Sumptuary
Sumptuary laws are acts of regulating or controlling expenditure or personal behavior.
For example, sumptuary laws discourage construction of large houses on small plots of land. They have also applied to the clothing allowed to people of a given social class, or the length of the swords that they were permitted to wear.
Sumptuary laws for clothing were enacted in Medieval and Renaissance England. Fabrics were restricted to specific classes. For example, only royalty was allowed to wear purple velvet in Henry VIII's reign. The same type of law applied to jewelry. Only royalty and the nobility were allowed to wear precious gemstones in their clothing. Violators of sumptuary clothing laws would be punished by severe fines. Surprisingly, for modern audiences, sumptuary laws were considered important enough in this period that they were regularly discussed and enacted by Parliament during Elizabeth I's reign.
These laws were designed to preserve the social order. By social order, what is meant is social classes. People in this period found the blurring of class lines unsettling. However, these laws were really only relevant to the newly rich mercantile classes. The poor could not afford clothing that would violate sumptuary laws, so the laws were not relevant for them.
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