FROM COIF TO WIG.
The lawyer's dress comes from his distant connection with the clergy. During the Middle Ages, the practice of law was confined to the clergy, who wore the characteristic dress of a kind of cassock and hood.
When laymen began to act as lawyers, they wore a gown very similar to that of the clergy, but as a compromise between the monastic hood and the tonsure, or clean-shaven heads of the clergy, they wore what was called a coif, a kind of night-cap. This cap was at first made of linen, but later of silk, and when the general custom of wearing wigs came in during the Seventeenth Century, the coif gave way to the wig in lawyers’ dress. But the gown and hood have changed in shape until they came to their present form.
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Bibliographic details
Cromwell Argus, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3484, 30 August 1937, Page 7
Word Count
138FROM COIF TO WIG. Cromwell Argus, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3484, 30 August 1937, Page 7
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