The Puritan Fashion Police: A Look at Sumptuary Laws
By Elizabeth Prata
You can’t legislate behavior. The 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the sale, transportation, and manufacture of alcohol. It went into effect on January 17, 1920.
It didn’t work. The 21st Amendment repealed it in 1933. It had little effect on alcohol consumption.
I was watching a Youtube history video on the Renaissance in Europe. This is the period around the 1400s to the 1600s. In the video the history expert mentioned Italian “Sumptuary laws.” I learned that these were laws designed to regulate personal spending, often based on religious or moral grounds. The idea was to limit extravagant spending on food, drink, clothing, and/or household items.
Sumptuary Laws extend as far back as ancient Rome and ancient Greece. The secular point of sumptuary laws was to distinguish one’s class by the manner of dress. The religious point was to prevent lavish and wasteful expenditures on finery of those in ‘mean condition.’
The American Puritans tried Sumptuary Laws on the new colony as well. It worked about as well for them as these laws did for everyone else: not too good. But they tried it anyway, and so, the American Puritans became fashion police for a while.
Hannah Lyman was a Connecticut Puritan who, in 1676, was hauled to court for her manner of dress, along with about three dozen other women. Charged with overdressing, their crime was wearing a silk hood. In a moment of rebellion, Hannah wore her silk hood to court. The judge was not amused, and she along with the other women, were fined.
In another example of a specific sumptuary law, no one except those in high government were permitted to wear gold in their clothes. “Declaring its “utter detestation and dislike” of men and women of “mean condition, education and calling” who would wear the “garb of gentlemen,” the Massachusetts General Court in 1639 particularly prohibited Puritans of low estate from wearing “immoderate great breeches, knots of riban, silk roses, double ruffles and capes.” Women of low rank were forbidden silk hoods and scarves, as well as short sleeves “whereby the nakedness of the arms may be discovered”— the daring new fashion popular among the upper classes.” We Were What We Wore.
As the Puritan colony settled, trade resumed between our side of the Atlantic and Europe. People were just as fond of their frills and frippery as they always had been. More exotic garb was coming in, including short sleeves, gasp! This infuriated the Reverend Nathaniel Ward so much that, under a pseudonym, in 1647 he issued an angry and somewhat cryptic treatise called ‘A Simple Cobbler of Aggawam‘, and called out the ladies:
“I truly confesse, it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive, how those women should have any true grace, or valuable virtue, that have so little wit, as to disfigure themselves with such exotic garb, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gant bar-geese, ill-shapen-shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphicks, or at the best into French flirts“… geese, shellfish, hieroglyphics, and French flirts!? Egad! The reverend was truly worked up! (Source).
To be fair, the reverand also called out other religious sects, such as Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, and other enthusiasts…
Governing personal behavior and individual choices is always a dicey proposition. Hannah and the other women were fined. It was said specifically that Hannah was “wearing silk in a fflonting (flaunting) manner, in an offensive way…” I really don’t know how you’d wear a silk cap in a flaunting way. Perhaps she flirtatiously tipped it over one eye?
According to Claudia Kidwell, the former head curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s Costume Division, “Clothing’s most pervading function has been to declare status.” The early Puritans loved finery, but only the ones who could afford to have it tailor made enjoyed the finer points of it, and these were usually the leaders of the community, wealthy merchants, or high-born immigrants from England. It wasn’t until the late Industrial Revolution when ready made clothes appeared on the shop shelves.
But in the early days, we read,
Though simplicity of dress was one of the cornerstones of the Puritan Church, the individual members did not yield their personal vanity without many struggles. As soon as the colonies rallied from the first years of poverty and, above all, of comparative isolation, and a tide of prosperity and wealth came rolling in, the settlers began to pick up in dress, to bedeck themselves, to send eagerly to the mother country for new petticoats and doublets that, when proudly donned, did not seem simple and grave enough for the critical eyes of the omnipotent New England magistrates and ministers. Hence restraining and simplifying sumptuary laws were passed. In 1634, in view of some new fashions which were deemed by these autocrats to be immodest and extravagant, an order was sent forth by the General Court.
Though we most often see a Puritan portrait where the subject is wearing black, this was not usually the case in real life. Puritans wore black for paintings becuase black was their Sunday best. Black was a hard color to achieve and it faded quickly. But their daily mode of dress sported all sorts of colors.
Margaret Winthrop, the Massachusetts governor’s wife, ordered her clothing from John Smith, her family’s tailor in London. Margaret wanted “the civilest fashion now in use.”
Even then the clothes made the man. Or woman. In 1652, Jonas Fairbanks was called to the court in Salem for “wearing great boots.” Someone had spotted him wearing them, and snitched. The court record reads: “Jonas Fairbankes presented for wearing great boots. Discharged, it appearing that he did not wear them after the law was published.” Not today, snitcher. Not today.
