17th-century dress belonging to English noblewoman found on Dutch island

Fox News.com ^ | April 24, 2016

[Kaslin]

A 17th-century silk dress reportedly belonging to someone on the royal court of an English queen was found buried in sand on a Dutch island.

The Dutch News reported Thursday the dress belonged to someone who was on the royal court of English Queen Henrietta Maria. The queen was apparently traveling on a secret mission in the Wadden Sea when one of her baggage ships sank.

According to paper, the queen’s trip to the Dutch Republic was to deliver her 11-year-old daughter to the court of William II, Prince of Orange – whom the girl married a year before the delivery.

However, the trip was apparently a cover for a secret mission.

The mission was to sell the crown jewels and use the money to buy weapons for King Charles I. A pivotal move because the king needed the weapons in the English Civil War.

Experts at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam confirmed the authenticity of the dress, the Dutch News reported.

The gown is well preserved and was on display at the Texel maritime museum earlier in April.

[minnesota_bound]

That ship that sunk must have carrying a lot of baggage!
Remember ladies to pack light when going on a trip.

[Tax-chick]

the sunken warship in the Baltic

Do you mean the Vasa?

My mother and her globe-trotting friends saw that on their Scandinavian Capitals Plus St. Petersburg tour. She brought me the book from the museum.

[Rockpile]

I think the jacket with the remains of it’s owner inside it were in the Swedish battleship Kronan which blew up in battle in 1676.

Amazing how many billions of garments have been made over the millenia and how few have survived.

[MinuteGal]

Golly gee! That discovered dress looks like it was tie-dyed.....or tide-died.....or sumpin'.

Leni

[Tax-chick]

Oh. I think that's a later date than the Vasa

Textiles don't last, unfortunately, except under very unusual conditions.

[Rockpile]

Looked up the Vasa-—1628.

Well, at least the Swedes got some actual use out of Kronan.

There must be some spectacular stuff sitting on the bottom in the Baltic with that cold brackish water. If I was a bazillionaire like Paul Allen I would have my own research ship and crew as a hobby.

---

Something that has made me nuts for years is how the drab, pathetic, ugly, colorless cretins in Hollyweird make drab, pathetic, ugly, colorless films now. Just look at the blue dress upthread or the wreck find as an example of reality.

[Rockpile]

Post 33

What’s the deal with chicks and dresses that drag on the ground? Seems senseless to me.

[afraidfortherepublic]

9 was common for marriage contracts in those days. But, the man was prohibited from touching her until she was 14. That is how the nobility ensured the “purity” of their brides. She would usually move into the man’s castle by 12, but her chaperones kept her away from the bridegroom. No prohibition agains the bridegroom sleeping with everybody else to become experienced before he approached his bride.

And when they finally got together it was a public event with lots of witnesses. It must have been humiliating for the girl.

[gleeaikin]

Remember, it is both wrinkled and probably shrunken from being in the sea. Also we don’t know if it was for the child or a thin elderly woman with osteoporosis. Do we know anything about the household she was going to? Did they have young women needing gifts of clothing? How old was the prospective groom? Among the nobility, marriages were made for political reasons. The contract was often signed when the promised were quite young. Sometimes the husband to be was even younger than the wife to be. In the western countries, I think they usually delayed marriage until puberty of the bride.

I visited friends renting a small cottage in Chincoteague, VA. The ceilings were very low, and my husband of 5’11” was able to walk through the doors OK, but the poor 6’2” guy kept hitting his head. The house was built before the bridge to the mainland was built in 1924. Prior to the easy access of new blood, the women were usually 90lb. and the men 120lb. They mostly bred among themselves, and occasionally a runaway, Army deserter or petty criminal would show up to stay and add a new surname.

[cynwoody]

I read that except for Scotland, most people in that area were much smaller than we are and women averaged 5’ to 5’3” while men averaged 5’6”. The Scots (men) were about 6’1”.

Trump 6' 2"
Cruz 5' 8"
Little Marco 5' 10"

[Tax-chick]

Good point. Things in the past were often very colorful, including public buildings, temples, and statues that are now bare stone.

[Tax-chick]

Uncool.

[Buttons12]

LOL I resemble that remark! Except I have a more waspy waist. Anything form-fitting, like those multi-buttoned bodices in the western movies of the '50s, I'm in!

[Texan5]

I’m more flat than well-endowed, have a long waist, but pretty much no hips-I used to envy the buxom girls when I was young, but now that we are all older, they have gone from buxom to overweight, and I weigh the same I did at 17, and still wear a 4 or 5-but I have eaten a natural diet, low in carbs, with grass-fed, free-range meat and fresh veggies since childhood, too, so the natural lifestyle is nothing new.

Multi-buttoned dresses/blouses/shifts in soft feminine materials are hard to find-but there is a seamstress out here who makes what you want for a very reasonable price, if it comes to that-but I wear Tshirts, jeans and cargo shorts to work anyway.