In 'The London Spy,' Ned Ward shows that during Queen Anne's reign legal practitioners of the lowest sort were particular to wear bands. Describing the pettifogger, Ward says, "He always talks with as great assurance as if he understood what he pretends to know; and always wears a band, in which lies his gravity and wisdom." At the same period a brisk trade was carried on in Westminster Hall by the sempstresses who manufactured bands and cuffs, lace ruffles, and lawn kerchiefs for the grave counsellors and young gallants of the Inns of Court. "From thence," says the author of 'The London Spy', "we walked down by the sempstresses, who were very nicely digitising and pleating turnsovers and ruffles for the young students, and coaxing them with amorous looks, obliging cant, and inviting gestures, to give so extravagant a price for what they buy."
From collars of lace and lawn, let us turn to collars of precious metal.
Antiquarians have unanimously rejected the fanciful legend adopted by Dugdale concerning the SS collar, as well as many not less ingenious interpretations of the mystic letters; and at the present time it is almost unanimously settled that the SS collar is the old Lancastrian badge, corresponding to the Yorkist collar of Roses and Suns, and that the S is either the initial of the sentimental word 'Souvenez,' or, as Mr. Beltz maintains, the initial letter of the sentimental motto, 'Souvenez-vous de moi.' In Mr. Foss's valuable work, 'The Judges of England,' at the commencement of the seventh volume, the curious reader may find an excellent summary of all that has been or can be said about the origin of this piece of feudal livery, which, having at one time been very generally assumed by all gentle and fairly prosperous partisans of the House of Lancaster, has for many generations been the distinctive badge of a few official persons. In the second year of Henry IV. an ordinance forbade knights and Esquires to wear the collar, save in the king's presence; and in the reign of Henry VIII., the privilege of wearing the collar was taken away from simple esquires by the 'Acte for Reformacyon of Excesse in Apparayle,' 24 Henry VIII. c. 13, which ordained "That no man oneless he be a knight ... weare any color of Gold, named a color of S." Gradually knights and non-official persons relinquished the decoration; and in our own day the right to bear it is restricted to the two Chief Justices, the Chief Baron, the sergeant-trumpetor, and all the officers of the Heralds' College, pursuivants excepted; "unless," adds Mr. Foss, "the Lord Mayor of London is to be included, whose collar is somewhat similar, and is composed of twenty-eight SS, fourteen roses, thirteen knots; and measures sixty-four inches."