PECULIAR CUSTOMS OF THE QUAKERS. CHAPTER I. SECTION I. Dress-Quakers distinguished by their dress from others-Great extravagance in dress in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries-this extravagance had reached the clergy-but religious individuals kept to their antient dresses-The dress which the men of this description wore in those daysdress of the women of this description alsoGeorge Fox and the Quakers, springing out of these, carried their plain habits with them into their new Society. I HAVE now explained, in a diffusive man ner, the Moral Education and the Discipline of the Quakers. I shall proceed to the explanation of such Customs as seem peculiar to them as a Society of Christians. The Dress of the Quakers is the first custom of this nature that I purpose to notice. All They stand distinguished by means of it from all other religious bodies. The men do not wear lace, frills, ruffles, swords, or any of the ornaments used by the fashionable world. The women wear no lace, flounces, lappets, rings, bracelets, necklaces, ear-rings, nor any thing belonging to this class. Both sexes are also particular in the choice of the colour of their clothes. gay colours, such as red, blue, green, and yellow, are exploded. Dressing in this manner, a member of this Society is known by his apparel through the whole kingdom. This is not the case with any other individuals of the island, except the clergy; and these, in consequence of the black garments worn by persons on account of the death of their relations, are not always distinguishable from others. I know of no custom among the Quakers which has more excited the curiosity of others than this of their dress, and none in which they have been more mistaken in their conjectures concerning it In the early times of the English history, : dress dress was frequently regulated by the Government *. Persons of a certain rank and fortune were permitted to wear only clothing of a certain kind. But these restrictions and distinctions were gradually broken down; and people, as they were able and willing, launched out into unlimited extravagance in their dress. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and down from thence to the time when the Quakers first appeared, were periods particularly noticed for prodigality in the use of apparel. There was nothing too expensive or too preposterous to be worn. Our ancestors, also, to use an antient quotation, were never con stant to one colour or fashion two months to an end." We can have no idea, by surveying the present generation, of the folly in such respects of these early ages. But these follies were not confined to the laity. Affectation of parade and gaudy clothing were admitted among many of the clergy, who incurred the severest invectives of the poets on that account. The Ploughman in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is full upon this point. See Strutt's Antiquities. S 2 He |