The King's Servants

The King's Servants
Men’s dress at the accession of Henry VIII. A Tudor Tailor Case Study 

Caroline Johnson

Paperback, 48 pp. Very richly illustrated. Fat Goose 2009

• 48 pages with colour illustrations throughout
• Detailed line drawings and diagrams by Michael Perry
• Sumptuous full-colour photographs by Henrietta Clare
• Patterns for shirts, doublet, hose, coat, jacket and hat with advice on appropriate fabrics and comprehensive making instructions

The King’s Servants provides a vivid picture of Henry’s early court using evidence from royal warrants and account books in The National Archive. Caroline Johnson’s transcriptions and translations of more than two hundred hand-written pages of the original 16th century Latin and English documents have revealed a wealth of fascinating facts about expenditure on garments for servants at the Tudor court.
The typical clothes worn by middling men during the decades between the battles of Bosworth (1485) and Flodden (1513) are described and reconstructed in this beautifully illustrated book.

Previously unpublished documents, including bundles of orders for clothes, and parchment books recording payments to such people as mercers, drapers, tailors, cordwainers and silkwomen, are carefully analysed to provide details of the usual allocation of dress to different ranks of servants at the royal court.

The book focuses on the middle-ranking men who were clerks, messengers and huntsmen. There is also information on trends in men’s fashion at the turn of the century as the documents investigated demonstrate Henry VII’s expenditure as well as his son’s. A noteworthy inclusion is an early livery issued to Henry VII’s newly-founded Yeomen of the Guard, who were resplendent in green and white damask coats embellished with lavish gold embroidery.

The book offers a survey of relevant pictorial sources such as effigies, brasses and stained glass plus rare glimpses of archaeological artefacts from the late 15th and early 16th century. These, together with the archival information, have provided sufficient evidence for reconstructions of the typical royal servant’s every day wardrobe to be made and these are illustrated in high-quality colour photographs.

The book also features comprehensive patterns for a man’s complete costume during the early Tudor period. These were devised by Ninya Mikhaila with other experienced costumiers, including Sarah Thursfield (The Medieval Tailor’s Assistant) and Jane Huggett (Clothes of the Common Woman, 1480-1580).