Safeguard (costume)

A safeguard or saveguard was a riding garment or overskirt worn by women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some safeguards were intended to protect skirts or kirtles worn beneath.[1] Mary Frith, dramatised as the character Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl, wore a black safeguard over breeches.[2]

The Great Seal of Elizabeth I, designed by Nicholas Hilliard shows her riding sidesaddle with voluminous skirts
  1. ^ Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd (Maney, 1988), pp. 142, 371.
  2. ^ Michael Shapiro, Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (University of Michigan, 1994), p. 26: Jean MacIntyre, Costumes and Scripts in the Elizabethan Theatres (University of Alberta, 1992), p. 245.