ABSTRACT
On 14 November 1540, Pieter Van der Molen, the manager of the Antwerp Van der Molen merchant company, wrote to Jeronimo Azeretto di Vivaldis, one of their clients in the Italian city of Genoa: ‘there are rumours that the Emperor [Charles V] will announce a new law on velvet and silk cloth, but nothing has happened so far’.1 The Van der Molen referred to the previous sumptuary law of 1531 issued by the Low Countries central government. This substantive law limited the wearing of gold and silver cloth to the high nobility and the highest officials. Only they could wear crimson silks. The ordinance explicitly tied the permission to wear certain silk varieties to the number of horses one could deliver to the governess in case of war.2 A year later, on the 8 February 1542, Pieter wrote to Jeronimo again, this time to announce that: ‘velvets and silk cloths are at their usual price level. The court [Charles V and governess Mary of Hungary] has promulgated a new law: nobles or those who act like nobles who wear garments made of velvet, satin or damask, have to keep two horses of fifteen hands high to serve the court when necessary. So that it will be too difficult for most to pay for silk garments and keeping two horses’. Pieter suggestively added that probably this law would fade into obscurity as other laws often did.3
