Eastern fashion of vest, changing doublet, stiff collar, bands and cloak, into a comely vest" (Pepys describes it as "a long cassock close to the body"), "after the Persian mode, with girdle or straps, and stockings and garters into buckles of which some were set with precious stones, resolving never to alter it, and to leave the French mode, which had hitherto obtained to our great expense and reproach".

Many of the courtiers then made bets with the king that he would not persist in this good resolution. They had not long to wait before winning their wagers.

News of Charles II.'s reformed attire reached the French court, where it became the source of immense amusement and ridicule. Louis XIV. said he would soon put an end to the King of England's new fashion; and this he very effectually proceeded to do by adopting the reformed English court dress as the livery of his servants, which Pepys calls "the greatest indignity ever done by one prince to another".

Be that as it may, the result was that Charles II.'s fashion, which was to last for ever, lasted only two months, and dress at Whitehall became more French and more extravagant than ever.

But let us be fair! Clothing at the court of Charles II. was not entirely a matter of external show and glitter. Even at that frivolous court, a doctrine now esteemed in this country as next to godliness, if not indeed considerably before it,

namely that flannel should be worn next the skin, was already established. The French ambassador declared that he owed his life to the advice of Charles II. to wear underclothes made of "a plain sort of woollen stuff, woven in the cottages of Wales nothing could be more warm, comfortable, or hygienic". And we read in Sir John Reresby's Memoirs, that Charles II. warned him against wearing thin soles to his boots in the country.

Sometimes, again, the dresses of the ladies tended in a direction exactly opposite to that of excessive effeminacy and any undue development of female finery; and what we are about to quote in proof of this assertion will show that there is nothing new under the sun-even in the present aping of male dress by females. "Walking in the galleries at Whitehall," says a diarist, in 1666, “I find the ladies of honour dressed in their riding garbs, with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just for all the world like mine, and buttoned their doublets up to the breast, with periwigs and with hats; so that, only for a long petticoat dragging under their men's coats, nobody could take them for women in any point whatever, which was an odd sight, and a sight did not please me." What would he have said if he could have known that even the "long petticoat dragging" would be discarded? Men's clothes were not the only male appurtenances

1 French State Papers, Courtin to Pomponne, tome cxx., fol. 271, Autograph P.S.

adopted by the ladies at the court of Charles II. During the panic caused by the so-called Popish plot, it became the fashion for ladies to carry loaded pistols in their muffs. Those must indeed have been desperately dangerous times in London!

1"The Countess of Shaftesbury had always in her muff little pocket pistols, loaden, to defend her from the papists, being instructed by her lord; and most timorous ladies followed her fashion" (Bruce's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 29).

CHAPTER XIII.

WE noticed that when an opportunity for energetic action presented itself, Rochester abandoned his idle, profligate life to avail himself of it, and appeared to have turned over a new leaf. Reformation of life is a splendid achievement; but it is of little permanent value without perseverance: and perseverance-at any rate perseverance in well-doing-is a virtue in which Rochester was singularly deficient.

Although only eighteen years old, he appears to have ended his naval and military career in 1666. This is the more remarkable because his late captain, Sir Edward Spragge, commanded the squadron of eighteen ships which opposed De Ruyter's advance up the Thames in the following year; and that year was a notable one in the history of the British navy.

Evelyn describes the alarm caused by that "most audacious enterprise" of the Dutch in "entering the very river with part of their fleet, doing us not only disgrace, but incredible mischief in burning several of our best men-of-war lying at anchor and moored there, and all this through our unaccountable negligence in not setting out our fleet in due time. This alarm caused me . . . to send away my best goods,

plate, etc., from my house to another place. The alarm was so great that it put both Country and City into a panic, fear, and consternation, such as I hope I shall never see more; everybody was flying, none knew why or whither."

Pepys, as secretary to the Admiralty, went down. to Gravesend, where he was able to hear the firing of the guns "most distinctly". He was told that "people do complain of Sir Edward Spragge that he hath not done extraordinary". Pepys seems to have shared Evelyn's uneasiness during this anxious crisis respecting his personal property. On 19th June, 1667, he wrote: "My wife did give me so bad an account of her and my father's method in burying of our gold, that made me mad, and she herself is not pleased with it, she believing that my sister knows of it. My father and she did it on Sunday, when they were gone to Church, in open daylight, in the midst of the garden, where, for ought they knew, many eyes might see them." A hole in the ground, it may be observed, was the bank of the period.

Happily the enemy never looted London. Nevertheless, Londoners were considerably impoverished indirectly by the presence of the Dutch fleet at the mouth of the Thames, through its influence upon the price of coal. Nearly all the coal that came to London at that period was brought by sea, indeed mineral coal used to be called sea-coal for that reason. The navy was not strong enough to send escorts for the coal ships coming from Newcastle to London, and