Dressing the Scottish Court, 1543–1553

This book is set to become the indispensable reference book for anyone working on sixteenth‐century clothing, fabrics and footwear in Scotland, and indeed for anyone working on the mid-sixteenth-century Scottish court. English historians of dress and performance will benefit from it, too. They will have Melanie Schuessler Bond to thank for her painstaking and invaluable work, transcribing and editing thousands of entries relating to clothing in the Lord High Treasurer’s Accounts for the years 1543 to 1553, in the time of Mary Queen of Scots’s minority and the regency of the earl of Arran. These are organised helpfully: firstly, into descriptive sections defining the clothes and their materials, their costs and functions; and secondly, ‘wardrobe biographies’ of entries relating to members of the royal household, from the highest, including Arran and his family, to the lowest, such as Janet Legs (probably a nickname), called a ‘bard hussy’ (an entertainer or fool), which suggest something of their lives and status. It provides a useful listing of the range of prices quoted for specific types and colours of fabrics, which summarises the wide range of material being used. This is an all-encompassing work and it is likely that it will not be surpassed in the cultural history of the early modern Scottish court in the depth of its detail and use of primary material

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Clothing · Genealogy · Listing (finance · Literature · Political science · Queen (butterfly · Scots · Classics · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Scottish History and National Identity