felt

1) Felt is a material of wool, or wool, fur and hair, with the fibres matted together under pressure.

1577 ij felts of xiiij pence the pece, Richmond, and it was used to make a number of garments in the late Middle Ages, especially hats: 1450 ‘I leave to John Yate, my bow, my arrows ... with one cap called Felthatte’, Bradford. The Hull customs accounts show that they were an important trading item at that time, both as imports and as exports: 1453 80 duss’ felthattes, Hull. In the accounts of Fountains Abbey they feature prominently in the mid-fifteenth century: 1446-58 Item in j Felthatt pro equitacione, xd,. The alleged excessive use of felt hats lay behind a statute in 1570 which required anybody over the age of seven to wear a woollen cap upon the sabbath and holydays: the cap had to be knit, thicked and dressed in England. The manor court rolls of Methley have examples from 1578 of tenants disobeying that order, e.g. 1584 ‘they present the inhabitants for wearing felt hats on Sunday’. The verb ‘to thick’, as used in 1570, gave rise to an occupational term: 1495 Ric. Colynson, thyker of cappez, York.

spellings felt hat
dates 1446-1458 1450 1453 1495 1570 1577 1584

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Photo by Kreuzschnabel CC BY-SA 3.0