Chapter XXII

HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE.--THE PARLOUR.--THE CHAMBER.

As social peace and security became more established in the country, people began to be more lavish in all the articles of household furniture, which thus became much more numerous during the period of which we are now treating. It also went through its fashions and its changes, but in the progress of these changes it became less ponderous and more elegant. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, and perhaps later in some parts of the island, where social progress was slower, the old arrangements of a board laid upon trestles for a table still prevailed, though it was gradually disappearing; and, although the term of “laying” the board in a literal sense was no longer applicable, it has continued to be used figuratively, even to our own times. Richard Kanam, of Soham, in the county of Cambridge, whose will was proved so late as the 12th of April, 1570, left, among other household furniture, “one table with a payer of tressels, and a thicke forme.” The first step in the change from tables of this kind appears to have been to fix the trestles to the board, thus making it a permanent table. The whole was strengthened by a bar running from trestle to trestle, and ornamental wood-work was afterwards substituted in place of the trestles. A rather good example of a table of this description is given in the cut on the preceding page (No. 295), taken from that well-known publication, the “Stultifera Navis” of Sebastian Brandt. This, however, was a clumsy construction, and it soon gave way to the table with legs, the latter being usually turned on the lathe, and sometimes richly carved. This carving went out of use in the unostentatious days of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, to make way for plain table legs, and it never quite recovered its place.

We have seen already that in the latter part of the previous century, in the chairs and stools, the joinery work of Flanders was taking the place of the older rude and clumsy seats. This taste still prevailed in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, and a large proportion of the furniture used in this country, as well as of the earthenware and other household implements, during the greater part of that century, were imported from Flanders and the Netherlands. Hence, in the absence of engravings at home, we are led to look at the works of the Flemish and German artists for illustrations of domestic manners at this period. The seats of the description just mentioned were termed joint (or joined) stools or chairs. A rather fine example of a chair of this work, which is, as was often the case, three-cornered, is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, where it is reported to have been the chair of Henry VIII., on what authority I know not. It is represented in our cut No. 296. These “joined” chairs and stools were laid aside for furniture of a more elegant form, which was used during the reign of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, and of which examples are so common that it is hardly necessary to give one here. This fashion appears to have been brought from France. An example of rather peculiar style is given in our cut No. 297, taken from a picture executed in 1587, representing Louis de Gonzagues, duke of Nivernois.

Hitherto the cushions were merely adjuncts to the chairs, but by another advance in convenience the cushion was soon made as a part of the chair or stool, which at the same time became simpler in form again. Our cut No. 298, taken from one of the prints of Abraham Bosse, dated in 1633, represents the general character of the chairs and stools used in France at that date, as they are drawn in the works of this artist, and also the manner in which they were arranged round a room when not in use. On the left appears the end of a cushioned bench, which was generally of the length of two or three stools, and appears as a common article of furniture. Among other articles of furniture now introduced was the couch, or, as we should call it, the sofa. This was called, in the age of Shakespeare, a day-bed, and appears to have been in some discredit, as an article indicating excess of luxury. Large cupboards, usually termed court-cupboards, and often very richly carved, were now in general use, for containing, under lock and key, the plate and other valuables. In allusion to the carvings on these cupboards, which usually consisted of faces more or less grotesque, and not very artistically executed, Corbet, in his “Iter Boreale,” speaks of a person--

_With a lean visage, like a carv’d face_
_On a court-cupboard._

The sixteenth century was especially the age of tapestries, and no gentleman could consider his rooms furnished if they wanted these important adjuncts. They were now elaborately worked into great historical pictures, sacred or profane, or mythological or other subjects, to suit the varieties of tastes. Sir John Elyot, in his “Governor,” reminds his readers that “semblable decking oughte to bee in the house of a noblemanne, or man of honoure; I meane concerning ornaments of hall and chambers in arras, painted tables, and images concernynge historyes, wherein is represented some monument of vertue most cunningly,” &c. At the commencement of the seventeenth century this practice was already beginning to go out of fashion, and it was not long afterwards that it was entirely laid aside: and the walls were again covered with panels, or painted or whitewashed, and adorned with pictures. In our last cut, of the date of 1633, we see the walls thus decorated with paintings.

