“Bucklers brode and sweardes longe,
   Baudryke with baselards kene.”

He then accuses them with wearing gay gowns of scarlet and green colours, ornamented with cut-work, and for the long pykes upon their shoes.

But so late as the year 1652 we have the following anecdote of the whimsical dress of a clergyman.  John Owen, Dean of Christ church, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, is represented an wearing a lawn-band, as having his hair powdered and his hat curiously cocked.  He is described also as wearing Spanish leather-boots with lawn-tops, and snake-bone band-strings with large tassels, and a large set of ribbands pointed at his knees with points or tags at the end.  And much about the same time, when Charles the second was at Newmarket, Nathaniel Vincent, doctor of divinity, fellow of Clare-hall, and chaplain in ordinary to his majesty, preached before him.  But the king was so displeased with the foppery of this preacher’s, dress, that he commanded the duke of Monmouth, then chancellor of the university, to cause the statutes concerning decency of apparel among the clergy to be put into execution, which was accordingly done.  These instances are sufficient to shew, that the taste for preposterous and extravagant dress must have operated like a contagion in those times, or the clergy would scarcely have dressed themselves in this ridiculous and censurable manner.

But although this extravagance was found among many orders of society at the time of the appearance of George Fox, yet many individuals had set their faces against the fashions of the world.  These consisted principally of religious people of different denominations, most of whom were in the middle classes of life.  Such persons were found in plain and simple habits notwithstanding the contagion of the example of their superiors in rank.  The men of this description generally wore plain round hats with common crowns.  They had discarded the sugar-loaf hat, and the hat turned up with a silver clasp on one side, as well as all ornaments belonging to it, such as pictures, feathers, and bands of various colours.  They had adopted a plain suit of clothes.  They wore cloaks, when necessary, over these.  But both the clothes and the cloaks were of the same colour.  The colour of each of them was either drab or grey.  Other people who followed the fashions, wore white, red, green, yellow, violet, scarlet, and other colours, which were expensive, because they were principally dyed in foreign parts.  The drab consisted of the white wool undyed, and the grey of the white wool mixed with the black, which was undyed also.  These colours were then the colours of the clothes, because they were the least expensive, of the peasants of England, as they are now of those of Portugal and Spain.  They had discarded also, all ornaments, such as of lace, or bunches of ribbands at the knees, and their buttons were generally of alchymy, as this composition was then termed, or of the same colour as their clothes.