Hands Deep in History: Pockets in Men
`and Women’s Dress in Western Europe,
`c. 1480–1630
`
`By R E B E C C A U N S W O R T H
`
`Pockets are now standard and accepted aspects of clothing, but their presence in
`dress has not always been so assured. This article examines the use of pockets
`in western Europe from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries,
`demonstrating that pockets were adopted into clothing much earlier than has
`often been believed. It discusses the physical form of pockets in the dress of both
`genders and the types of garments into which they were inserted. It also explores
`the possible reasons for the uptake of pockets, the uses to which they were put and
`the sorts of objects which were kept in pockets, showing that pockets provided the
`wearer with an individual and personal space which they could use to transport
`a wide range of goods hands-free.
`Keywords: pockets, clothing, sixteenth century, Europe, fashion, accessories
`
`INTRODUCTION
`
`Pockets are now relatively ubiquitous aspects of dress. Sitting here reading this
`article, the chances are that you have on at least one garment which contains
`a pocket or two, be it jeans, a skirt, a suit, a T-shirt or a cardigan. Pockets
`have permeated the wardrobes of both genders, even increasingly to be found
`in the gowns worn by celebrities on the red carpet. They are applied to clothes
`for both functional and decorative purposes, and such is the advantage which
`they provide that they can be used as a means of selling garments: in 2011,
`H&M launched a trouser collection for men with one style explicitly called the
`‘5-pocket’ trouser. We rely on our pockets as spaces in which to store and carry
`varied objects such as our keys, phones, loose change, tissues, or just put our
`
`Costume 51.2 (2017): 148–170
`Edinburgh University Press
`DOI: 10.3366/cost.2017.0022
`© Rebecca Unsworth. The online version of this article is published as Open Access
`under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence
`(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits commercial use,
`distribution and reproduction provided the original work is cited.
`www.euppublishing.com/cost
`
`NIKE-1035
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`hands. The expectation of their presence in clothing is now such that there can
`be a sense of loss and confusion when we unexpectedly find ourselves wearing a
`garment without pockets, uncertain of where to put our possessions.
`But pockets have not always been such an assured feature of clothing, an
`accepted and expected part of our sartorial world. This article aims to historicize
`the pocket, exploring when and why pockets began to become such indispensable
`additions to both male and female dress. It focuses on an expanded sixteenth
`century, from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, and uses a
`range of sources, including objects, images and texts, to examine the form and
`function of pockets in Europe in this period: what garments they were placed
`in, what they looked like and were made from, what was held in them, and the
`reasons for and significance of their inclusion in clothing.
`
`THE STUDY OF POCKETS
`
`Pockets have tended to stay out of the gaze of the early modern historian, their
`historiographical absence mirroring their frequent physical invisibility. Hidden
`away amongst folds of fabric, unlike the outfit as a whole, pockets do not
`appear to fit the usual narrative of early modern dress, that of display and the
`proclamation of an individual’s actual or desired identity through their clothing.
`Nor have pockets been included in the relatively recent spate of studies on
`the cultural significance and applications of individual accessories or separable
`aspects of early modern clothing.1 A considerable amount of research has been
`done into the material, social and symbolic lives of pockets in the eighteenth
`and nineteenth centuries, and particularly women’s tie-on pockets, mainly due
`to Barbara Burman and her ‘Pockets of History’ project.2 By contrast, sixteenth-
`century pockets have generally been overlooked by historians; either their very
`existence has been refuted in favour of a later start date for the adoption of
`pockets, or they have been brushed over in a paragraph or two in a wider
`work of dress history without any sustained analysis of their material forms
`or cultural associations.3 There has, however, been a little more interest in the
`physicality and use of pre-eighteenth-century pockets outside of the academy,
`amongst those involved in the historical reconstruction of dress and the online
`costuming community.4
`Whilst large numbers of later tie-on pockets survive, offering up a visibly
`interesting cache of objects and a sizeable body of material to analyse, references
`to sixteenth-century pockets, whether textually, visually or in the material
`remains of garments, are rather harder to come by.5 It is not easy to determine
`how pervasive pockets were in the early modern period, as inventories and
`wardrobe accounts rarely record the presence of pockets, whether separable or
`included in garments, and for all the paintings which show a gaping pocket hole,
`in how many more was a pocket hole concealed amongst folds of fabric or elided
`altogether by the painter’s brushstrokes and a lack of concern for the construction
`of clothing?6 The fragmentary nature of surviving evidence for early modern
`
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`
`pockets means that this article has taken a broad geographical approach, looking
`beyond Britain alone to evidence from the wider European continent. This article
`is an introduction to the topic of sixteenth-century pockets, built up from years
`of small discoveries and serendipitous encounters in the archives whilst in the
`process of conducting other research, finding hints of pockets embedded in a
`myriad of different sources. A combination of portraits, prints, objects, letters,
`books and wardrobe accounts which depict or refer to pockets have been used
`to gain a sense of the physicality of pockets in this period and the uses to which
`they were put. In particular, this article has been aided by the recent rise of online
`digital resources, which offer searchable access to large databases of manuscripts
`and printed works, enabling references to pockets to be pinpointed more easily.
