entury. In the reign of James I.,
the ruff was occasionally exchanged for a wide stiff collar, standing out
horizontally and squarely, made of similar stuff, starched and wired, and
sometimes edged like the ruff with lace. These collars were called bands. A
good example occurs in the portrait of Shakspeare by Cornelius Jansen,
engravings of which are well known. At the end of the seventeenth century
these broad-falling bands were succeeded by the small Geneva bands, which
have ever since been retained by our clergymen and councillors, but in a
contracted form, having been originally _bona fide_ collars, the ends of
which hung negligently over the shoulders. (See Planche's _Brit. Costume_,
pp. 350. 390.) Bands are worn by the ecclesiastics in France and Italy, as
well as in England.

In the second number of _Popular Tracts Illustrating the Prayer-Book_, p.
3., it is suggested that bands are perhaps the remains of the amice, one of
the eucharistic vestments in use previous to the Reformation, which
consisted of a square cloth, so put on that one side, which was
embroidered, formed a collar round the neck, whilst the rest hung behind
like a hood. By analogy with the scarf of our Protestant clergy, which is
clearly the stole of the Roman Church retained under a different name, this
suggestion is not without some degree of plausibility.

The fact that the present academical costume is derived from the ordinary
civil dress of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sufficiently
accounts for the retention of the bands as a part.

ARUN.

Surely bands are no part of the peculiar dress of the clergy, &c., but the
ordinary dress of the people, retained by certain classes or professions,
because they wished for something regular and distinctive. So the wigs of
the judges were the fashionable dress 150 years ago. It is curious that the
clergy have cut down their bands, while the lawyers still glory in
comparatively large and flowing ones. Bands altered greatly in their form.
Taylor, the Water Poet, I think, says--

"The eighth Henry, as I understand,
Was the first prince that ever wore a band,"

or, indeed, person of any sort. The date of the same thing in France is
mentioned in Vellay, but I forget it now.

C. B.

_Bishops and their Precedence_ (Vol. ii., p. 9.).--It may interest your
correspondent E. to refer to a passage in Baker's _Chronicle_, sub anno
1461, p. 204., which would tend to show that the precedency of t