A first thy Poet, never let him lacke

A comely cleanly Shirt unto his backe.

Cleane Linnen, is my Mistris, and my Theme

—John Taylor, In Praise of Cleane Linen (1624)

With prayers said, it was time to prepare the body for the day. Washing the body with hot soapy water was obviously a stupid and dangerous thing to do in a world wherein disease entered the body through the open pores of the skin. Only a fool would expose himself or herself to the evil miasmas that carried plague, sweating sickness and smallpox from person to person. The physician Thomas Moulton, in his This is the Myrrour or Glasse of Helth of 1545, spelt it out: ‘Also use no baths or stoves; nor swet too much, for all openeth the pores of a manne’s body and maketh the venomous ayre to enter and for to infecte the bloode.’ The medical advice of the era was clear: avoid places where the air was stagnant, or where vapours rose from marshes, pools, tanyards and muck heaps; keep the air about you fresh and sweet-smelling; keep the pores of your skin tightly sealed, and cover the body as fully as possible.

While sickness was generally viewed as an imbalance within the body, infection was seen as an outside agency that arose from places of putrefaction and drifted in the air like seeds or spores. There were several ways that the more noxious fumes could enter the body, the main infection route being the mouth and nose. The pores of the skin were a secondary route but one that could at least be guarded against by the adoption of a sensible personal hygiene routine, one that maintained the skin as a solid barrier. Clean clothes were therefore essential for health, in particular the layer that touched the skin. Ideally no wool, leather or silk would be in direct contact with your body, as these were difficult to clean. Linen shirts, smocks, under-breeches, hose, ruffs, cuffs, bands, coifs (skull-caps) and caps could be combined by the two sexes to give total coverage in a form that permitted regular vigorous laundry. Each time you changed or ‘shifted’ this linen layer, you would remove the dirt, grease and sweat that had accumulated. The more regularly you changed your underwear, the healthier and cleaner you would be. Linen was considered to be especially effective at this job as it was absorbent, so it actively drew the grease and sweat away from the skin into the weave of the cloth, like a sponge soaking up a spillage.

In addition to providing clean clothes, linen could also be employed to cleanse the body actively. In Sir Thomas Elyot’s book The Castel of Helth (1534), he recommends that the morning routine should include a session whereby a man was to ‘rubbe the body with a course lynnen clothe, first softely and easilye, and after to increase more and more, to a harde and swyfte rubbynge, untyll the fleshe do swelle, and be somewhat ruddy, and that not only downe ryghte, but also overthwart and round’. This would ensure that ‘his body is clensed’. This vigorous rubbing, especially if done after exercise, was intended to help draw out the body’s toxins through the open pores, with the unwanted bodily matter then being carried away by the coarse linen cloth. ‘Rubbing cloths’ or ‘body cloths’, despite their very low financial value, occasionally turn up in inventories of people’s goods.