`Rather than endlessly trawling manually through the State Papers, for example,
`keyword searches on State Papers Online have been used to identify all the
`references to pockets that they contain. The utility of such tools depends on how
`well documents have been catalogued, whether a description or transcription
`of their contents is in-depth enough to contain the word ‘pocket’, and on how
`effective a programme’s search function is. However, through the use of these
`online repositories of documents and literature, this article shows how changes
`in technology are opening up new avenues of research for dress historians,
`allowing small facets of clothing to be reclaimed from the archives and enabling
`large bodies of sources to be scoured in a way that previously would have been
`incredibly time-consuming.7
`
`THE FORM AND DEVELOPMENT OF POCKETS
`
`The limited evidence available for pockets makes it hard to ascribe a definitive
`start date to their introduction into dress; this article is not trying to claim that
`pockets were an ‘invention’ of the long sixteenth century per se. Though pockets
`may have been in use before the late fifteenth century, it is from this point
`onwards that their presence becomes more noticeable, increasing in popularity
`and prevalence throughout the sixteenth century. It has been argued that tie-
`on pockets fell out of fashion with the adoption of the slender profile and
`gauzy fabrics of neo-classical dress at the end of the eighteenth century.8 By
`the same reasoning, whereas the fullness of sixteenth-century dress for both
`men and women gave ample opportunities for the inclusion and concealment
`of pocket bags without unsightly bulges, the narrower medieval silhouette would
`have similarly restricted the placement of pockets in clothing. Some garments
`could have accommodated pockets even less than others, as in men’s hose,
`worn skin-tight in the fifteenth century and described by the Venetian Cesare
`Vecellio (1521–1601) as being ‘so closely fitted that they showed almost all their
`muscles, as if they were completely naked’.9 In a chapter on ‘The Grossenesse
`of former Times’, the 1613 text The Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times,
`a compendium of observations collated from a variety of European authors, said
`of the hose men used to wear that they were ‘made close to their limbes, wherein
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`
`they had no menes for Pockets’.10 However, in his work illustrating historical and
`contemporary dress from around the world, Vecellio indicated that pockets were
`a relative novelty of the end of the fifteenth century, writing of the ‘reformed and
`more modest dress’ of some Venetian women that:
`
`I have found that in those times trains were not worn long but held up and attached to the
`belt or to the edges of pockets — which were being used for the first time, though their
`use continued for a very long time afterward.11
`
`So what forms did pockets adopt in the long sixteenth century, and what
`types of garments were they placed in? Men’s upper hose in this period grew in
`volume, becoming rotund and then baggy, so large that attempts were made to
`try and limit the amount of material and padding which could be used in their
`construction and concerns were raised that men were concealing weapons in their
`hose.12 These increased dimensions of hose enabled the inclusion of pockets,
`which, according to Janet Arnold’s (1932–1998) study of extant objects, were
`generally a pocket bag made of fustian or leather stitched into a vertical placket
`which was not always located along the side seam of the hose.13 The wardrobe
`accounts for Elizabeth I (1533–1603) record that in 1575 Thomas Ludwell
`(fl. 1564–1582), one of her tailors, was charged with making a pair of paned hose
`for a Moorish boy of carnation stammel with ‘pockettes of fustian’.14 The hosier
`Henry Herne (fl. 1559–1592) also made a pair of hose for the boy ‘with thre yerds
`of chaungeable mockeado with lase & silke lyned with lynen, wollen, cotten,
`canvas, heare, pockettes & Poyntes’.15 A pair of calze were made for Cosimo I
`de’ Medici (1519–1574) in 1570 of crimson twill with cotton pockets.16 Svante
