Many thanks for all the replies. This is pure speculation on my part, based upon no research worth the name, but I wonder whether the ruff started out as a fashion for gentlemen, because you couldn't do manual work while wearing a ruff, that it spread down the social order for a while but that it ended up as it began - as a fashion for gentlemen. You do see ruffs being worn by ECW / later TYW officers in paintings , but I do wonder whether they wore them much in the field. I also wonder whether ruffs survived longer among militia because I imagine that militia tended to be, if not gentlemen, then at least tradesmen and their apprentices who would want to, and have the means to, put on a bit of a show.