The dress of the Quakers is the first custom of this nature, that I purpose to notice.  They stand distinguished be means of it from all other religious bodies The men wear neither lace, frills, ruffles, swords, nor any of the ornaments used by the fashionable world.  The women wear neither 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.  All gay colours such as red, blue, green, and yellow, are exploded.  Dressing in this manner, a Quaker 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 distinguished from others.

I know of no custom among the Quakers, which has more excited the curiosity of the world, than this of their dress, and none, in which they have been more mistaken in their conjectures concerning it.

[35]In the early times of the English History, dress had been frequently restricted by the government.—­Persons of a certain rank and fortune were permitted to wear only cloathing 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 ancient quotation, “were never constant to one colour or fashion two months to an end.”  We can have no idea by the present generation, of the folly in such respects, of these early ages.  But these follies were not confined to the laiety.  Affectation of parade, and gaudy cloathing, 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.  He gives us the following description of a Priest

   “That hye on horse wylleth to ride,
   In glytter ande gold of great araye,
   ’I painted and pertred all in pryde,
   No common Knyght may go so gaye;
   Chaunge of clothyng every daye,
   With golden gyrdles great and small,
   As boysterous as is here at baye;
   All suche falshed mote nede fell.”

[Footnote 35:  See Strut’s Antiquities.]

To this he adds, that many of them had more than one or two mitres, embellished with pearls, like the head of a queen, and a staff of gold set with jewels, as heavy as lead.  He then speaks of their appearing out of doors with broad bucklers and long swords, or with baldrics about their necks, instead of stoles, to which their basellards were attached.