Monmouth cap

A flat round cap formerly worn by soldiers and sailors. (Oxford English Dictionary)

A popular pirate hat, a sort of big woolen beret with a bobble on top, made in Monmouth, Gwent, and worn on the back of the head. (Breverton)

Man’s knitted cap with high rounded crown, worn by soldiers, sailors and others and listed as necessary item for new settlers in America; most common in 17th century and made at Monmouth and Bewdley in Worcestershire, England. Also called Bewdley cap. (Calasibetta, Monmouth cap)

In spite of inflated prices they thrived, and appear in songs, satires, and inventories throughout the seventeenth century, attached to soldiers, sailors, Welshmen, and “the lower orders.” What did they look like, and how were they made? All references are brief and uncommunicative; no description is ever given, no shape, size, or identification. The name was so familiar that it was self-explanatory. Even the gullible, gossipy Heath can only say “We have not any evidence among us of the Cap here manufactured.” The court evidence shows that they were knitted; isolated literary references over two hundred years merely describe them as “round,” “brown,” and “pinnacled with the battlement of a button.” Something distinguished them from other woollen caps of the period. Some interesting sixteenth century caps in the National Museum of Ireland are described as “felt with wool tufts,” but feltmaking was not introduced into Coventry, with its long history of capping, until 1636.

There is a brownish knitted cap in Monmouth’s Local History collection which is believed to be a genuine specimen and the only survivor. It has been studied by experts who agree that there is nothing opposing a sixteenth-century date. It is seamless stocking stitch throughout, with a flat double brim knitted together at the edge, which continues into a loop, the crown is finished off with a small button, and it is knitted in coarse, thick, 2-ply wool, felted, thickened and shorn. It may have been dyed after or during felting. The most noticeable feature is the shape which is achieved with mathematical care and simplicity; all in plain knitting, and in multiples of ten and twenty, it could not be simpler for an illiterate novice to learn. It follows a carefully head-hugging, helmet-shaped pattern suggesting that this was important. ...

Daniel Defoe, in his “Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain” made in 1712, describes “Monmouth Caps, sold chiefly to the Dutch seamen, and made only at Bewdley ...” Peter the Great worked in the Dutch shipyards of the East India Company in 1697. Did he return to St Petersburg wearing a “Monmouth” made in Bewdley and bought in Amsterdam? His hat and the tokens indicate that the same simple method was adapted to make two shapes, one small and practical, the other more fashionable – a poor man’s beaver. Countrymen were told to “... cast off for ever your two shilling bonnets, cover your coxcombs with £3 beavers ...” (Buckland 7-8)