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Knitting Socks And Underwear – A Knitting History Tale by Chaka Lucas

Knitted underwear crept up the social ladder. In 1499 Princess Margaret Tudor (Henry VIII’s sister) listed “two pairs of hosen, knit” among her possessions. In 1509 Henry VIII married the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. Despite the knitted artifacts in royal Spanish tombs, we know that knit stockings were not introduced by Queen Catherine because of the interesting comment that “Henry VIII commonly wore cloth hose, except that there came from Spain by great chance, a pair of knit silk stockings.” If the rare knit stockings were to Henry’s taste, his divorce of Queen Catherine and the resulting insult to Spain dried up any more such gifts. Perhaps if one of his last five wives had been French or Italian he would have had a source. The oldest known guild of stocking knitters was formed in Paris in 1557, and silk hose knitting businesses in Venice and Milan by 1539.

By 1560 in England, Queen Elizabeth I wore only silk knitted stockings and made her preference known. Her Scottish rival, Mary Queen of Scots, also wore knitted stockings, which she may have become accustomed to in France. European royalty were all wearing knitted silk stockings by the end of the 16th century. Once the Royals were wearing knitted stockings, the nobility realized how much better knitted stockings were than woven ones. They all wanted knitted stockings, too, and they didn’t intend to make those stockings themselves. Knitting guilds on the continent flourished.

Under Appreciated

Stockings were being knit in the city of Nottingham by 1519, but stocking knitters’ guilds never formed because there was little fashionable demand for stockings for another 40 years. Guilds formed only when tradesmen organized to protect the trade secrets and promote commerce. Once knitting became fashionable enough to spur the development of a full-blown trade it was too late to protect the trade secrets of knitting. Then the bourgeoisie wanted luxurious knitted stockings, too, but they wanted to haggle over the price.

British merchants undercut European guild stocking knitters by going directly to rural British peasants and getting them to knit for almost nothing, then sold stockings dirt-cheap at home and abroad. Everyone loved the high quality, low cost stockings knitted by British farm families, and the farm families were glad to oblige. Knitting for pittance kept impoverished rural folk off the parish dole with a respectable, if scant, subsistence. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have denied William Lee a patent for a knitting frame because “To enjoy the privilege of making stockings for the whole of my subjects is too important to be granted to any individual… I have too much love for my poor people who gain their bread by the employment of knitting to give my money to forward an invention that will tend to their run by depriving them of employment and making them beggars.” Lee took his invention to France. The French continued to import cheap, well-made English stockings.

Finally in 1657 a framework Knitters’ Guild was allowed to incorporate in England. High tech knitting began, though it didn’t overtake hand knitting for 200 years, in part because frame knitting was not that much more productive than hand knitters. Hand knitters could work anytime, anywhere, in any daylight, while frame knitters could only work at their frames in daylight. The other factor was that frame-knit stockings did not have the exquisite shaping of hand-knitted stockings. Decent women didn’t show their legs, but men in knee breeches depended upon elegant legs for their fashion status, and baggy stockings were a disaster. Cheap won out sometimes, but not often enough to eliminate the preference for hand knitted stockings. Not until the French Revolution, anyway, when the knee breeches of the aristocracy were abandoned in favor of the long trousers of the triumphant proletarians. If you were not wearing calf-revealing breeches, who cares who your stockings fit? Thus died the international hand-knitted stocking trade, a slave to crass fashion. This led to renewed rural poverty and emigration.

Where does all this talk of stockings lead? It seems interminable, and in many ways it was, because for most of its history knitting was stockings or underwear. If you were lucky enough to be rich, someone else knitted it for you. There were occasions when even underwear got its moment in the sun. At the execution of King Charles I in 1649, the doomed monarch stripped to his undershirt, which was sky blue silk, knitted in geometric knit/purl brocade patterns, and declared before he was beheaded that, “A subject and his sovereign are clean different things.” This showed what kings and their underwear were made of. Afterwards the king’s physician kept the garment, which still exists at the London Museum.

Chaka is a knitting enthusiast who loves to knit baby clothes. In fact, she has a great baby knitting pattern to recommend for anyone else who likes to knit baby clothes. She also has great recommendations for sock knitting patterns for those who like a different sort of challenge.
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