`Sture’s (1517–1567) pluderhose, which he was wearing when he was murdered
`in Uppsala Cathedral in 1567, have a rather different style of pocket: a pouch
`with a drawstring top built into one of the flounces of the hose in between the
`panes.17
`Some pocket holes are clearly visible in men’s hose in paintings and prints,
`although, as with women’s skirts, it can be difficult to determine what is simply
`a fold in the fabric and what is a pocket hole. Giovanni Battista Moroni’s
`(1520–1578) portrait of Count Alborghetti and his son from c. 1545–1550 shows
`the boy wearing a pair of horizontally striped hose with a vertical pocket hole
`lined with the same fabric as the hose and trimmed with a pink binding.18
`Bindings and embroidery down the sides of men’s hose were used to frame
`and advertise the presence of pockets to even greater effect in the late sixteenth
`and early seventeenth centuries, as in Robert Peake’s (c. 1551–1619) painting
`of Henry, Prince of Wales (1594–1612) from c. 1605 (Figure 1). Alongside
`actual pockets in the sides of hose, seemingly false pockets which were an
`elongated hexagonal shape decorated with buttons were playfully placed in the
`front of hose in the early seventeenth century. The parade costume of Christian
`II, Elector of Saxony (1583–1611), sports a pair of such pockets, as do figures
`in a number of paintings.19 These buttoned, possibly imitation, pockets could be
`placed vertically as well as horizontally, with several sets in one pair of hose, as
`can be seen in a portrait of Lars Kagg (1597–1661) (Figure 2).20 One painting
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`COSTUME
`
`Figure 1. Robert Peake the Elder, Henry Frederick Prince of Wales (1594–1612), with Sir
`John Harington (1592–1614), in the hunting field, 1603. Oil on canvas, 201.9 × 147.3 cm.
`New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest 1944,
`44.27 Metropolitan Museum of Art.
`
`of an unknown French nobleman from 1607 shows the sitter with both a set of
`vertical buttoned pockets in the front of his hose and a set of actual pockets in
`the side of his hose (Figure 3).
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`Figure 2. Georg Günther Kraill von Bemeberg, Portrait of Lars Kagg (1597–1661), 1623.
`Tempera on canvas, 112 × 198 cm. Sweden: Skoklosters slott, 2264 Skoklosters slott.
`
`Pockets were also placed in upper body garments for men, such as gowns,
`coats and jerkins, and some paintings even show small openings in the sleeves of
`doublets fastened with buttons which resemble pocket holes.21 Thomas Ludwell
`made a jerkin for one of Queen Elizabeth’s fools ‘of black frise cut in panes and
`weltid with frenge lyned with fustian with a pocket of fustian faced with taphata
`with buttons of silke’.22 Another fool received a number of gowns from Ludwell’s
`workshop, one of ‘blewe damaske’ and the other of ‘olde Tyncell’, both with
`‘two pockettes of fustian’.23 Ludwell also made a gown of ‘tufte mockeado’ for
`a Moorish boy, which was ‘lyned with white bayes with pockettes of fustian’.24
`Such pockets in gowns were most likely vertical insertions, as can be seen in
`the gown Ludovick Stuart (1574–1624) is wearing in his portrait by the studio
`of Daniel Mytens (c. 1590–1647).25 But in jerkins, images show buttoned slits,
`
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`COSTUME
`
`Figure 3. French School, Unknown Courtier, 1607. Oil on panel, 83 × 62 cm. London:
`Weiss Gallery Courtesy of the Weiss Gallery, London.
`
`which may have simply been decorative or concealed a pocket hole, sitting
`horizontally or at a slight angle on the skirts and chest (Figure 4).26 A leather
`jerkin recovered from the Mary Rose, a warship which sank off the south coast
`of England in 1545, has a pocket with a flap top fastened with three buttons on
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`Figure 4. This outfit features a vertical pocket hole on the sides of the hose, as well as
`buttoned pocket slits in the front of the hose, skirts of the jerkin and on the chest of the
`jerkin. Flemish School, Unknown Young Boy, c. 1600. Oil on canvas, 62.5 × 51.5 cm.
`London: Weiss Gallery Courtesy of the Weiss Gallery, London.
