Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 186, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1910 — ROYAL MOURNING CUSTOMS [ARTICLE]

ROYAL MOURNING CUSTOMS

in England Sumptuary, Laws Wara Formerly Found Noeesaary to Restrict Extravagance. Royal mourning in the past was regulated far more elaborately than nowadays. In pre-Revolution days, when the French court was in mourning, the royal apartments were hung with black, and every looking glass In the king’s residences was covered with crape. French queens, when widowed, were expected to remain secluded for six weeks in a room draped with black cloth v on which were fastended white velvet dots, supposed to represent tears.' The same custom prevailed in Scotland. In the pamphlet which George ’Buchanan wrote against Mary Queen of Scots he dwelt severely on the fact that long before the forty days following Darnley’B death were spent she showed herself at a window and “looked out on the light of day.” Sumptuary mourning laws were formerly found necessary in England to restrict the extravagance of the nobility and their imitators in the matter of funeral costume. At the end of the fifteenth century it was laid down that dukes, marquises, and archbishops should be allowed sixteen yards of cloth for their gowns, “eloppes” (mourning cassocks) and mantles, earls fourteen, viscounts twelve, barons eight, knights six, and all persons of inferior degree only two. Hoodß were forbidden to all except those above the -rank of esquire of the king’s household. In the following century Margaret, Countess, of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, issued an ordinance for “the reformation of apparel for great estate of women in the time of mourning.” So it seems that men and women have met in the extravagance of sorrow. Even two hundred years ago London tradesmen found that court mourning seriously affected their business. Addison relates that a tavern he often met a man whom be took for an ardent and eccentric royalist. Every time this man looked through the Gazette he exclaimed “Thank God! all the reigning families of Europe are well.” Occasionally he would vary this formula by making reassuring remarks respecting the health of British royalists. After some time Addison discovered that this universal royalißt was a colored silk merchant, who never made a bargain without inserting in the agreement. “All this will take place as long as no royal personage dies in the interval."