Chapter VII

EARLY ENGLISH HOUSES.--THEIR GENERAL FORM AND DISTRIBUTION.

After the middle of the twelfth century, we begin to be better acquainted with the domestic manners of our forefathers, and from that period to the end of the fourteenth century the change was very gradual, and in many respects they remained nearly the same. In the middle classes, especially in the towns, there had been a gradual fusion of Norman and Saxon manners, while the Norman fashions and the Norman language prevailed in the higher classes, and the manners of the lower classes remained, probably, nearly the same as before the Conquest.

We now obtain a more perfect notion of the houses of all classes, not only from more frequent and exact descriptions, but from existing remains. The principal part of the building was still the hall, or, according to the Norman word, the _salle_, but its old Saxon character seems to have been so universally acknowledged, that the first or Saxon name prevailed over the other. The name now usually given to the whole dwelling-house was the Norman word _manoir_ or manor, and we find this applied popularly to the houses of all classes, excepting only the cottages of labouring people. In houses of the twelfth century, the hall, standing on the ground floor, and open to the roof, still formed the principal feature of the building. The chamber generally adjoined to it at one end, and at the other was usually a stable (_croiche_). The whole building stood within a small enclosure, consisting of a yard or court in front, called in Norman _aire_ (area), and a garden, which was surrounded usually with a hedge and ditch. In front, the house had usually one door, which was the main entrance into the hall. From this latter apartment there was a door into the chamber at one end, and one into the _croiche_ or stable at the other end, and a back door into the garden. The chamber had also frequently a door which opened also into the garden; the stable, as a matter of course, would have a large door or outlet into the yard. The chief windows were those of the hall. These, in common houses, appear to have been merely openings, which might be closed with wooden shutters; and in other parts of the building they were nothing but holes (_pertuis_); there appears to have been usually one of these holes in the partition wall between the chamber and the hall, and another between the hall and the stable. There was also an outer window, or _pertuis_, to the chamber.

In the popular French and Anglo-Norman _fabliaux_, or tales in verse, which belong mostly to the thirteenth century, we meet with many incidents illustrating this distribution of the apartments of the house, which no doubt continued essentially the same during that and the following century. Thus in a fabliau published by M. Jubinal, an old woman of mean condition in life, dame Auberée, is described as visiting a burgher’s wife, who, with characteristic vanity, takes her into the chamber adjoining (_en une chambre ilueques près_), to show her her handsome bed. When the lady afterwards takes refuge with dame Auberée, she also shows her out of the hall into a chamber close adjoining (_en une chambre iluec de joste_). In a fabliau entitled _Du prestre crucifié_, published by Méon, a man returning home at night, sees what is going on in the hall through a _pertuis_, or hole made through the wall for a window, before he opens the door (_par un pertuis les a veuz_). In another fabliau published in the larger collection of Barbazan, a lady in her chamber sees what is passing in the hall _par un pertuis_. In the fabliau of _Le povre clerc_ (or scholar), the clerc, having asked for a night’s lodging at the house of a miller during the miller’s absence, is driven away by the wife, who expects a visit from her lover the priest, and is unwilling to have an intruder. The clerc, as he is going away, meets the miller, who, angry at the inhospitable conduct of his dame, takes him back to the house. The priest in the meantime had arrived, and is sitting in the hall with the good wife, who, hearing a knock at the door, makes her lover hide himself in the stable (_croiche_). From the stable the priest watches the company in the hall through a window (_fenestre_), which is evidently only another name for the _pertuis_. In one fabliau the gallant comes through the court or garden, and is let into the hall by the back door; in another a woman is introduced into the chamber by a back door, or, as it is called in the text, a false door (_par un fax huis_), while the hall is occupied by company.

The arrangements of an ordinary house in the country are illustrated in the fabliau _De Barat et de Haimet_, printed in the collection of Barbazan. Two thieves undertake to rob a third of “a bacon,” which he (Travers) had hung on the beam or rafter of his house, or hall:--

_Travers l’avoit à une hart_
_Au tref de sa meson pendu._

The thieves make a hole in the wall, by which one enters without waking Travers or his wife, although they were sleeping with the door of their chamber open. The bacon is thus stolen and carried away. Travers, roused by the noise of their departure, rises from his bed, follows the thieves, and ultimately recaptures his bacon. He resolves now to cook the bacon, and eat some of it, and for this purpose a fire is made, and a cauldron full of water hung over it. This appears to be performed in the middle of the hall. The thieves return, and, approaching the door, one of them looked through the _pertuis_, and saw the bacon boiling:--

_Baras mist son oeil au pertuis,_
_Et voit que la chaudiere bout._

The thieves then climb the roof, uncover a small space at the top silently, and attempt to draw up the bacon with a hook.