`
`the inside of the left skirt, and there is evidence of pockets having been attached
`to the skirts of two other jerkins found on the ship (Figure 5).27
`Women’s clothes also contained pockets, although they do not appear to
`have been turned into decorative features and had their presence made overt
`through buttons and trimmings, as in men’s dress. Integrated pockets were
`stitched into women’s gowns and over-garments, most likely as vertical pocket
`holes positioned below the waist, as can be seen in a print of a Florentine woman
`by Pieter de Jode (1570–1634) (Figure 6), although a portrait of the young
`Anna Eleonora Sanvitali (1558–1582) from 1562 depicts her with a single bound
`horizontal pocket hole clearly visible on the left side of her skirt.28 The adoption
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`
`Figure 5. Remains of a leather jerkin (81A2592) recovered from the Mary Rose with a
`pocket on one skirt fastened with a flap top © The Mary Rose Trust.
`
`of farthingales by women in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
`seemingly did not impede the inclusion of pockets in gowns. Janet Arnold has
`noted a pocket hole in a gown in the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, intended
`to be worn over a wheel farthingale, whilst a letter from William Yardley to
`Edward Conway (c. 1564–1631) in 1599 spoke of a letter having been ‘putt into
`the pocket of A Frenche vardingale’.29
`The wardrobe accounts of Elizabeth I show that pockets were often placed
`in her gowns, nightgowns, safeguards and cloaks. A ‘straight bodied Gowne of
`blak taphata’ made for the Queen in 1569 had a ‘Pockett of carnation taphata’,
`while a loose gown made in 1574 of ‘plaine blak vellat’ also had pockets made
`of ‘blak taphata’.30 The records for the alteration of a gown ‘brought out of
`Fraunce’ for Elizabeth note that the gown included a ‘pockett of blak taphata’,
`but whether the gown had originally been made with such a pocket or whether
`the Queen’s tailor Walter Fyshe (fl. 1557–1586) had inserted it is unknown.31
`Pockets could be remade or added to a garment after its initial construction: in
`1575, Fyshe had the task of ‘makinge newe pockettes of blak taphata’ for a black
`wrought velvet cloak, and in 1580 of ‘making of a pockett for a rounde kyrtell
`of yellowe taphata’.32 The fabric which pockets were made from generally did
`not match the rest of the garment, but they did often coordinate with trimmings,
`as in a safeguard of black tuft taffeta ‘borderid with blak sarceonett and pocketts
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`
`Figure 6. Pieter de Jode after Sebastiaan Vrancx, Viri atque muleris apvd Florentinos
`habitvs, 1605–1610. Engraving, 22.5 × 14.9 cm. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum,
`RP-P-OB-7740 Rijksmuseum.
`
`of like sarceonett’.33 Elizabeth’s pockets were predominantly made of taffeta,
`but she also had pockets of grosgrain or sarcenet, and occasionally they were
`lined with fustian, presumably for strength.34 Two pieces of yellow taffeta were
`found amongst the satin remnants of the burial gown of Eleonora di Toledo
`(1522–1562) which are thought to have comprised a pocket, whilst the pockets
`in the loose gowns and nightgowns of Mary I (1516–1558) were always made of
`black satin.35 However, when a garment was made for someone else, whether
`a dwarf, a maid or a lady of the court, the wardrobe accounts of Mary and
`Elizabeth show that the pockets included were almost always made of either
`fustian or buckram, as opposed to a type of silk cloth.36 Elizabeth’s pockets were
`not necessarily made from offcuts of fabric: Baptist Hicks (1551–1629) delivered
`‘two yerds thre quarters of taphata for pocketts’ to the Great Wardrobe in 1603.37
`Women also wore tie-on pockets long before the end of the seventeenth
`century. There are a number of references in Elizabeth’s wardrobe accounts
`to pockets having been made separate to any gowns, as in ‘Item for makinge
`of Twelve Pockettes of silke grograine: Twelve Pockettes of taphata: and
`Twelve Pocketts of bridge satten’ in 1579.38 In 1608, Sir Thomas Edmondes
`(c. 1563–1639) sent Sir Robert Cecil (1563–1612) a parcel of goods from
`Brussels, which included ‘2 perfumed pocketts’ alongside Spanish gloves and
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`COSTUME
`
`scented candles, and there are extant embroidered pockets in the Museo del
`Traje in Madrid.39 Similar pockets can be seen in several works depicting
`women — paintings, preparatory sketches and prints — by the artists Giovanni
`Stradano (also known as Jan van der Straet (1523–1605)) and Alessandro Allori
`(1535–1607), both based in Florence in the late sixteenth century (Figure 7).40
`These items perfectly match Burman and White’s definition of tie-on pockets —
