Gown, a loose upper garment worn by members of universities, civil magistrates, and the like. The use of the gown by ecclesiastics has been erroneously derived from the custom of the friars, but is more probably to be traced to the practice of inviting doctors of divinity to preach, and to the power of the university to license graduate preachers. Originally the gown was merely the out-of-door dress; and after the Reformation the clergy (mostly Puritan) who did not hold degrees, regarding enviously the comely wide-sleeved gown which was the mark of the graduate, adopted a gown of their own or of Genevan devising. In 1444 all doctors and graduates of the Benedictine order were authorised to use their scholastic habit when preaching before a large congregation; and in 1571 the gown formed part of the preacher's 'common apparel abrode.' Addison, in the Spectator (1714), speaks of the clergy 'equipped with a gown and a cassock;' and both garments were retained until within the 19th century. In Edinburgh, at the coronation of Charles I., the Archbishop of Glasgow and others not engaged in the service 'changed not their habit, but wore their black gowns without rochets or sleeves;' but in the same year a warrant was sent down from London, directing the use of the 'whites' by bishops and archbishops, and ordering all inferior clergymen to preach in their black gowns, but to use their surplices while reading the prayers and in other services. In the 18th century, however, even during the service, the surplice was almost unknown in the Scottish Episcopal Church. The controversy in the Anglican Church as to exchanging the surplice for the gown in preaching, which arose about 1840 and exercised the church for a generation, has never received a definitive settlement.
The academic gown is a survival of the tabardus, a garment with many folds, which came in when the doctors began to wear long, priestly robes as a distinctive mark of their standing as clerics. At Padua, for instance, certainly as early as the 16th century, the gown and square cap were the insignia of a doctor; and, at a later period, the undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, wore a gown of violet colour to distinguish him from the doctors, who wore a scarlet gown. The purple gown common to all rectors of universities has been described as the livery of the popes: in the words of the Emperor Joseph II., it is a reminiscence of 'the dark times when the papal see arrogated to itself the exclusive right of establishing universities.' On the Continent the several faculties possess distinctive colours, although in some universities, as at Leipzig and Tübingen, only two colours have been used. In Britain a similar custom obtains in the full dress of doctors; the faculty, like the university, of a graduate is indicated by his hood. The gowns of under-graduates are now black, except at Glasgow, Aberdeen, and
St Andrews; but in some of the English universities surplices are worn in college chapel on Sundays and saints' days. University preachers in England wear academic gowns. In the United States there is no distinctive academic dress. See Notes and Queries, 5th series, vol. xi.; and a paper in Prof. Delitzsch's Iris (Eng. trans. 1889).