The rapid social revolution which was now going on, gradually produced changes in most of the articles of domestic economy. Thus, the old spiked candlestick was early in the century superseded by the modern socket candlestick. The chandelier represented in our cut No. 299, taken from one of Albert Durer’s prints of the Life of the Virgin, published in 1509, in its spikes for the candles and its other characteristics, belongs to a ruder and earlier style of household furniture, and has nothing in common with the rich chandeliers which now began to be used.

The parlour appears in the sixteenth century to have been a room the particular use of which was in a state of transition. Subsequently, as domestic life assumed greater privacy than when people lived publicly in the hall, the parlour became the living room; but in the sixteenth century, though in London it was already used as the dining-room, in the country it appears to have been considered as a sort of amalgamation of a store-room and a bedroom. This is best understood from the different inventories of its furniture which have been preserved. In 1558, the parlour of Robert Hyndmer, rector of Sedgefield, in the county of Durham, contained--“a table with a joined frame, two forms, and a carpet; carved cupboards; a plain cupboard; nine joined stools; hangings of tapestry; and a turned chair.” In the parlour at Hilton Castle, in the same county, in 1559, there were--“one iron chimney, two tables, one counter, two chairs, one cupboard, six forms, two old carpets, and three old hangings.” In 1564, Margaret Cottom, a widow of Gateshead, had in her parlour--“one inner bed of wainscot, a stand, a bed, a presser of wainscot, three chests, a Dantzic coffer;” a considerable quantity of linen and cloth of different kinds, and for different purposes; “tallow candles, and wooden dishes, a feather bed, a bolster, and a cod (_pillow_), two coverlets, two happgings (_coverlets of a coarser kind_), three blankets, three cods (_pillows_), with an old mattress; five cushions, a steel cap, and a covering; a tin bottle, a cap-case with a lock.” In the house of William Dalton, a wealthy merchant of Durham in 1556, the parlour must have been very roomy indeed to contain all the “household stuff” which it holds in the inventory, namely, “a chimney, with a pair of tongs; a bedstead close made; a feather bed, a pair of sheets, a covering of apparels, an ‘ovese’ bed, a covering wrought of silk; a cod (_pillow_), and a pillow-bere; a trundle-bed, a feather bed, a twilt (_quilt_), a happing (_coverlet_), and a bolster; a stand-bed, a feather-bed, a mattress, a pair of blankets, a red covering, a bolster, and curtains; eight cods, and eight pillow-beres; seven pair of linen sheets; eight pair of strakin (_a sort of kersey_) sheets; six pair of harden (_hempen_) sheets; thirteen yards of diaper tabling; ten yards and a half of table-cloth; twenty-one yards of towelling; four hand towels; two dozen napkins; five pillow-beres; two head sheets; a pair of blankets; two ‘overse’ beds, and three curtains; a cupboard; a table, with a carpet; a counter, with a carpet; a Dantzic chest; a bond chest; a bond coffer; an ambry; a long settle, and a chair; three buffet stools; a little stool; two forms; red hangings; a painted cloth; three chests; a stand-bed, a pair of blankets, two sheets, a covering, and two cods; an ‘ambre call.’” In 1567, the parlour at Beaumont Hill, a gentleman’s house in the north, contained the following furniture:--“One trundle bed, with a feather bed; two coverlets, a bolster, two blankets, two carpet table cloths, two coverlets, one presser, a little table, one chest, three chairs, and three forms.” In other inventories, down to the end of the century, we find the parlour continuing to be stored in this indiscriminate manner.

