Cassock

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The cassock was a short, cape-like garment often worn for by men on military campaign. (Waugh, p.16) However, as it increased in popularity it seems to begin to incorporate itself more into civilian life, being worn as a more everyday fashion by both men and women. There are several examples of cassocks given as gifts by Queen Elizabeth. One, given to William Shenton, a fool, as part of a complete outfit, was “a [c]assocke … of changeable mockeado striped with billement lase, sowed on with silke with buttons of silke fased with taphata and lyned with bayes and buckeram…”. (Arnold, p.105)

English terminology of this period may be confusing. Many translators seem to have used the term cassock to refer to many different kinds of garments. For example Minsheu uses the term cassock to refer to a number of different Spainish garments. “Randle Cotgrave gives the French terms ‘gippon’ and ‘jupon’ while ‘cassock’ is translated as ‘casaque, galleverdine, gippon, hoqueton, juppe’”. (Arnold, p.142)

Like the Dutch cloaks, which generally seem to have had sleeves (Arnold, p.136, 142), many cassocks also seem to have had sleeves, although this is not always true. There are examples of sleeveless cassocks being worn (see Figure 6). They were generally loose garments worn over ones regular clothing (ie doublet, jerkin, pants, ect). There does not seem to have been any set length as we can find examples of both very long and very short garments.