From the unskilfulness of the mediæval artists in representing details where any knowledge of perspective was required, we have not so much information as might be expected from the illuminated manuscripts relating to the arrangements of houses. But a fine illuminated copy of the romances of the San Graal and the Round Table, executed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the British Museum (MS. Addit. Nos. 10,292-10,294), furnishes us with one or two rather interesting illustrations of this subject. The romances themselves were composed in Anglo-Norman, in the latter half of the twelfth century. The first cut which we shall select from this manuscript is a complete view of a house; it belongs to a chapter entitled _Ensi que Lancelot ront les fers d’une fenestre, et si entre dedens pour gesir avoec la royne_. The queen has informed Lancelot that the head of her bed lies near the window of her chamber, and that he may come by night to the window, which is defended by an iron grating, to talk with her, and she tells him that the wall of the adjacent hall is in one part weak and dilapidated enough to allow of his obtaining an entrance through it; but Lancelot prefers breaking open the grating in order to enter directly into the chamber, to passing through the hall. The grating of the chamber window appears to have been common in the houses of the rich and noble; in the records of the thirteenth century, the grating of the chamber windows of the queen is often mentioned. The window behind Lancelot in our cut is that of the hall, and is distinguished by architectural ornamentation. The ornamental hinges of the door, with the lock and the knocker, are also curious. Our next cut (No. 82), taken from this same manuscript, represents part of the house of a knight, whose wife has an intrigue with one of the heroes of these romances, king Claudas. The knight lay in wait to take the king, as he was in the lady’s chamber at night, but the king, being made aware of his danger, escaped by the chamber-window, while the knight expected to catch him by entering at the hall door. The juxtaposition of hall and chamber is here shown very plainly. In another chapter of the same romances, the king takes Lancelot into a chamber to talk with him apart, while his knights wait for them in the hall; this is pictorially represented in an illumination copied in the accompanying cut (No. 83), which shows exactly the relative position of the hall and chamber. The door here is probably intended for that which led from the hall into the chamber.

We see from continual allusions that an ordinary house, even among men of wealth, had usually only one chamber, which served as his sleeping-room, and as the special apartment of the female portion of the household--the lady and her maids, while the hall was employed indiscriminately for cooking, eating and drinking, receiving visitors, and a variety of other purposes, and at night it was used as a common sleeping-room. These arrangements, and the construction of the house, varied according to the circumstances of the locality and the rank of the occupiers. Among the rich, a stable did not form part of the house, but its site was often occupied by the kitchen, which was almost always placed close to the hall. Among the higher classes other chambers were built, adjacent to the chief chamber, or to the hall, though in larger mansions they sometimes occupied a tower or separate building adjacent. The form, however, which the manor-house generally took was a simple oblong square. A seal of the thirteenth century, attached to a deed by which, in June, 1272, William Moraunt grants to Peter Picard an acre of land in the parish of Otteford in Kent, furnishes us with a representation of William Moraunt’s manor-house. It is a simple square building, with a high-pitched roof, as appears always to have been the case in the early English houses, and a chimney. The hall door, it will be observed, opens outwardly, as is the case in the preceding cuts, which was the ancient Roman manner of opening of the outer door of the house; it may be added that it was the custom to leave the hall door or _huis_ (_ostium_) always open by day, as a sign of hospitality. It will also be observed that there is a curious coincidence in the form of chimney with the cuts from the illuminated manuscript. We must not overlook another circumstance in these delineations,--the position of the chimney, which is usually over the chamber, and not over the hall. Fireplaces in the wall and chimneys were first introduced in the chamber.

As the grouping together of several apartments on the ground-floor rendered the whole building less compact and less defensible, the practice soon rose, especially in the better _manoirs_, of making apartments above. This upper apartment was called a _soler_ (_solarium_, a word supposed to be derived from _sol_, the sun, as being, by its position, nearer to that luminary, or as receiving more light from it). It was at first, and in the lesser mansions, but a small apartment raised above the chamber, and approached by a flight of steps outside, though (but more rarely) the staircase was sometimes internal. In our first cut from the Museum manuscript (No. 81), there is a soler over the chamber, to which the approach appears to be from the inside. In the early metrical tales the _soler_, and its exterior _staircase_, are often alluded to. Thus, in the fabliau _D’Estourmi_, in Barbazan, a burgher and his wife deceive three monks of a neighbouring abbey who make love to the lady; she conceals her husband in the soler above, to which he ascends by a flight of steps:--

