ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on just two objects: a cap bought in a shop in Canterbury in Kent in 1560 as a part of the wedding outfit of a woman called Margaret Cole, and a hat purchased in London and delivered to another woman, Godlene Allen, in Wye in Kent as a courtship giĞ in 1567. The chapter concentrates on the documentary traces leĞ by these two pieces of material evidence in order to draw out particular questions about aĴitudes towards objects. It analyses in detail the descriptive language which is used about them in order to establish their perceived value, and therefore their function within the marriage negotiations between two couples. Neither the cap nor the hat is an everyday item in the sense of being worn regularly or of being a part of a working wardrobe; on the contrary, both are rather special objects, intended to convey a sense of occasion. They do this, however, by being exceptional types of an everyday thing – versions finer and more striking than the ones previously owned by Margaret and Godlene. And it is the process of relating a new object to the ‘everyday’ body of its wearer that is central to this essay. It raises a series of questions: what is a personal object? Or rather when and in what ways does an object become personal?
