Did this ever really happen? Seems like a massively stupid thing to do, especially in days of yesteryear when outerwear was probably made by hand and was fabulously expensive.
What’s the problem with getting the bottom of one’s shoes wet, anyway?
It refers to a legend regarding Sir Walter Raleigh, which probably never happened:
As far as I know, the legend refers to one specific incident when Sir Walter Raleigh put down his cloak in a puddle to demonstrate his loyalty to Queen Elizabeth. I don’t think there was ever a real or fictional tradition of it being done by anyone else, let alone as a matter of routine politeness.
I think the context has always been that it would be a pretty ridiculously over-the-top example of chivalry, meant to impress the girl with an act of self-sacrifice. Nothing more. 
In Days of Yore when this supposedly happened, it wasn’t just rain water in the streets of the city. This was before sanitation became widely known, people emptied night soil into the streets, and horses were the main means of transportation. So even the non-fastidious might avoid stepping in the muck.
The Raleigh story is first recorded in Thomas Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England, which Fuller was working on when he died in 1661 and which was then published posthumously. So there’s about 80 years separating Fuller’s story and the supposed event. Which is why historians mostly think it probably never happened.
I’d throw down my coat for Queen Elizabeth because she’s filthy stinking rich and would probably buy me a better coat. My coat is kind of crappy.
Not only were the streets paved with shit, but shoes could be as fabulously expensive as outerwear. If a person had to walk in the street (which the rich usually didn’t, being carried everywhere by servants) they often wore tall clogs over their shoes to keep them out of the muck.
OK, if I am a wealthy upper-class Elizabethan, and I have fabulously expensive clothes and fabulously expensive shoes, would I be seen wearing clogs that were not also fabulously expensive? In which case, how do I protect the clogs? Does it ever stop?
It would be my guess that today’s equivalent (often seen in movies) is for a guy to take of whatever outerwear he has on and place it over the shoulders of the gal. I suspect even that much chivalry isn’t as widespread as it would appear on film. Opening doors, helping with chairs, that’s about as far as it goes in real life.
I almost laugh when the guy goes first and lets the lady fend for herself. Maybe it’s because of all the flap about the condescension involved. Guys learn pretty fast.
Would you if it was your high school letterman jacket?
:: ducks and runs ::
I’m probably going to hell for bringing that thread up.
Tripler
What’s hell for a Doper? A dial-up connection that works half the time.
And as portrayed by Miranda Richardson she was really scrummy.
Two points need to be remembered. The Tudors did have different types of shoes for different purposes. The fancy ones you see in portraits are not the ones they would have worn in muddy streets.
Moreover, in the specific case of Elizabeth I, the shoes were pretty much disposable anyway. Like any self-respecting sixteenth-century monarch, female or male, she ordered them in bulk. She wasn’t quite at the stage of wearing each pair only once, but their use would have been measured in days rather than weeks.
Gore Tex stilts.