_Tesiez, vous monterez là sus_
_En cel solier tout coiement._

The monk, before he enters the house, passes through the court (_cortil_), in which there is a sheepcot (_bercil_), or perhaps a stable. The husband from the soler above looks through a lattice or grate and sees all that passes in the hall--

_Par la treillie le porlingne._

The stairs seem, therefore, to have been outside the hall, with a latticed window looking into it from the top. The monk appears to have entered the hall by the back door, and the chamber is adjacent to the hall (as in houses which had no soler), on the side opposite to that on which were the stairs. When another monk comes, the husband hides himself under the stairs (_souz le degré_). The bodies of the monks (who are killed by the husband) are carried out _parmi une fausse posterne_ which leads into the fields (_aus chans_). In the fabliau of _La Saineresse_, a woman who performs the operation of bleeding comes to the house of a burgher, and finds the man and his wife seated on a bench in the yard before the hall--

_En mi l’aire de sa meson._

The lady says she wants bleeding, and takes her upstairs into the soler:--

_Montez là sus en cel solier,_
_Il m’estuet de vostre mestier._

They enter, and close the door. The apartment on the soler, although there was a bed in it, is not called a chamber, but a room or saloon (_perrin_):--

_Si se descendent del perrin,_
_Contreval les degrez enfin_
_Vindrent errant en la maison._

The expression that they came down the stairs, and _into the house_, shows that the staircase was outside.

In another fabliau, _De la borgoise d’Orliens_, a burgher comes to his wife in the disguise of her gallant, and the lady, discovering the fraud, locks him up in the soler, pretending he is to wait there till the household is in bed--

_Je vous metrai privéement_
_En un solier dont j’ai la clef._

She then goes to meet her _ami_, and they come from the garden (_vergier_) direct into the chamber without entering the hall. Here she tells him to wait while she goes _in there_ (_là dedans_), to give her people their supper, and she leaves him while she goes into the hall. The lady afterwards sends her servants to beat her husband, pretending him to be an importunate suitor whom she wishes to punish! “he waits for me up there in that room:”--

_Là sus m’atent en ce perin._
* * * * *
_Ne souffrez pas que il en isse,_
_Ainz l’acueillier al solier haut._

They beat him as he descends the stairs, and pursue him into the garden, all which passes without entering the lower apartments of the house. The _soler_, or upper part of the house, appears to have been considered the place of greatest security--in fact it could only be entered by one door, which was approached by a flight of steps, and was therefore more easily defended than the ground floor. In the beautiful story _De l’ermite qui s’acompaigna à l’ange_, the hermit and his companion seek a night’s lodging at the house of a rich but miserly usurer, who refuses them admittance into the house, and will only permit them to sleep under the staircase, in what the story terms an _auvent_ or shed. The next morning the hermit’s young companion goes upstairs into the soler to find the usurer, who appears to have slept there for security--

_Le vallet les degrez monta,_
_El solier son hoste trova._

It was in the thirteenth century a proverbial characteristic of an avaricious and inhospitable person, to shut his hall door and live in the soler. In a poem of this period, in which the various vices of the age are placed under the ban of excommunication, the miser is thus pointed out:--

_Encor escommeni-je plus_
_Riche homme qui ferme son huis,_
_Et va mengier en solier sus._

The _huis_ was the door of the hall. The soler appears also to have been considered as the room of honour for rich lodgers or guests who paid well. In the fabliau _Des trois avugles de Compiengne_, three blind men come to the house of a burgher, and require to be treated better than usual; on which he shows them upstairs--

_En la haute logis les maine._

A clerc, who follows, after putting his horse in the stable, sits at table with his host in the hall, while the three other guests are served “like knights” in the soler above--

