Nor did sober John Alden and doughty Miles Standish lack for variety in
their dress; besides their soldier's garb, their sentinel's armor, they
had a vast variety of other attire to choose from; they could select their
head-wear from "redd knitt capps" or "monmouth capps" or "black hats lyned
at the browes with leather." They could have a "sute" of "dublett and hose
of leather lyned with oyled-skin-leather," fastened with hooks and eyes
instead of buttons; or one of "hampshire kerseys lyned." They could have
"mandillions" (whatever they may have been) "lyned with cotton," and
"wast-coats of greene cotton bound about with red tape," and breeches of
oiled leather and leathern drawers (I do not know whether these leathern
drawers were under-garments or leathern draw-strings at the knees of the
breeches). They could wear "gloves of sheeps or calfs leather" or of kid,
and fine gold belts, and "points" at the knees. In fact, the invoices of
goods to the earliest settlers show that they had a choice of various
materials for garments, including "gilford and gedleyman, holland and
lockerum and buckerum, fustian, canvass, linsey-woolsey, red ppetuna,
cursey, cambrick, calico-stuff, loom-work, Dutch serges, and English
jeans"--enough for diversity, surely. Sad-colored mantles the goodmen wore,
but their doublets were scarlet, and with their green waistcoats and red
caps, surely the Puritan men were sufficiently gayly dressed to suit any
fancy save that of a cavalier.
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