76532 shoes&pattens1

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Shoes in art and literaturę

The Carpenter’s Wife in The Miller’s Tale wore shoes laced on hir legges hye (ed. Skeat 1912, 3267), possibly similar to those shown in Figs. 39-40.

It seems likely that in the 12th and 13th cen-turies women often wore boots - perhaps the high ankle-shoes found so frequently in archaeological deposits of this period. In 1200, King John ordered four pairs of boots for his wife, one of which was to be lined with grey fur [ąuattuor par[ia] botarfum] ad feminas q[u]ar[um] unum par f[u]rret[u]r de gńs; Liberate Rolls, 2 John; ed. Hardy 1844, 9), and a French writer of similar datę States that the nuns at Montmartre were allowed boots lined with fur as a concession to the cold (Strutt 1842, 49). Yarwood (1979, 82) has suggested that women wore the same fashions as men but did not affect the same extremes, and there are occasional con-firmations that this was indeed so. The brass of Lady de la Pole (c. 1380), for example, shows long ‘poulaines’ peeking from under her dress (Clayton 1968, PI. 7), although the problems of walking in them must have multiplied when one had to manage a full-length skirt as well. The sculpture from the tomb of Blanche de la Tour (d. 1340), which shows only the lady’s toes protruding from under her skirts (Fig. 162), is typical of many of the depictions of women during this period. In the absence of evidence from contemporary English sources, it becomes necessary to look at evidence

162 Detail from the tomb of Blanche de la Tour (d.1340) in Westminster Abbey, showing her shoes peeking from under her skirts.

from the Continent, such as the illustration for February in Les Tres Riches Heures de Jean, Duc de Berry. Here a shepherdess warming her feet against the winter’s cold offers a rare display of ankles and feet, clad in modestly-shaped black (presumably undyed) ankle-shoes; her małe and female companions wear buskins. An earlier 12th-century French feast scene, with małe and female guests, depicts a tangle of feet under the table, all identical to each other (Cosman 1976, Fig. 1.4).

Documentary sources confirm that young child-ren wore shoes, though not perhaps that they wore them at so early an age as the archaeological finds imply (see above, pp. 104-5). The house-hold accounts of Prince Henry, son of Edward I, list the shoes - including those wom at the King’s coronation - that were purchased in 1273-4 for Henry himself, for his sister Eleanor, and for their cousin, John of Brittany Oohnstone 1922-3, 414-6). Henry was five or six at the time, and John was seven or eight. The shoes are merely described as sotulares (perhaps used here as a generał term rather than specifically for below-the-ankle ‘shoes’), and except for the information that some laces were purchased separately for Eleanor’s shoes (Iłem pro aguletis ad sotulares domine Alianore .j. d.), no details of styling are given.

Just over two centuries later, in 1478-9, Sir William Stonor was sent a bill by his shoemaker which specified, among other things,

. . . It. to my ladys chyldryn, xviij peyre, pńce of all

thepeyrys, iij.s. . . .

(ed. Kingsford 1919, ii.74, No. 234)

The large number of shoes that were purchased on a single occasion for just four children - my ladys chyldryn were the three daughters and one son from Lady Elizabeth’s first marriage - seems elear testimony both to the frailty of medieval foot-wear and to the rapidity with which children grow out of shoes. Archaeological excavations have yielded children’s shoes in considerable numbers (see above, Table 19), though maybe not as many as might be anticipated. Even when no allowance is madę for the distortion caused by a high ratę of infant mortality, there are many possible practical considerations: that very young children went about barefoot, especially in the summer; that