_Et li avugle du solier_
_Furent servi com chevalier._

During the period of which we are speaking, the richer the householder, the greater need he had of studying strength and security, and hence with him the soler, or upper story, became of more importance, and was often made the principal part of the house, at least that in which himself and his family placed themselves at night. This was especially the case in stone buildings, where the ground-floor was often a low vaulted apartment, which seems to have been commonly looked upon as a cellar, while the principal room was on the first-floor, approached usually by a staircase on the outside. A house of this kind is represented in one of our cuts taken from the Bayeux tapestry, where the guests are carousing in the room on the first-floor. Yet still the vaulted room on the ground-floor was perhaps more often considered as the public apartment. In this manner the two apartments of the house, instead of standing side by side, were raised one upon the other, and formed externally a square mass of masonry. Several examples of early manor-houses of this description still remain, among which one of the most remarkable is that at Millichope in Shropshire; which evidently belongs to the latter half of the twelfth century. It has not been noticed in any work on domestic architecture, but I am enabled to describe it from two private lithographed plates by Mrs. Stackhouse Acton, of Acton Scott, from which the accompanying cuts are taken. The first (No. 85) represents the present outward appearance of the ancient building, which is now an adjunct to a farm-house. The plan is a rectangle, considerably longer from north to south than in the transverse direction. The walls are immensely thick on the ground-floor in comparison to the size of the building, as will be seen from the plan of the ground-floor given in the next cut (No. 86). The original entrance was at _b_, by a late Norman arch, slightly ornamented, which is seen in the view. To the right of this is seen one of the original windows, also round arched. On the north and east sides were two other windows, the openings of them all being small towards the exterior, but enlarging inwards. The interior must have been extremely dark; nevertheless it contains a fireplace, and was probably the public room. The opening at _a_ is merely a modern passage into the farm-house. As this house stands on the borders of Wales, and therefore security was the principal consideration, the staircase, from the thickness of the walls, was safer inside than on the exterior. We accordingly find that it was worked into the mass of the wall in the south-west corner, the entrance being at _c_. The steps of the lower part--it was a stone staircase--are concealed or destroyed, so that we hardly know how it commenced, but there are steps of stone now running up to the soler or upper apartment, as represented in our plan of the upper floor. This staircase received light at the bottom and at the top, by a small loop-hole worked through the wall. Although the walls were so massive in the lower room, the staircase was secured by extraordinary precautions. At the top of the steps at _d_, again at _e_, and a third time at _f_, were strong doors, secured with bolts, which it would have required great force to break open. The last of these doors led into the upper apartment, which was rather larger than the lower one, the west wall being here much thinner. This was evidently the family apartment; it had two windows, on the north and east sides, each having seats at the side, with ornamentation of early English character. A view of the northern window from the interior, with its seats, is given in our cut No. 88; it is the same which is seen externally in our sketch of the house: this room had no fireplace.

Towards the fourteenth century, the rooms of houses began to be multiplied, and they were often built round a court; the additions were made chiefly to the offices, and to the number of chambers. They were still built more of wood than of stone, and the carpenter was the chief person employed in their construction. In the fabliau of Trubert, printed by Méon, a duke, intending to build a new house, employs a carpenter to make the design, and takes him into his woods to select timber for materials. It may give some notion of the simplicity of the arrangement of a house, and the small number of rooms, even when required for royalty itself, when we state that in the January of 1251, king Henry III., intending to visit Hampshire, and requiring a house for himself with his queen and court, gave orders to the sheriff of Southampton to build at Freemantle a hall, a kitchen, and a chamber with an upper story (_cum estagio_, sometimes called in documents written in French _chambre estagée_), and a chapel on the ground, for the king’s use; and a chamber with an upper story, with a chapel at the end of the same chamber, for the queen’s use. Under the chamber was to be made a cellar for the king’s wines.

The chamber had, indeed, now become so important a part of the building, that its name was not unusually given to the whole house, which, in the documents of the thirteenth century, is sometimes called a _camera ad estagiam_--an upper-storied chamber. Such was the case with a house built in 1285 for Edward I. and his queen in the forest at Woolmer, in Hampshire, the account of the expenses of which are preserved in the Pipe Rolls. This house was seventy-two feet long, and twenty-eight feet wide. It had two chimneys, a chapel, and two wardrobes. The chapel and wardrobe had six glazed windows. There was also a hall in it, but the two chimneys appear to have belonged to the chamber. The windows of the chamber and hall had wooden shutters (_hostia_), but do not appear to have had glass. The kitchen was the only other apartment in the house. The ordinary windows of a house at this time were not usually glazed; but they were either latticed, or consisted of a mere opening, which was covered by a cloth or curtain by day, and was closed by a shutter, which turned upon hinges, either sideways, like an ordinary door, or up and down, and which seems generally to have opened outwards. The rooms were, in this manner, very imperfectly protected against the weather, even in palaces. A precept of Henry III. has been quoted, which directs glass to be substituted for wood in a window in the queen’s wardrobe at the Tower, “in order that that chamber might not be so windy;” and in the same reign a charge is made in the accounts relating to the royal manor at Kennington, “for closing the windows better than usual (_et in fenestris melius solito claudendis_).”[24]

