thirteen year old daughter of the house] to make hir nyght-raylles and nyght kerchers, 4s. (7) Agnes Hals of Bury leaves in her 1554 will “Oon of my night kerchers, and oon of my night railes.” (8 p. 142)  In the 1598 New Year’s Roll of gifts to Queen Elizabeth is “one night rayle of lawne wrought with black silk.” (5 p. 100)

Queen Elizabeth’s night rail was wrought with black silk, and in Philip Massinger’s play, The City Madam, the character of Luke complains that;

Great Lords and Ladies feasted to survey

Embroider'd petticoats: and sicknesse fain'd

That your night rayls of forty pounds a piece

Might be seen with envy of the visitants;

Forty pounds is an exaggeration, but the Howard family of Naworth Castle paid 46 shillings (two pounds six shillings) “for a rayle to bestow on Mrs Pennington” in 1623. (9 p. 296) As well as embroidery they could be decorated with lace, and the woman in the 1640 image “A bolster lecture” (Figure 1) may well be wearing a lace trimmed night rail. A similar image appeared three years earlier in Thomas Heywood's  "Curtaine Lecture: As It Is Read by a Countrey Farmers Wife to Her Good Man".

Figure 1: Richard Braithwaite, A Bolster Lecture, 1640.

Randle Holme writes of hooded night rails being, “a kind of dress which women in child bed usually wear when they are for christnings and up-sittings.” (10) After childbirth elite women were expected to spend a month in bed, were they would received vistors while "up-sitting". This is similar to Massinger's lady feigning illness, so her visitors could see her night rail.

So far all these have been rails worn by elite women, but they do appear in the wills and probates of lower class women. In 1615 Ann Dent leaves in her will “to my sisters Elizabeth Laxe and Dorithy Taton, a band, a raill and a lynnen apron.” (11 pp. 133-4) In 1613 Elizabeth Tennant’s inventory has “4 kirchers, 4 railes, 4 neckerchers and 4 approns” worth together 6s, which would be about 4½d each. (12 p. 242) Further up the social scale Elizabeth Lee, the widow of gentleman, has in 1632 “2 night railes 4s.” (13 pp. 113-4) They appear to always be of linen, from the finest lawn down through holland cloth, to the woman who is described as having “A course hempen rayle about her shoulders.” (14)

It is difficult to decide what survivals might be rails, however it is almost certain that in Manchester there is an example in the Filmer Collection. It looks very similar to what is being worn in the Bolster Lecture. The museum describes it as a cape, “Linen cape cut in two curved sections, with 0.5cm wide insertion of needlepoint lace at seam down centre back, and five insertions set in each side, evenly spaced from front, extending to edge of collar; closely cartridge pleated into band at neck; collar shaped with five darts in each shoulder, ending 3.75cm in from front of cape, all edges including insertion edges with narrow openwork hem, collar and cape edged with 1.25cm needlepoint lace” they date it to 1640-1660. (Figure 2)

Figure 2: A rail, 1640-1660. Manchester Art Gallery.

 

References

1. Acts, Statutes, etc. Statutes made at Westminster, Anno 22 Edw . IV. and Anno Dom. 1482 A repeal of all former Statutes made touching the excess of Apparel.

2. Palsgrave, John. Lesclarcissement De La Langue Francoyse. 1530.

3. Florio, John. A worlde of wordes, or most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English. London : A Hatfield for E. Blount, 1598.

4. Cunnington, C. Willett and Cunnington, Phillis. Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century. London : Faber, 1970.

5. Arnold, Janet. Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd. Leeds : Maney, 1988.

6. Corbet, Richard. The Poems of Richard Corbet, late bishop of Oxford and of Norwich. [Online] [Cited: June 17, 2023.] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65375/65375-h/65375-h.htm.

7. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. Report on the manuscripts of Lord Middleton, preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire. [Online] [Cited: June 17, 2023.] https://archive.org/details/repwollatonhall00greauoft.

8. Tymms, S. ed. Wills and inventories from the registers of the Commissary of Bury St Edmunds and the Archdeacon of Sudbury. London : Camden Society, 1850.

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

10. Holme, Randle. The academy of armory. [Online] 1688. [Cited: March 31, 2022.] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A44230.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.

11. Atkinson, J A., et al eds. Darlington wills and inventories 1600-1625. Publications of the Surtees Society. 1993, Vol. 201.

12. Kaner, J. ed. Goods and chattels 1552-1642: wills, farm and household inventories from the parish of South Cave in the East Riding of Yorkshire,. Hull : University of Hull, Centre for Continuing Education, 1994.

13. Briggs, J. and McGhee, R. Sunderland Wills and Inventories, 1601-1650. Publications of the Surtees Society. 2010, Vol. 214.

14. Nash, Thomas. Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Divell. London : Richard Ihones, 1592.