Robe
Category
Costume
Date
1610 - 1615
Materials
Silk damask, shag and silver-gilt
Measurements
56 in (l)
Order this imageCollection
Claydon House, Buckinghamshire
NT 1446623
Caption
Sir Francis Verney (1584–1615) died in a hospital in Messina, Sicily, on 6 September 1615, a once well-connected young man who had lost both his friends and his fortune. His personal possessions, including long silk tunics, pairs of slippers and a turban, were sent back to the Verney family in England. This fashionable and expensive silk gown with matching hat and slippers (below) may have been among them. Made of the finest Italian purple damask, lined with grey shag and decorated with expensive silver-gilt lace and buttons, it would have been worn over a doublet and breeches. The gown features hanging sleeves with tops that unhook, allowing the arms to come through and the re-buttoned sleeves to become decorative. A combination of contested inheritance, family discord and significant debt prompted Verney to set off on his travels, leaving his wife, Ursula St Barbe (1585–1668), behind. He established himself as a pirate, operating across the Mediterranean from the Barbary coast of North Africa. Having built a fortune by trading stolen goods and enslaved people, he was eventually captured and suffered enslavement himself. Emma Slocombe
Summary
A purple silk figured damask man's robe, cap and pantoufles. The robe lined with slate blue silk shag which is meant to simulate fur. It has long hanging sleeves which are decorated with gold and silver braid. The arms were placed through an armhole just infront of these sleeves which were purely decorative. The cap and pantoufles match the robe, they are made from the same fabric. The pantoufles are shoes with no backs, like mules. The robe is long, it would fit a man of about six feet tall. The purple damask gown is full skirted and appears to be cut so that there are almost 8 widths around the hem (see J. Arnold 101-102). The neck and sleeve shaping of the front panel is extended beyond the top line of the shoulder to form the yoke seam with the back of the shawl collar. The two centre back panels are closely gathered with cartridge pleats to fit the back yoke. There are two green satin stay tapes (the tape seems to have made from the selvedge of the silk shag) which were attached at the centre back of each armhole running across the back, presumably to support the yoke seam and cartridge pleats by bearing some of the weight of the hanging sleeves. There are mock buttoned pockets at the side seams formed from the gold and silver braid and metal thread covered buttons. The centre front and hems and armholes are also trimmed with two rows of braid with mock splits and a functional split at the centre back also outlined with braid and buttons. The shawl collar is made from two pieces seamed at the centre back (the pieces may have been cut from the excess left from cutting the centre front panel). The centre back neck seam of the shawl collar also forms part of the back yoke seam. The sleeves are straight to the elbow tapering to a straight cuff. They are heavily trimmed with braid of gold and silver in a chevron pattern, with buttons and loops running closely from the shoulder point to the cuff, which allows the sleeve to be buttoned or left open. There is also a short opening with buttons at the inside seam at the cuff. Only the back half of the sleeve is attached to the back armhole, leaving the front half of the open allowing the sleeve to be worn hanging to the back of the arm as seen in images of men and women of the late Tudor and early Jacobean period. The sleeves have a slashed sleeve cap or wing, each tab being trimmed with gold and silver braid. The Robe is dated to about 1610 and reputed to have belonged to Sir Francis Verney of Claydon House, Oxfordshire, who died in Messina in 1615. The gown is part of a set with a matching cap and a pair of slippers.
Provenance
Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust for display at Claydon House, 2005.
Exhibition history
Splendid Stitches & Exotic Embroidery: a Treasure House of Textiles, Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury, 2013
References
Reynolds 2013: Anna Reynolds In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion Royal Collection Trust, 2013, pp.106-108. Antrobus and Slocombe 2025: Helen Antrobus and Emma Slocombe, 100 Things to Wear: Fashion from the collections of the National Trust, National Trust 2025, pp. 38-39. Tinniswood, 2007: Adrian Tinniswood. The Verneys: a true story of love, war and madness in seventeenth-century England. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007., pp. 3-21.