This period also differs from former periods in the much greater number of beds, and greater abundance of bed-furniture, we find in the houses. We have often several beds in one chamber. Few of the principal bedrooms had less than two beds. The form of the bedstead was now almost universally that with four posts. Still in the engravings of the sixteenth century, we find the old couch-bed represented. Such appears to be the bed in our cut No. 300, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems,” an English book printed at Leyden in 1586. We have here another, and rather a late example, of the manner in which money was hoarded up in chests in the chambers. The couch-bed is still more distinctly shown in our cut No. 301, taken from Albert Durer’s print of St. Jerome, dated in 1511. This print is remarkable for its detail of the furniture of a bed-chamber, and especially for the manner in which the various smaller articles are arranged and suspended to the walls. Not the least remarkable of these articles is the singular combination of a clock and an hour glass, which is placed against the wall as a time-piece. This seems, however, to have been not uncommon. A time-piece of the same kind is represented in our cut No. 302, which is taken from a print of St. Jerome at prayer, by Hans Springen Kelle, without date, but evidently belonging to the earlier half of the sixteenth century. The method of suspending or attaching to the walls the smaller articles in common use, such as scissors, brushes, pens, papers, &c., is here the same as in the former. Our next cut (No. 303), from a print by Aldegraver, dated in 1553, represents evidently a large four-post bedstead, which is remarkable for its full and flowing curtains. The plate appears here to be kept in the bed-chamber. Chests, cupboards, presses, &c., become now very numerous in the bedrooms, and we begin to meet with tables and chairs more frequently. In 1567, the principal chamber in the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Hutton, at Hunwick, contained the following articles:--“In napery, in linen sheets, sixteen pair; certain old harden (_hempen_) sheets, and sixteen pillowberes; two Dantzic chests, a little chest bound with iron, a candle chest, and another old chest; a press with two floors and five doors; a folding table, seven little cushions, and two long cushions of crool (_a sort of fine worsted_) wrought with the needle, and a carpet cloth that is in working with crools for the same; six feather beds, with six bolsters, and a coarse feather-bed tick; eight mattresses, and nine bolsters; twelve pillows, twelve pair of blankets, and six happings; twenty coverlets, three coverings for beds of tapestry, and two of dornix (_Tournay_); a carpet cloth of tapestry work, five yards long, and a quarter deep; five standing beds, with cords; two testers with curtains of saye, and two testers with curtains of crool.” In the principal chamber in the house of lady Catherine Hedworth, in 1568, the following furniture is enumerated:--“One trussing bed, one feather bed, one pair of blankets, one pair of sheets, one bolster, one pillow with a housewife’s covering, four pillows, two Flanders chests, one almery, two cupboards, three coffers, two cupboard stools, three buffet forms, one little buffet stool, two little coffers, five mugs, three old cushions.” The principal chamber of Thomas Sparke, suffragan bishop of Berwick, whose goods were appraised in 1572, was furnished with the following articles:--“A stand-bed, with a testron of red saye and fringe, and a truckle-bed; a Cypres chest, a Flanders chest, a desk, three buffet stools; the said chamber hung with red saye.” At Crook Hall, in the suburbs of Durham, in 1577, the principal chamber contained three beds; another chamber contained four beds; and a third two beds. These lists furnish good illustrations of the various prints from which we have already given some sketches.

Our cut No. 304 represents the usual form of the bedstead in the seventeenth century, and the process of “making” the bed; it is taken from a print by the French artist, Abraham Boste, of the date 1631. Another of his prints, of the same date, has furnished us with a sketch of a bedroom party (cut No. 305), which is no unapt illustration of domestic manners in the seventeenth century. It represents a custom which prevailed especially in France. A woman, after childbirth, kept her room in state, and with great ceremony, and received there daily her female acquaintances, who passed the afternoon in gossip. This practice, and especially the conversation which took place at it, were frequent subjects of popular satire, and formed the groundwork of one of the most celebrated books of the reign of Louis XIII., entitled “Les Caquets de l’Accouchée,” first published in 1622. An edition of this curious satire has been recently published by M. Ed. Fournier, in the introduction to which, as well as in the text, the reader will find abundant information on this subject.