'Like going out naked': the hat that Tudors dared not leave the house without

In 16th-century England, walking on a London street without a hat was a serious breach of an everyday etiquette of the time. A long essay published in HistoryExtra this week explores just how deeply hat-wearing was embedded as a social norm in Tudor culture.

The essay's author, Dr Emily Spencer of the Cambridge University history department, says she combed through primary sources of the Tudor period — merchants' diaries, tailors' books, court records, university statutes — and an extraordinary picture of hat culture emerged. 'Walking outside without a hat was, for an Englishman of the period, comparable to walking out without shoes today — it simply was not done. If someone did so, either something was wrong (illness, bereavement, madness) or they were deliberately breaking a social rule.'

Tudor hat culture marked social class very clearly. The working class wore short-brimmed wool caps; officials and city men preferred tall, stiff-brimmed felt hats. Aristocrats wore velvet hats trimmed with peacock feathers or swans' tails. A stranger walking the streets of London could guess the social class of a person opposite simply from the shape, fabric and ornament of the hat.

The religious dimension was equally important. Through the 16th century, England moved from Roman Catholic to Anglican Reformation; in that process, the rules on male head covering in church services changed. Reformist currents began to insist that men should be bareheaded inside church, a meaningful turn because the older Catholic tradition went the other way. According to Spencer, the question of 'what taking the hat off means to whom' even took on political colour in this period.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) saw hat fashion picking up influences from other European cities. Headcovering styles from Italy, the Netherlands and Germany travelled into the streets of London; Hampton Court Palace paintings show that variety. The work of one of the period's most famous artists, Hans Holbein the Younger, is a primary visual resource showing how varied Tudor court headcoverings could be.

Spencer's essay also draws on the research of Yale history professor Maria Hayward. Hayward studied more than 200 examples of Tudor-era tailors' books and showed that hat sales were growing twice as fast as other clothing categories. 'The hat was a kind of fast-fashion category. A hat purchased for a garden party might be out of style three months later. Economically, hat production was a major sector in Tudor England.'

The essay focuses on the hat regulations of the Sumptuary Laws issued by Parliament in 1571. Those laws prohibited individuals outside the royal family from wearing certain ornaments, and hats fell within that scope. The purpose of the law was to preserve markers of social class and prevent the rising merchant class from imitating aristocratic ornamentation.

In everyday life, Tudor men could wear hats even indoors. There was a habit of wearing a felt or wool cap at the dining table, during prayer or in evening reading sessions. This was both a practical need in an era of inadequate heating and a piece of social ritual. A visitor coming to the house did not always remove his hat when entering, and the host watched how the visitor handled his hat.

Women's head coverings were a separate tradition from the men's. In the Tudor period, the 'gable headdress' and later the 'French hood' became established as a social norm for married women. Covering the hair entirely and framing the face was a visual part of a married woman's identity. Unmarried women could wear simpler hair bands. Spencer emphasises that Tudor-era women's headcoverings carried religious as well as political meaning — particularly for women in the court.

The HistoryExtra essay also briefly considers how Tudor-era passion for hats reaches into the present day. British royal weddings, Ascot race week, parliamentary ceremonies — hat culture is still alive in all of these. 'The descendants of the Tudor hat can be seen in Ascot's fancy-hat parade or at the Royal Weddings. Five hundred years have passed, but the English still cover their heads at important moments.'