`‘large, discrete garments of a more or less rectangular or oblong shape, designed
`to be tied around the waist, over a petticoat and under a dress’ — except for
`the fact that they are only visible because they are being worn externally, over
`the skirts.41 This raises the question of whether such items should be seen as
`a type of bag as opposed to a pocket. Although decorated, they do not look
`as robust or secure as the purses which men can be seen sporting in formal
`portraits, and it is notable that Stradano and Allori’s images all show women in
`domestic environments or states of semi-undress, implying that in some informal
`circumstances it may have been acceptable to wear a pocket above your clothes
`for ease of access. There is a terminological as well as a physical inexactitude
`to pockets, however. In his Italian to English dictionary from 1598, John Florio
`(1553–1625) defined a tasca, the modern Italian term for pocket, as ‘a pouch, a
`pocket, a bag, a budget, a purse, a satchell, a hawking bag, a poake, a scrip’.42
`In the warrants for the wardrobe of Mary I, the term ‘bagges’ was used for what
`must have been pockets inserted into garments — as in the making of a loose
`gown of black damask with ‘baggs of blacke Satten’ — whereas in the warrants
`of Elizabeth I, the term ‘bagges’ generally referred to scented sweet bags.43
`
`THE ADOPTION AND USES OF POCKETS
`
`In Materializing Gender in Early Modern England, Will Fisher argues that
`certain accessories and aspects of appearance in the early modern period —
`handkerchiefs, codpieces, beards and hair — were prostheses, integral yet
`detachable attachments to the body, which both shaped and compensated for
`a lack in the original body.44 Fisher sees these features as not only outwardly
`marking a person’s gender identity, but as actively constituting it. Pockets are
`not able to mould one’s gender in the same way, although pockets can be seen in
`some images of women wearing hose and as an opening into which items could
`be inserted pockets did have a sexual connotation.45 However, the notion of the
`prosthetic in general can be usefully applied to pockets to explain their increasing
`adoption in the long sixteenth century. Pockets were liminal and constructed
`temporary extensions to the natural or clothed body which supplemented its
`inability to store, carry and protect as many possessions as might be desired
`at once. Certainly, the idea of a ‘prosthetic backlash’, that there is a sense
`of deprivation when a prosthesis is removed, can be witnessed in relation to
`pockets.46 People’s dependency on pockets to hold items for them can be seen
`in an event from 1588, when Sir William Fitzwilliam (1526–1599) sent a letter
`to Sir Edward Denny (1547–1600), which was delivered when Denny was out
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`
`Figure 7. Women wearing tie-on pockets whilst incubating silk worms. Karel van Mallery
`after Jan van der Straet, Vermis sericus, pl. 3, c. 1595. Engraving, 20 × 27 cm. New York:
`The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey
`Fund, 1950, 49.95.869(2) Metropolitan Museum of Art.
`
`riding and so ‘after he had lookde in it he threw it awaye’, much to Fitzwilliam’s
`chagrin. Denny’s explanation for his action was that he ‘thought [. . . ] noe harme
`in it’, but he simply had on ‘a suit that had noe pockets’ and therefore could not
`hold onto the letter.47
`Pockets allowed a person to continue to carry possessions on their body
`when their hands were otherwise engaged, such as in the world of work, whether
`that involved domestic activities or professional employment. Comparatively few
`images from the sixteenth century show people completing a task as opposed to
`merely sitting for a portrait, where their hands are often occupied with extraneous
`objects; however, the women wearing tie-on pockets in the pictures of Stradano
`and Allori are all busy ‘doing’, whether spinning, setting their hair or helping
`with a birth. Stradano’s ‘Vermis sericus’ series of prints on the production of
`silk also features men and women wearing both tie-on and integrated pockets
`as they go about their work (Figure 7).48 These images and the extant jerkins
`from the Mary Rose indicate that pockets were not just restricted to the clothing
`of the elite. Although the more limited evidence available for the dress of the
`lower classes means that the commonality of pockets amongst artisans and
`labourers cannot be traced, it would seem that the practical functionality of
`pockets encouraged their adoption by non-elites. Women’s outfits appear to have
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`COSTUME
`
`contained fewer pockets in total than men’s, but was this due to the nature of
`their clothing, or was this a sign of their more restricted duties and therefore
`potentially lesser need for pockets?