A few other court decisions from that time in Salem (1646-1651) read:
Henrye Bullocke fined for excess in his apparel in boots, ribbons, gold and silver lace, etc.
Marke Hoscall of Salem fined for excess in his apparel, wearing broad lace.
John Bourne and his wife presented for concealing some pieces of cloth, stuff and thread committed to them and converting them to their own use. To make treble restitution and public acknowledgment at a public meeting in Salem within one month or pay fine.
In England in the late 1500s, a sumptuary law was passed requiring wool caps to be worn. In New England, such wool caps, called Monmouth caps, proved to be practical, and the people who had come from England were used to wearing them, so they were worn without resistance. These ‘Monmouth caps’ became widely used, but as a personal, practical choice.
“Every person above the age of six (excepting “Maids, ladies, gentlewomen, noble personages, and every Lord, knight and gentleman of twenty marks land”) residing in any of the cities, towns, villages or hamlets of England, must wear, on Sundays and holidays (except when travelling), “a cap of wool, thicked and dressed in England, made within this realm, and only dressed and finished by some of the trade of cappers, upon pain to forfeit for every day of not wearing 3s. 4d.” Sumptuary Law of 1651 Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Fairbanks Family
Partly, the old issue of Job’s friend tinged the American Puritans’ thinking. They believed that wealth ordained by God, the wealthy were in favor with Him. Thus, to dress below one’s class would be highly incorrect. However, this use of sumptuary laws to identify class distinctions and maintain hierarchies in class waned as there was more socio-economic movement between classes occurring than it did in England. It became impossible to enforce, too. “Clothing is created out of motivation,” says Claudia Kidwell. “The wealthy wanted to maintain distinctions. Everyone else wanted to close the gap.”
In Puritan Massachusetts, the Sumptuary Law was instituted less to maintain a hierarchy, though that was part of it, but based on biblical standards of wise shepherding and to institute frugality. In this, New Englanders do owe a debt, because if you have heard of the “Thrifty Yankee”, that regional characteristic is real and pervasive to this day. Enacted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the fall of 1634, the General Court ordered,
“That no person either man or woman shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woolen or silk or linen with any lace on it, silver, gold, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of said clothes. Also that no person either man or woman shall make or buy any slashed clothes other than one slash in each sleeve and another in the back; also all cut-works, embroideries, or needlework cap, bands, and rails are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn under the aforesaid penalty; also all gold or silver girdles, hatbands, belts, ruffs, beaver hats are prohibited to be bought and worn hereafter.” (Old English updated to modern language, Source).
Problem is, Christian liberty is still Christian liberty. It should not be legislated. But it kept happening anyway, people insisting on personal choice with their money, including where or when to buy finery. The court opined there was-
“intolerable excess and bravery hath crept in upon vs, and especially amongst people of mean condition, to the dishonor of God, the scandal of our profession, the consumption of estates, and altogether unsuiteable to our povertie…”
Obedience to God’s ways is a personal choice and a matter of Christian liberty when it’s in the areas not prescribed. Attempts to regulate one’s choices, whether tobacco, alcohol, clothing, or spending have always proved impossible to enforce and have failed in almost all cases. Hannah Lyman was 16 years old when she faced the court. Her bold stand for personal fashion choice resounds to this day.
However, there IS something to “the clothes make the woman.” The Bible advises us to be modest, and it also advises to shepherd our means well. Peter wrote of women in 1 Timothy 2:9, “Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive apparel,”
and in, 1 Peter 3:3-4, “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair or gold jewelry or fine clothes, / but from the inner disposition of your heart, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in God’s sight“.
In the Old Testament, showy attire is likened to haughtiness. Being haughty is behavior that attempts to bring excessive attention to self,
Isaiah 3:16-24, “The LORD also says: “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty—walking with heads held high and wanton eyes, prancing and skipping as they go, jingling the bracelets on their ankles— / the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will make their foreheads bare.” / In that day the Lord will take away their finery: their anklets and headbands and crescents…“
But legislation is not the way. Simple obedience to Jesus is the way. It DOES say something about a woman who wears short-shorts and halter tops. It says, ‘look at my body on display.’ It also says something if a woman goes in the other direction with a constant neck-high and floor length mode of dress, which in my opinion says, ‘look at my modesty on display.’
The indignant Reverend does make a sensible plea, “to avoid morose singularity, follow fashions slowly, showing by their moderation, that they rather draw in the other direction with their hearts, then put on by their examples.“
All things in moderation. Including laws!
Further Resources
Our Puritan Ancestors: Mass Bay Residents Waged a Fashion War in the Colony
Records and files of the Quarterly courts of Essex county, Massachusetts
