KNITTING HISTORY
Penelope Hemingway analyses the fine patterning and construction of the knitted shirt worn by King Charles I to his execution in 1649
Examining King Charles I’s knitted execution shirt
“The season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.”
THESE WERE the words of King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, as he prepared for his execution in 1649. He was executed for treason; a kind, gentle and shy man in private, but an execrable king. He was executed outside the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, London.
That bitterly cold morning, Charles asked to be given two shirts to wear, so that he wouldn’t be shaking as he mounted the scaffold. One of those shirts is still extant, and is held at the Museum of London. It is part of the permanent collection, although not always on display, and can be viewed in the Museum’s online collection.
At 10am on 30th January, there was a knock on the door, letting Charles know that it was time. The king, attended by his Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Thomas Herbert, walked to the scaffold, passing through the Banqueting House where, years before, he had commissioned Rubens to paint the ceiling.
Usually, the execution block was about two feet high and the victim could kneel, but for Charles’s execution, the block was a mere 10 inches and he had to lie prone; adding to his humiliation. His executioner wore a mask and wig and did not speak so he couldn’t be identified, later; he was paid £100.
Fit for a king
On the day of his execution, Charles wore black clothing with a blue silk sash. The shirt was pale blue knitted silk. It could have been dyed with woad or indigo. Indigo was widely imported by around 1600 and was favoured especially in the UK and Holland. The Netherlands has been mooted as a place where the shirt may have been knitted. Although sky blue now, the shirt’s colour may have been more saturated originally, but
“sky” was a colour name for textiles mentioned in 17th century inventories.
Woad was grown in the UK, but also imported in large quantities from France, via Bordeaux. Indigo was cheaper than woad in the 17th century. In The Good
Housewife (Gervase Markham, 1615), there are several recipes for making a woad dye vat. Silk takes the dye as readily as wool, and the methods needed to produce this blue would probably be identical for both. Slight irregularities in the dye saturation can be seen between rounds of knitting, which makes me think the silk was dyed in the yarn rather than the finished garment.
Across the shirt’s front, three huge, ominous stains can be seen with the naked eye. These stains were tested, before DNA analysis, by the Metropolitan Police Forensic Society in 1959 and again in 1989, and it was ascertained that they are “body fluids” of some kind. The shirt has so far been deemed too fragile for re-testing. I suspect the staining would be far worse if the shirt had been worn as the outermost garment.
Charles wore a black cloak over his black clothes to the scaffold, which it is likely he had to take off before being beheaded. He asked to wear a silk nightcap on the scaffold so his hair wouldn’t impede the axe blade. He may well have worn a waistcoat and/or a doublet over the two shirts. I suspect this shirt was the item worn next to his skin - the first he put on before ordering Herbert to pass him a second one. This would have been an undershirt; not a ‘decent’ thing to display, but something no one but the King and his Master of the Robes and inner circle of servants would normally have set eyes on.
Construction and style
The Museum of London has some provenance for the shirt. It came from the King’s physician and passed through various hands until it was donated to the Museum of London in 1925. It is the Museum’s star exhibit.
THE MOTIFS ARE REMINISCENT OF THOSE USED ON LATER GANSEYS
It is not possible to know where the shirt was knitted, but it’s likely it was made in England or the Netherlands.
The cast-on welt and cast-off sleeve cuffs start and end with garter stitch then diamonds/lozenges, before segueing into the main all-over geometric pattern. Early knitting motifs often tend to be highly stylised and not figurative, resembling patterns on 17th century Delftware ceramics.
It was only when charting the main motif that I realised it may represent a stylised Scottish thistle. How appropriate that this son of a Scottish-born king wore the thistle next to his skin - and in blue, the colour of Scotland. I have never seen this commented upon before, and it only became apparent as I charted - perhaps because the motif is so stylised.
Silk was an apt choice of fabric for the King. Charles I’s father, James I, had tried to establish silkworm-raising in England, at Greenwich (just a few miles from where his son was to be beheaded). James had mulberry orchards planted, and appointed a Governor of the Chamber to take silkworms “withsoever his Majesty went”. Thirty years before Charles died, his father had two thousand mulberry trees planted in Chelsea Park in London. The venture failed. But silk was, so to speak, in Charles’s blood.
Silk, spun smoothly, with its high sheen, would lend itself to the shirt’s relief patterning. The silk was possibly imported and then handspun where the shirt was made. In England, silk fibres were imported and spun for damask weaving; damask knitting would have been a comparatively niche trade, possibly using the same silk yarn that was mainly intended for weavers.
The shirt is essentially a precursor, structurally, of the gansey. It was knitted in the round, bottom-up, and had gradual shaping in the body, tapering in towards the waist. It is worth knowing that underpants did not yet exist (not even for royalty). So shirts would be long to cover ‘all eventualities’. The sleeves also taper to the wrist, with consistent decreases right down to the cuffs. The beauty of this garment is its simple, seamless construction with no bumps or hems.
By around the time Charles had been born, England and Wales were pre-eminent, internationally, as centres of knitting, and knitting was part of the new-style textiles called “new draperies”. Most knitting was stockings and caps - there are few extant knitted shirts, still fewer that are silk.
The repeating thistle motif is knitted in moss stitch - a hack known to gansey knitters, as patterns tend to stand out better, and visually just work better, if knitted in moss rather than just plain garter stitch. Like some ganseys, the yoke of the shirt has different motifs to the body and sleeves; the two main body patterns are divided by an ‘OXO’ motif horizontal band, just like a transitional band of patterning on the later ganseys.
Without examining in person, I can’t be certain whether the front is steeked (knitted in the round then cut into),