`However, pockets were not the only means by which people could carry
`objects around with them; other alternatives both preceded and continued
`alongside pockets. Some of these were created for purposes of containment,
`only they were worn externally and so contributed to the decoration of one’s
`person and display of one’s status, as with bags, purses and girdles. Other
`garments and accessories, such as sleeves, hatbands and muffs, could also be
`used as containers. A portrait of William Pope (1573–1631) by Robert Peake
`shows him with his gloves tied into the strings of his cloak, whilst Vecellio
`claimed that the married women of Piedmont carried their handkerchiefs in the
`bottom of their over-sleeves.49 Another apparent alternative to the pocket was the
`codpiece.50 Vecellio stated that soldiers in the time of Charles V (1500–1558) had
`a very large codpiece ‘which they used in place of a pocket’, and the Treasvrie
`corroborates this by noting that when men were still wearing skin-tight hose,
`instead of a pocket,
`
`[. . . ] they hadde a large and ample Cod-piece, which came vppe with two wings, and so
`were fastned to eyther side with two Pointes. In this wide roome, they had Linnen bagges,
`tied with like Points to the inside, betweene the Shirte and Cod-piece. This serued as the
`receipt for Pursse, Hand-kerchers, Apples, Plummes, Peares, Orenges, and other fruits.51
`
`The character of Panurge takes an orange out of his codpiece on one occasion
`in François Rabelais’s (c. 1494–1553) Pantagruel, and a few men can be seen
`with items other than their genitals spilling out of their codpieces in a couple of
`images, implying that some men, especially labourers and soldiers, did indeed
`house prized possessions in their codpieces.52
`Although unlikely to be looted, the codpiece was not necessarily the most
`convenient receptacle in which to hold items, however. The Treasvrie argued of
`men carrying pieces of fruit in their codpieces that,
`
`[. . . ] did it not seem verie Inciuill, that sitting at the Table, hee should make a present
`of such, preserued (for som time) in so sweet a Closet, euen as now adaies, some (as
`mannerly) vse the like out of their Pockets? [. . . ] Surely, in my poore opinion, the
`fashion of Pockets made in the Doublet Sleeue, or in the hose, is much more honest
`and commendable.53
`
`For the sixteenth century saw the rise of new codes of manners and civility,
`as expressed in conduct manuals. Not only was there less shame in removing
`an item from a pocket rather than a codpiece, but pockets could also be used
`to hide things from view. Conduct manuals advocated the need to keep certain
`bodily functions, such as blowing the nose, discreet, and pockets provided an
`ideal space within which to squirrel away a soiled handkerchief, although clean
`handkerchiefs were a sign of display and can be seen emerging from at least two
`female pocket holes in paintings.54
`Giovanni della Casa’s (1503–1556) Galateo advised against taking items
`out of your pockets to fiddle with when someone else was talking to you,
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`
`Figure 8. Detail of Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, Prince Maurice and Frederick Henry at
`the Valkenburg Horse Fair, 1618. Oil on panel, 54.2 × 133.5 cm. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum,
`SK-A-676 Rijksmuseum.
