Since I came here to mention the word capotain and have been beaten to it, I’ll add some trivia:
As most know, most clothing was handmade in the 16th/17th century and thus it was extremely expensive. Few people who weren’t royalty or very rich aristocracy had more than 2 changes of wardrobe. Clothing was so valuable that it was not only mentioned in wills (and sometimes a hat or a dress might be passed down for generations- altered accordingly until it wore out, then it’d be used for rags) but was among the most common items stolen either for the thief to wear or to pawn (for every town or village had second hand clothing dealers).
In 1612 a family in Pendle, Lancashire, England headed by a matriarch called Mother Chattox (real name Anne Whittle) was known, or at least rumored, to deal in stolen clothing. One specific piece of clothing they were accused of stealing was a capotain from a local merchant. They were taken to trial and found not guilty. Thereafter the ugly, hunched old Mother Chattox took to wearing the beat up old capotain, the top inverted a bit to make it more comfortable or perhaps to make it less recognizable, but she was hardly ever seen without it, a sort of flaunting it to her accusers.
And by the way, she also was said to be a witch, as was her archenemy Elizabeth Southerns, another old crone who was called “Mother Demdike” since that was the name of the family she headed. I won’t go into the details of the trial but it’s very interesting- all sorts of accusations of devil worship and curses and black magick and the like that ended with ten members of the Demdike and Chattox clans being hanged. They’re known collectively as the Pendle Witches.
Reason for mentioning: written accounts in pamphlet form of the trials and the hangings were bestsellers in the 17th century. King James I & VI, a fanatic on the subject of witchcraft (and author, at least nominally, of the then definitive book on the topic), was among the most interested, and there is some belief that the role of the witches in MacBeth (a play already written largely to suck up to him by near deifying his Scottish ancestors) may have been beefed up or possibly added altogether to reflect the fascination with the Pendle witches. (There’s debate on when MacBeth was written- it was performed as early as 1611 but probably not in its final form, and James had it performed many times.)
Many of the pamphlets and other written and dramatized accounts of the trials featured likenesses of Old Mother Chattox in her stolen battered inverted capotaine. This is oneof those likenesses; Mother Chattox is on the right. (She, her daughter and her granddaughter were accused as witches, the trio being another reason some Shakespearean scholars believe they may have inspired the three witches in MacBeth; before then it’s possible there was only one or that there was no witch.)
And the reason this relates to the OP: to this day, though few Americans know her name, Mother Chattox (who also was accused of bewitching her broom to fly) is the image of the Halloween witch: the cape, the flying broom, the literally “warts and all” crone description, and that inverted black capotaine she stole is sold by the millions each year as a witch hat. (It’s basically the same hat that you see a month later in pics of Puritans, but beaten up and stretched.) A pity she never got royalties or she may could have gotten a better defense attorney.
