[Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 32, Issue 49

[Cat Dancer]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise wrote:

> > ISTR that servers in livery are either very late period, or out of
>> period entirely.
>
> Servers would be grooms and gentlemen in waiting, and other employees of
> the host. Generally, clothing or lengths of cloth were part of such
> servants' hire, though it might not match. Since most people had very
> few suits of clothes, presumably those would be the clothes they would
> serve in. I checked OED, and the use of the term livery for distinctive
> clothing of employment (or guild membership) does date to period:

The Rules of Robert Grossteste (13th c) talk about making sure the 
servants are wearing the household livery: "The (sixteenth) rule teaches 
you on what clothing your men ought to wait on you at table. Order your 
knights and your gentlemen who wear your livery that they ought to put on 
that same livery every day, and especially at your table and in your 
presence to uphold your honour, and not old surcoats, and soiled cloaks, 
and cut-off coats."

According to the household accounts I've been reading, members of the 
household would be wearing clothes of the same fabric according to their 
place in the social order, i.e., a group such as valets would get a 
specific quality, amount, and color of cloth, but the particulars of the 
cloth varied by group. So you'd have the knights in blue, and the valets 
in murrey, and so forth.

Margaret FitzWilliam
Nordskogen
Northshield