Codpieces at the Museum of London

Today the gang (Historic Royal Palaces curators) and I went to the Museum of London to visit the costume collection stores (fourth picture down).  (Our old colleague Beatrice Behlen, formerly of Kensington Palace, is now their curator.)

We saw the shirt that Charles I wore to his execution, with stains of (possibly) his blood.  But the highlight was the entire drawerful of Tudor codpieces. (Listed by a prudish Victorian curator in an early catalogue as ‘shoulder pads’!)