(obsolete or historical, chiefly in the plural) An item of clothing for the leg: fitted rolls or tubes of cloth worn below short trunk hose and above (calf-)stockings (sometimes, close-fitting breeches worn under trunk hose; sometimes, an ornamental rolls terminating the legs of hose, above the knee or over the tops of boots).
2011, Doreen Yarwood, Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Costume, Courier Corporation (→ISBN), page 64:
Cannons, canons, canions In the second half of the sixteenth Century these were tube-like breeches, worn by men, tightly-fitting over the thigh and extending from the lower edge of the short trunk hose to the knee.
2013, Mary Brooks Picken, A Dictionary of Costume and Fashion: Historic and Modern, Courier Corporation (→ISBN), page 44:
Originally, decorative extension of trunk hose, usually in form of horizontal folds below knees. Formerly called cannons. Also tight, close-fitting knee breeches extending below trunk hose.
Varieties in nether garments introduced during this decade included 'Venetians' and trunk-hose with canion. These introductions, however, did not oust the now familiar trunk-hose which remained in favour until […]
1975, Doreen Yarwood, European Costume: 4000 Years of Fashion, Larousse Kingfisher Chambers
[…] playing a decorated upper hose or canion beneath
on the thigh (510C, H).
1999, Martin Butler, Re-Presenting Ben Jonson: Text, History, Performance, Springer (→ISBN), page 138:
... and pickardevant came over with an Italian marqueshe, and was worne (as I remember) with the shorte Rownd hose, and the long canion by the worthy earle of Pancridge Alderman of lye, when I was a boye & long after and had yt bine in ...
2011, Charlotte Bingham, Debutantes: (Debutantes: 1): a delightful and stylish saga focusing on the battle for love, power, money and privilege from bestselling author Charlotte Bingham, Random House (→ISBN), page 181:
... Collins herself to be wearing what I should imagine are meant to be canion and hose, rather than bloomers as you describe them. And do bear in mind, Nanny sweet, whatever costume Edward is wearing at present it is only for the play.
2013, Herbert Norris, Tudor Costume and Fashion, Courier Corporation (→ISBN), page 634:
(Trunk-hose are either worn with long cloth stockings sewn to them, or—from about 1570—they are equipped with canions.) For a while they appear to have lost […] Fig. 633. Canion Nether stocks were 'curiously knitte with open seam down the […]
2015, Lucy Adlington, Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear, Random House (→ISBN)
The extraordinary exaggeration of Renaissance trunk hose. Knee-length, easy-fitting canion hose from Italy bedecked the fashionable male thigh, while trunk hose (sometimes gaily partnered with canions) bloomed out over the buttocks ...
2015, José Blanco F., Patricia Kay Hunt-Hurst, Heather Vaughan Lee, Mary Doering, Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion from Head to Toe [4 volumes]: American Fashion from Head to Toe, ABC-CLIO (→ISBN), page 35:
This band was known as a canion. Depending on the cut of the hose, it could be either long or short. Sometimes the canions were worn over the stockings that covered the legs, and at other times the stockings were pulled on top of them ...
2017, Susan Wiggs, The Tudor Rose Trilogy Collection: An Anthology, MIRA (→ISBN)
The men in the room wore silken hose and kid slippers. The blousy canion trousers bulged obscenely, as if the wearer had done something disgraceful in them. The formfitting peascod doublets, all crusted with baubles, added a haughty ...
Slops or beeches without canions or nether-stocks.
1611, Cotgrave:
chausses à queue de merlus — round breeches with strait canions.
(but the edition F. M. Kelly quotes has) (Can we date this quote?), Cotgrave:
[...] round breeches with strait cannions, having on the seat a piece like a fishes tail, and worn by old men, scholars, and such niggardly or needy persons.
1611, R. Richmond, preface to Thomas Coryat, Coryat's Crudities:
For nought fears he backbiters' nips in doublet or in canions.
c.1615–1657, Middleton, More Dissemblers Besides Women, i. 4.
Come, you are so modest now, 'tis pity that thou wast ever bred to be thrust through a pair of canions; thou wouldst have made a pretty foolish waiting-woman, but for one thing.
1918, F. M. Kelly, "What are 'canions'?", in The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, page 106:
"Canions" seem to be always associated with wide breeches of the "trunk-hose" class—sc. "French" or "round" hose, generally "paned"—or "gally-gascoynes", and impression definitely confirmed by Covarrubias y Horozco. [...] an article (a) tubular in structure, (b) appended to shortish wide breeches, (c) covering the lower thigh and knee. With these postulates before us we are immediately reminded of a very characteristic feature of masculine costume which makes its appearance in contemporary art just about the date when canions begin to be noticed by writers. […] stockings are depicted as drawn up and secured indifferently outside [Plate, A, (a)] or inside (Figs. 1 and 2B) the canions. […]
[Kelly connects the spellings skalinge [hose], scavilones, skabilonians, scabulonions, scalings of canish, scalins with canons, canions, and cannions.]
[ 1840, Thomas Middleton, The honest whore [by T. Dekker and Middleton] The witch. The widow [by B. Johnson, J. Fletcher, and T. Middleton] A fair quarrel [by Middleton and W. Rowely] More dissemblers besides women, page 573:
“Cannions of breeches,” says Minsheu, [are] so called “because they are like cannons of Artillery, or Cans or pots.” Guide into the Tongues, 1617.— "Cannions, boot-hose tops." Kersey's Dict. According to Strutt, “ornamental […]" ]
1995, Christopher Breward, The Culture of Fashion, Manchester University Press (→ISBN), page 78:
Portraits and surviving items of clothing from the opening two decades of the century reveal that the sixteenth-century arrangement of male clothing around such staples as the doublet, trunkhose and knee-length cannions survived ...
1826, Horace Smith, Brambletye House: Or, Cavaliers and Roundheads : a Novel, page 176:
... of his black cannon hose, his russet shoes, his perriwig, and, in short , every part of his person to which they could be attached; such silken trappings being at that moment an indispensable appendage to every man of fashion.
1570 December, Archbishop Whitgift's diary, quoted in 1847, The British Magazine, page 368:
for one pare of cannons and mendyng a pare . . . . . iijs viijd
Nares in his Glossary says, "CANION or CANNION. Thus defined in Kersey's Dictionary : 'Cannions, boot-hose tops an old-fashioned ornament for the legs,'" &c.
(Can we date this quote?), Samuel Butler, Hudibras:
And as the French we conquered once / Now give us laws for pantaloons, / The length of beeches and of gathers, / Port cannons, perriwigs, and feathers.
(quoted in 1834, William Toone, A Glossary and Etymological Dictionary, page 137)
1986, Marie-Helene Davies, Reflections of Renaissance England: Life, Thought, and Religion Mirrored in Illustrated Pamphlets, 1535-1640, Wipf and Stock Publishers (→ISBN), page 134:
Between 1570 and 1615 trunk-hose with cannons appear, which descend in a tight fit from hip to knee, or just below.
. . . a payer of paned hose . . . drawn out with cloth of silver and canyons to the same. […] a payer of Rownd hosse of payns of sylke layd with sylver lace and caneyanes of clothe and sylver.
