introduced by Isabella of Bavaria were responsible tor the innovation, and made popular the wearing of the new garment, which was made in all kinds of materials laced either at the front or at the back. At the end of the fifteenth century the basquine was adopted, a corset of stout linen or cotton with a busk of wood or metal at the front. Rabelais says, "The ladies at the Court of Francis I. wore basquines, and a silk camlet over their chemises," and it is needless to say that they incurred the displeasure of the preachers of the day; indeed Charles IX. and Henry III. issued several stringent laws with regard to the corset, being convinced that it was highly injurious to the health of its wearers, and the corps pique which was worn in this reign was neither more nor less than an instrument of torture, compressing the body into a hard unyielding mould, the splinters of wood often tearing the skin. Until the end of the sixteenth century the tailor had the monopoly of corset-making, and his methods seem to have been anything but tender. It was in the seventeenth century that Ben Jonson pathetically complained
The whalebone man,
Who quilts the bodies I have leave to span.
In the reign of Louis XV. corsets were cut away on the hips and laced at the back, the long busks of wood or steel being only in the front; whalebone was used to stiffen the corset, which was sometimes made in two pieces and laced under the arms, and it was invariably supplied with shoulder-straps, and began in those days to take unto itself such rich materials as brocade and satin embroidered
