Keep your hat on: why headwear mattered more than money in 17th and 18th century England
Today, whether or not to remove your hat is a matter of personal preference. But 400 years ago, refusing to doff (‘do off’) your hat could be an act of political resistance, according to new research published in The Historical Journal.
The study, led by the aptly-named Professor Bernard Capp, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Warwick and a specialist in the English Civil War period, uncovers a world in which headwear spoke volumes.
“Long before the civil wars, men and boys were expected to doff their hats, indoors or out, whenever they met a superior,” Professor Capp says. “That was about respecting your place in society, but in the revolutionary 1640s and 1650s, hat-honour became a real gesture of defiance in the political sphere.”
“In one memorable 1630 case, an oatmeal maker hauled before a church court briefly removed his hat out of respect for his privy councillor judges, but as soon as he learned that some judges were also bishops, he said, “as ye are rags of the Beast, lo! – I put it on again”.
Such acts were not isolated: radical Leveller John Lilburne resolved to appear before the House of Lords “with my hat upon my head, and to stop my eares when they read my Charge, in detestation.” Even King Charles I kept his hat on during his trial, rejecting the court’s authority. Hats had become a language of protest.
A very seventeenth-century grounding
Not all hat-related drama played out on the national stage. A teenage dispute turned into a battle of wills fought entirely through headwear when, in 1659, 19-year-old Thomas Ellwood’s father attempted to ground his son by confiscating all his hats. The result was that Thomas spent months trapped in the house “under a kind of Confinement, unless I would have run about the Country bare-headed, like a Mad-Man.”
“It makes no sense to us today,” said Professor Capp. “But in 1659, father and son just saw this as common sense. Thomas couldn’t leave the house without a hat as it would have brought too much shame on himself and his family.”
Take anything - apart from my hat
By the 18th century, hats still carried enormous social and practical value, with Professor Capp’s study explaining that being seen bareheaded was associated with abject poverty and madness. Professor Capp’s research into Old Bailey records also reveals that robbery victims often pleaded more passionately for their hats than their money. In one 1718 case, a man begged thieves not to take his hat, even after they had relieved him of £15 – and the robbers relented.
Not all highwaymen were so accommodating. One victim in 1733 complained bitterly after a robber took both his hat and wig, later confronting him in prison to say he “had used me hardly.” The highwayman apologised.
ENDS
Notes to Editors
Publication
Bernard Capp: The Cultural, Social, and Ideological Role of the Hat in Early Modern England will be published in The Historical Journal (Cambridge University Press) and is strictly embargoed until 00:01 UK (BST) on Friday 10 April 2026 / 19:01 US (ET) on Thursday 9 April 2026. Link: https://cup.org/3NpUnNw
Image: Portrait of a Young Artist, 1650s–60s. Oil on canvas, The Frick Collection, New York. Follower of Rembrandt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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