Muffs: an update on research

Back in 2013 I wrote a blogpost on muffs which is still valid. This blogpost gives more information on the costs of muffs, the materials used, and who was carrying them.

Fig. 1: W Hollar. From Ornatus, 1640

 

The values of muffs.

Gregory King’s 1680s table of apparel showed that he considered that there were 50,000 muffs a year being made or sold, with a total value of £10,000, meaning that the average cost of a muff was four shillings. (1) The problem with working out whether this is a valid price, is that in probates they are often listed with other items, for example in 1635, Lucy Gobert, has “stockins, shoes, hatts, ruffs, cuffs, muffs, hudds [hoods], ffans & other necessaries £20.” (2 p. 54) The cheapest muff listed in a probate in the database is 1626 and is priced at 3 shillings. (3 p. 105). In the same year the Howard of Naworth Castle accounts have 8 shillings paid for a muff. (4 p. 235) The most expensive is in 1650 when Rachel, Countess of Bath, purchased “a rich sable muff” for £22. (5 p. 156) By the 1670s muffs appear in the stock inventories of mercers and haberdashers. In 1665 in Lincoln the mercer Benjamin Marshall had in stock “seventeen payre of childrens muffs,” their value works out at about a penny halfpenny each (6 p. 18). In 1679 Henry Mitchell, a haberdasher also in Lincoln, had “9 muffes at £3 6s,” that would be 7s 4d each, and two children’s muffs worth 6d each. (6 p. 57) In Litchfield in 1670 a chapman had three muffs and two cauls for women worth three shillings, so they would certainly have been less than a shilling each. (7 p. 196)     While muffs might be carried in the hand, they could also be purchased with a string, to hold them suspended from the neck, and the probate accounts providing clothes to Mary Draper include £1 1s in 1691, “for a muff and string” (8 p. 214)

 

Fig. 2:

Jacob van Oost the elder. Portrait of a boy aged 11. National Gallery

            

Fur muffs

Top of the line for muffs was sable, as with the Countess of Bath’s muff. Sable was imported, and in 1658 the English rabbit was extolled over the foreign sable, “Madam, you may fitt your selfe … Here is an English conny furr, Rushia hath no such stuffe, Which for to keep your fingers warme, Excells your sable muffe.” (8) While rabbit fur was easily available other furs could also be used. Holme stated that “ the most usual way of making the Muff, be the Furrs of Dogs, Cats, Fitchets [polecat], and such like, and are lined within, with a Cony skin, or Furr, or Wool of the Rabbet.” (9) The skinner, Stephen Frewen list in his accounts for 1642 the provision of “one otter skin mufe  13s” (10 pp. 24-30) In 1695 the London Gazette recorded, “Lost.., a large Sabble Tip, Mans Muff, with a parting in the middle of it.” (19 p. 3065/4) Hollar’s a muff in five view shows what might be meant by a parting in the middle.

 

Fig. 3: W. Hollar.  A muff in five views

 Fabric muffs

Fur might be combined with fabric, as in this 1647 Hollar drawing of a muff with a fabric centre, or it might be mainly fabric. In 1626 a widow, Ann Wright, left “one black velvet muff priced at 3s” (3 p. 105) As well as velvet, plush might be used for muffs. Plush, like velvet, has a pile, but while it might be made of silk it could also be made of a combination of other fibres. In Chambers 1741 Encyclopaedia it is described as “composed regularly of a woof of a single woollen thread, and a double warp, the one wool, of two threads twisted, the other goat’s or camel's hair ; though there are also plushes entirely of worsted, and others composed wholly of hair.” In 1640 James Gresham wrote from London to his mother, “Your plush muff I would have sent you now but that I thought good first to let you know that plush muffs be clean out of fashion.” He goes on to advise that, “before one plush one shall be worn out you may be able to purchase a fur muff.” (11 p. 140) The implication in the wider correspondence is that a fur muff would be too expensive. Henry, Prince of Wales paid in 1608 for two decorated fabric muffs; “One of cloth of silver embroidered with purles, plates, and Venice twists of silver and gold, the other of black satten embroidered with black silk and bugles.” (12 p. 94)

             

Fig. 4. Hollar. Muff with brocade centre. 1647.

