, and that two or more shall not take it
together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offence."

The laws which our Colonial fathers enacted against "excess and bravery
in apparel" are fitted to excite a smile. But there is something more
than ludicrous in the aspect of grave lawmakers passing judgment on all
the minutiae of dress, and finding matter of offence in an extra "slash,"
or a needless garniture of "lace." Against this last-named article the
zeal of our Puritan fathers seems to have been especially stirred up. In
1634 it was ordered "that no person, either man or woman, shall
hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woolen, silk, or linen with
any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of
forfeiture of such clothes." In 1636 it was enacted "that no person,
after one month, shall make or sell any bone-lace or other lace, to be
worn upon any garment or linen, upon pain of 5s. the yard for every yard
of such lace so made, or sold, or set on; neither shall any tailor set
any lace upon any garment, upon pain of 10s. for every
offence,--provided that binding or small edging laces may be used upon
garments or linen." Again, three years later, a new edict was launched
at this obnoxious material, because "there is much complaint of the
excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities, tending to little use
or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride and the exhausting of men's
estates, and also of evil example to others." The law of 1634 was indeed
repealed in 1644; but in 1651 the Court, to their great grief, are
compelled to try their hand at the work again, though frankly confessing
the impotence of all previous legislation, and evidently awakening to a
sense of the inherent difficulties of the subject. "We acknowledge it,"
say they, "to be a matter of much difficulty, in regard of the blindness
of men's minds and the stubbornness of their wills, to set down exact
rules to confine all sorts of persons"; and so, leaving the wealthier
class to their own conscience of fancy, they undertake to prescribe for
"people of mean condition." It was therefore ordered (in 1651) that no
one whose estate is not of the value of L200 "shall wear any gold or
silver lace, or gold or silver buttons, or any bone-lace above 2s. per
yard or silk hoods or scarfs"; and moreover, the selectmen of the town
are required to fine anybody whom "they shall judge to exceed their rank
and ability in the costliness o