In 1556, John Knox wrote a letter to his female Protestant following in Edinburgh, advising on suitable clothing for the godly. The new-ish French farthingale was deprecated.1 After finding some scriptural justification for censuring hairstyles, Knox wrote:

‘Gif sic thingis as Esay the Prophet repruiffit in the wemen of his time be dampnabill, verdingallis, and sic other fond fantaseis that wer knawin in theis dayis, can not be justifeit’2

If such things as Isaiah the Prophet reproved in the women of his time be damnable, farthingales, and such other fond fantasies that were known in these days, cannot be justified.

Knox was directing his audience to Isaiah’s warning to the proud women of Sion, (Isaiah 3:16-18). In the English Great Bible of 1540, the passage includes a checklist of Tudor fashion and jewellery:

“Seeing the daughters of Sion are become so proud … In that daye shall the Lord take awaye the gorgiousnes of theyr apparell, and spanges, cheynes, partelettes, and colarres, bracelettes and hooues, the goodly floured, wyde and brodered rayment, brooches, and headbandes, rynges and garlandes, holy daye clothes and vales, kerchefes and pinnes, glasses and cypresses, bonnettes and taches.

And in steade of good smell, there shalbe stynck amonge them. And for theyr gyrdles there shalbe lowse bandes. And for well sett heare there shalbe baldnesse. In steade of a stomacher, a sack cloth, and for theyr bewty witherdnesse, and sonne burnyng.”3

This passage,4 with its mention of ‘stynck’ underlies two comments on costume that Knox included in his History of the Kirk, on Mary’s entourage at the May 1563 opening of Parliament as a ‘styncken pryde of wemen’, and his criticism of the jewellery, the ‘gold, garnishing, targetting’, worn by Mary’s gentlewomen in the outer chamber at Holyrood Palace in June 1563.5

The Byble in Englyshe (Edward Whytchurche, 1540), fol. xliii.
  1. Jane Dawson, John Knox (Yale, 2015), p. 141. ↩︎
  2. David Laing, Works of John Knox, 4 (Edinbrugh: Wodrow Society, 1855), p. 277. ↩︎
  3. The booke of the prophete Esay, The Byble in Englyshe (Edward Whytchurche, 1540), fol. xlii-xliii. ‘Hooues’ or howes were hoods or coifs. ↩︎
  4. For a modern discussion of the text, see Laura Quick, Dress, Adornment, and the Body in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford, 2021), p. 123. ↩︎
  5. Jane Dawson, John Knox (Yale, 2015), p. 237: David Laing, Works of John Knox, 2 (Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1848), pp. 381, 389. ↩︎

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