Undershirt, waistcoat

A rare survival of a high quality mid-seventeenth century vest or ‘waistcoat’ knitted of fine, pale blue-green coloured silk, said to have been worn by Charles I at his execution by beheading on January 30th, 1649. It is shaped like a long sleeve vest and has a short buttoned neck opening and small upstanding collar. This kind of garment was presumably worn for warmth over a fine linen shirt and underneath a doublet and therefore does not appear in most contemporary images.
(Please note that because of its age and importance the waistcoat is on restricted access.)

HISTORY
The following note of authentication was attached to the garment at the time of purchase:

‘This Waistcoat was worn by King Charles the First on the day he was Beheaded and from the Scaffold came into the Hands of Doctor Hobbs his Physician who attended him on that Occasion, The Doctor preserved this Relic of his Royal Master, and from him it Came into the Possession of Susannah Hobbs his Daughter, who married Temple Stanger [Stanyan] of Rawlins in the County of Oxfordshire. The above account of this Waistcoat was taken from the Testimony of Dame Grace Stanger, Second Wife and Relict of the above mentioned Temple Stanger [Stanyan] in the year 1767’.

The waistcoat was subsequently owned by relatives of Temple Hardy until 1898 when it was sold at auction by the last of the family line. It achieved a sale price of 200 guineas (£210), ‘not an exorbitant price’, one writer thought at the time, for ‘a relic at once authentic and ghastly’. This ‘combination of Royal associations with gruesome memories’ would prove ‘quite irresistible’ should the garment again appear on the market. It did so in 1910, changing hands for the same price. Mr. and Mrs. E. S. Makower purchased the garment in 1924 for presentation to Museum of London (then the London Museum) where it has been kept ever since.

History
The execution following the King’s trial took place outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, at first floor level. The king’s corpse was undressed and his clothing distributed to people at the execution. Thomas Herbert, the King’s attendant during his last two years, describes in his memoir of 1678 how, on rising on the morning of January 30th 1649, his master

‘…appointed what Cloaths he would wear; ‘Let me have a Shirt on more than ordinary,‘ said the King, by reason the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some Observers will imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such Imputation. I fear not Death!’

A description in William Sanderson’s Compleat History of the Life and Raigne of King Charles of 1658, of the King just prior to his beheading being ‘unclothed…to his Sky-colour Satten Wastecoat’. It is unknown whether Sanderson witnessed the execution himself or drew on the testimony of other eye-witnesses. No paintings or engravings of the execution are thought to be by eye-witnesses and they are full of inaccuracies. A number of macabre portraits of the King just before, or after, his death present Charles wearing a night cap and an ill-defined light blue upper garment. All are by anonymous and not over-competent artists. A clear picture of the King on the scaffold remains elusive.

The stains on the front of the waistcoat were tested in 1959 and 1989 for blood, with inconclusive results. They 'fluoresce' under UV light like body fluids but could be sweat, vomit or another substance. Further testing was exhaustively discussed in 2010 but was decided against as the tests have not changed significantly, and the shirt has been handled too much for DNA testing. Rev. J Leigh Bennett records in 1828 that Mrs. Hardy, widow of Temple Hardy, was 'unwilling to part with [the shirt] anymore, because it is so much soiled and defaced by having been lent to different friends' so the stains may be much later. Perhaps future technology will be able to identify the stains.