`
`but, although there was a general preoccupation with physical uprightness in
`concerns about civility, there do not seem to have been warnings explicitly
`against keeping your hands in your pockets.55 A working man can be seen
`standing with his hands in his pockets in Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne’s
`(1589–1662) 1618 painting Prince Maurice and Frederick Henry at
`the
`Valkenburg Horse Fair (Figure 8), and a number of men and women from Eastern
`lands, predominantly the Ottoman Empire, are depicted in late sixteenth-century
`costume books with their hands in their pockets, although the accompanying
`texts do not offer any comment on this habit.56
`By keeping possessions hidden from view, pockets gave their owners
`a sense of privacy and protection for their belongings. Letters and other
`documents, the objects most needed to be kept confidential, are the items
`recorded as having been most commonly carried around in pockets. But pockets
`were not inviolable spaces, with men tending to have their pockets searched when
`they were captured or killed. A letter from Thomas Randolph (1525/26–1590) to
`Thomas Radcliffe, the Earl of Sussex (1526/27–1583), in 1570 from Edinburgh
`spoke of a man called Moone who ‘is yet stayed to be examined agayne vpon
`some newe occasion of a letter founde in the pocket of his hose in Sipher after
`thother were delivered’.57 Even placing letters in the pockets of garments then
`
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`COSTUME
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`stowed away did not stop those pockets from being ransacked: Henry Killigrew
`(1525–1603) wrote to Francis Walsingham (c. 1532–1590) in 1582 that he had
`searched Archibald Douglas (c. 1540–c. 1602) and found a packet of documents
`‘in the pocquette of his hose that were in his chest’.58 However, it seems that one
`seminary priest brought before Sir Vincent Skinner (1543–1616) in 1603 may
`have tried to pre-empt an examination of his pockets, as ‘vppon serch I could
`fynd nothing but some papers in his pockett which he had torn into very small
`peces’.59
`Items could be lost from pockets of the owners’ own volition. One letter
`from 1606 advised the recipient to ‘Burne my letter I pray you Lest you Loose
`it out of your pockett’, whilst a letter giving news from Edinburgh in 1594 noted
`that the King of Scotland, James VI (1566–1625), had ‘latelye loste a letter out of
`his pockett which letter being found & returned to him he comaunded the fynder
`to keepe secrett the contents’.60 But pockets could also offer protection from
`thieves seeking to snatch a person’s possessions. Some extant leather purses have
`multiple hidden compartments within them, but these would have offered little
`extra security if the purse as a whole was taken.61 The visibility and elaborate
`decoration of purses worn around the waist advertised their presence and the
`potential wealth of their owners, while purses worn on long strings under the
`skirts could easily be cut, as in Bruegel’s painting of the Misanthrope, making
`pockets a potentially safer, less obvious alternative.62 However, criminals soon
`adapted to the use of pockets, both using them as spaces within which to secure
`their purloined goods and developing the art of pickpocketing.63 Simon Godin, a
`merchant jeweller from Lyons, had a parcel of jewels ‘robbed out of the pocket
`of his cote’ in 1550, and in 1585 a school for pickpockets was discovered in an
`alehouse near Billingsgate:
`
`There was a schole howse sett vpp to Learne younge boyes to Cutt pursses, there were
`hung vp two devises, the one was a Pockett the other was a Purse, The Pockett had in yt
`certen Cownters & was hvnge abowte with hawkes bells, and over the toppe did hange a
`litle sacringe bell, and he that could take owte a Cownter without any noyse, was allowed
`to be a publique Foyster, And he that could take a peece of sylver owt of the Purse without
`the noyse of any of the bells, he was adiudged a Iudiciall Nypper, nota that a Foister is a
`Pickpockett, and a Nypper is termed a Pickepurse, or a Cutpurse.64
`
`Although pockets were not necessarily used primarily for the transporting
`of money, due to the use of credit payments, pockets did gain a metaphorical
`association to finances. Empty pockets could therefore be used to satirize a
`country’s financial situation. Sir William Lovelace (1561–1629) wrote to Dudley
`Carleton (1574–1632), the English ambassador to the Netherlands, in 1617 of a
`print from the Low Countries ‘which was his Majestie in his dublet & hose with
`both his pocketts drawne out hanginge Loose’, and another letter to Carleton a
`couple of years later also mentioned a supposed print of James I and VI, ‘with
`his pockets hanginge owte empty of money’.65
`A range of items were held in early modern pockets, including letters,
`books, keys, combs, rosaries, money and handkerchiefs. One letter from Stephen
`
`

`

`UNSWORTH: HANDS DEEP IN HISTORY
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`163
`
`Figure 9. John Souch, Lady Anne Lawley, c. 1625. Oil on canvas, 197 × 160 cm. London:
`Weiss Gallery Courtesy of the Weiss Gallery, London.
`
`Gardiner (c. 1495–1555) to William Paget (1505/06–1563) in 1546 wrote of how
`he had heard of a German man who was supposed to be delivering letters to the
`French king, but pulled a piece of cheese, a piece of bacon and a lump of bread
`out of his pocket before finally drawing out the requisite letters.66 Pockets testify
`to the impact of increasing consumption in the Renaissance; people were buying
`more goods and had more things which were meaningful to them, which they
`wanted to keep safe, private and to carry around with them. But not every item
`was small enough to be enclosed