Henry VIII and the Knights of the Garter,
Example of Royal Purple Color

Fabric Color Myths

Myth: All purple colors in all fabrics are reserved for Royalty only.

'None shall wear in his apparel cloth of gold or silver tissued, silk of color purple under the degree of an earl, except Knights of the Garter in their purple mantles only' (emphasis mine).
~ From Elizabeth I's Decrees (1597 statue of apparel)

Royal Purple originally came from Tyrian purple, from the Murex (M. trunculus) snail, a red-purple to deep purple dye obtained from those snails. This was not a source during the Tudor time, as the source became depleted, and the recipe was lost prior. There are various shades of purple available, and can be gotten from a few different methods. The highland Scots even have a lichen that produce a purple dye.

Found the following on MedCos forum on the color purple. I cannot access the online Oxford English Dictionary, as I am not in college nor faculty, nor willing to pay for access, so this is the best I could get right now.

Re: purple
by Jessamyn Reeves-Brown - Wednesday, November 17 2004, 01:45 PM

The Oxford English Dictionary (boy, I love that thing - for those not familiar, it is a multi-volume dictionary giving exhaustive definitions bolstered by quotations dating back to the middle ages) explains several things about the history of purple.

For starters:

In the OE [Old English] purpure, ME [Middle English] purpre, purper, purpur... the form purple, purpel, appeared first in adj. or attrib. use, and only in the 15th c. supplanted purpur as the sb....

A. adj. 1. Of the distinguishing colour of the dress of emperors, kings, etc.; = L. [Latin] purpurcus, Gr. [Greek] ***** [I can't type Greek on this keyboard!], in early use meaning crimson; hence, imperial, royal.

And then a few paragraphs down I find:

B. sb. 1. The name of a colour. a. Anciently, that of the dye obtained from species of gastropod molluscs (Purpura and Murex,) commonly called Tyrian purple, which was actually a crimson; b. in the middle ages applied vaguely to many shades of red; cf. Purpur sb. 3; c. now applied to mixtures of red and blue in various proportions, usually containing also some black or white, or both, approaching on the one side to crimson and on the other to violet.

And - aha! - here I find a quotation from 1586, from Sidney's Arcadia:

Not that purple which we now haue..but of the right Tyrian purple, which was nearest to a colour betwixt our murry and scarlet.

Confusingly, both meanings seem to have persisted simultaneously for quite awhile, at least in metaphorical contexts. There are several references to blood (bluish, venous blood, not bright red arterial blood) being referred to as "purple" as late as the 18th century, as well as Cardinals' red gowns and hats being referred to as "purple" equally late if not later.

Henry VIII and the Knights of the Garter, c.1534, in an illumination from the register of the Garter known as the Black Book.

Eagle Dalmatic, South German, 1st half of 14th c. Chinese purple damask, c. 1300; gold and silk embroidery. Image of Eagle Dalmatic from Extant Clothing of the Middle Ages [Article] Retrieved March 22, 2006 from the World Wide Web: http://www.virtue.to/articles/extant.html

Thanks to Lisa Sinervo for sharing her copy of Elizabeth's decrees with me.