Hood wars

I am  building up my fictellectual capital to take up Catherine Parr, but in the mean time, I have learned that  you can't get far into fiction about the court of Henry VIII without having ladies described in terms of the hoods they wore, French versus English. 

Margaret Pole representing in an English hood

  The English hoods were the type that looked like Gothic doorways and in their most severe iterations hid all of the wearer's head.  Her is Margaret Pole, last of the Plantagenets rocking the style.  She was confined in the Tower for quite a while and ultimately executed by Henry for treason. As best I can tell her primary offense was to be the last Plantagenet and thus a potential rallying point.

French hoods are to the modern eye much more flattering, they followed the shape of the human head and sat back far enough to show a lady's own hair.  During the time of Anne Boleyn's ascendancy, the French model was  definitely the more fashionable and alluring choice, the English the choice of the elderly and traditionalists.  The English hood made a brief comeback when Jane Seymour, who favored it, was queen consort, but was generally on its way out by mid sixteenth century.  Below, Henry's sister Margaret Tudor models French style headgear.

Margaret Tudor rocking a French hood