            

Who carried muffs

Ownership of muffs could be related to wealth, analysis of a series of probate accounts showed that only those having an estate worth £300 and above had muffs. (13 p. 258) This group was not just the gentry and above, but included the aspiring middling sort. There is at least one probate inventory of someone with an estate value of only £54, George Bradford of Writtle in Essex who, in 1671, owned a number of women clothes including a muff, and was described as a gardener in his probate. (14 p. 210) Anne Baker in 1634 owned two muffs and a fan, and was the widow of a rector. (15 p. 61) Samuel Pepys and his wife purchased several muffs, and he sent one of his own to his mother which was “sent as from my wife” (16)

Fig. 5: St Jean. Gentleman in winter clothes. 1678.

Muffs were owned my men as well as women. In 1663 Anthony Woods complained in his memoirs of “A Strang effeminate age when men strive to imitate women in their apparell, viz. long periwigs, patches in their faces, painting, short wide breeches like petticotes, muffs, and their clothes highly scented, bedecked with ribbons of all colours.” (17 p. 509) The 1678 engraving by de St Jean shows this fashion. In 1684 a broadside ballad talks of a “A Spark of the Bar with his Cane and his Muff” at the Great Frost Fair on the Thames that winter. (18)

References

1. Spufford, Margaret. The Cost of Apparel in Seventeenth-Century England, and the Accuracy of Gregory King. Economic History Review. 2000, Vol. 53, 4.

2. Earwaker, J.P. Lancashire and Cheshire wills and inventories 1572-1696. Manchester : Chetham Society, 1893.

3. Reed, Michael, ed. The Ipswich probate inventories 1583-1631. Suffolk Records Society. 1981, Vol. 22.

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

5. Gray, Todd. Devon Household Accounts 1627-59. Part 2 . Exeter : Devon and Cornwall Record Society, new series, vol. 39, 1996.

6. Johnston, J. A. Probate inventories of Lincoln citizens 1661-1714. Woodbridge : Boydell, for the Lincoln Record Society, 1991.

7. Vaisey, D. G. ed. Probate inventories of Litchfield and district 1568-1680,. Historical Collections for a History of Staffordshire, Fourth Series. 1969, Vol. 5.

8. Spufford, Margaret and Mee, Susan. The Clothing of the Common Sort 1570-1700. Oxford : OUP, 2017.

9. Mennes, John and Smith, James. Wit restor'd in severall select poems. London : Printed for R. Pollard, N. Brooks, and T. Dring, 1658.

10. Holme, Randle. The academy of armory. [Online] 1688. [Cited: July 12, 2024.] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A44230.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.

11. Cooper, William Durant. Extracts from Account-Books of the Everden and Frewen Families in the Seventeenth Century. Sussex Archaeological Collections. 1851, Vol. 4, pp. 24-30.

12. London Gazette. 1695.

13. Tankard, Danae. Clothing in 17th century provincial England. London : Bloomsbury, 2020.

14. Bray, W. Extract from the Wardrobe Account of Prince Henry, eldest son of King James I. Archaeologia. 1794, Vol. 11, pp. 88-96.

15. Steer, Francis W. Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex 1635-1749. Chichester : Phillimore, 1969.

16. Groves, J. Ed. Ashton and Sale wills: wills and probate inventories from two Cheshire townships, part 1, 1600-1650 . Sale : Northern Writers Advisory Services, 1999.

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

18. Clark, Andrew. The Life and Times of Anthony Wood 1632-1695 ...described by himself. Oxford : Oxford Historical Society, 1891.

19. English Broadside Ballad Archive. EBBA 34766 - Houghton Library - EBB65. Blanket-fair,…Being a Relation of the merry Pranks plaid on the River Thames during the great Frost. P1684. s.l. : Printed for Charles Corbet, at the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane. , 1684.