These remarks on the general character of the house are, of course, intended to apply to the ordinary dwelling-house, and not to the more extensive mansion--which already in the thirteenth century was made to surround, wholly or partly, an interior court--or to the castle. These more extensive edifices consisted only of a greater accumulation of the rooms and details which were found in the smaller house. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, no great change took place in the general characteristics of a private house. The hall was still the largest and most important room, and was now usually raised on an under vaulted room, which, to whatever use it may have been applied, was usually called the _cellar_. Part of it appears to have been sometimes employed as the stable. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the hall, which is evidently the main part of the building, was open to the roof, with cross beams, on which they hanged the troughs, and the stable was attached to it, and intervened between the house and the garden. In the Cokes Tale of Gamelyn, the hall has its posts, or columns, and there is attached to it a room called a _spence_, which was more frequently called the _buttery_, in which victuals of different kinds, and the wine and plate, were locked up, and the man who had the charge of it was called the _spencer_ or _despencer_, which it is hardly necessary to say was the origin of two common English surnames. The gentleman’s house, in Chaucer’s Sompnoures Tale, was a “large halle,” and is called a _court_, which had now become an ordinary term for a manor-house.

_A stordy paas doun to the court he goth,_
_Wher as ther wonyd a man of gret honour._
--Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 7,744.

In the Nonne Prestes Tale, the poor widow’s cottage also has its hall and _bour_, or chamber, although they were all sooty, of course, from the fires, which had no chimney to carry off the smoke.

_Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle._
--Ib. l. 16,318.

This house was situated within a court, or, as it is called, _yard_, which was enclosed by a hedge of sticks, and by a ditch:--

_A yerd sche had, enclosed al aboute_
_With stikkes, and a drye dich withoute._

In the Tale of Gamelyn, the yard, or court, as we use the Anglo-Saxon or the Anglo-Norman name for it, had a stronger fence, with a gate and wicket fastened by lock and bolt, and apparently a lodge for the porter. In the yard there was a draw-well, seven fathoms deep. While Gamelyn took possession of the hall, his brother shut himself up in the cellar, which could be made a safe place of refuge, when all the rest of the house was in the power of an enemy. The yard here had also a postern-gate. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the chamber has a low window, to swing outwardly--

_So mote I thryve, I schal at cokkes crowe_
_Ful pryvely go knokke at his wyndowe,_
_That stant ful lowe upon his bowres wal--_

which is immediately afterwards called the “schot wyndowe”--

_Unto his brest it raught, it was so lowe._

A new apartment had now been added to the house, called in Anglo-Norman a parlour (_parloir_), because it was literally the talking-room. It belonged originally to the monastic houses, where the parlour was the room for receiving people who came to converse on business, and, when introduced into private houses, it was a sort of secondary hall, where visitors might be received more privately than in the great hall, and yet with less familiarity than in the chamber. In the story of Sir Cleges, the knight finds the king seated in his parlour, and listening to a harper. In a Latin document of the year 1473, printed in Rymer’s Fœdera, a citizen of London has, in his mansion-house there, a parlour adjoining the garden (_in quadam parlura adjacente gardino_).

Houses were, as I have before stated, usually built in great part of timber, and it was only where unusual strength was required, or else from a spirit of ostentation, that they were made of stone. There appear to have been very few fixtures in the inside, and, as furniture was scanty, the rooms must have appeared very bare. In timber houses, of course, it was not easy to make cupboards or closets in the walls, but this was not the case when they were built of stone. Even in the latter case, however, the walls appear not to have been much excavated for such purposes. Our cut No. 89 represents a cupboard door, taken from an illuminated manuscript of the thirteenth century, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; it is curious for its ironwork, especially the lock and key. The smaller articles of domestic use were usually deposited in chests, or placed upon sideboards and moveable stands. In the houses of the wealthy a separate room was built for the wardrobe.

The accompanying figure (cut No. 90), taken from a manuscript in the Cottonian Library (Nero, D. vii.), represents the cellarer, or house-steward, of the abbey of St. Alban’s, in the fourteenth century, carrying the keys of the cellar door, which appear to be of remarkably large dimensions; he holds the two keys in one hand, and a purse, or, rather, a bag of money, in the other, the symbols of his office. A drawing in the same MS., copied in our cut No. 91, shows us the entrance-door to an ordinary house, with a soler, or upper room, above. The individual intended to be represented was Alan Middleton, who is recorded in the catalogue of officers of St. Alban’s as “collector of rents of the obedientiaries of that monastery, and especially of those of the bursar.” A small tonsure denotes him as a monastic officer, while the penner and inkhorn at his girdle denote the nature of his office; and he is just opening the door of one of the abbey tenants to perform his function. The door is intended to be represented opening outwards. These Benedictines of St. Alban’s have also immortalised another of their inferior officers, Walterus de Hamuntesham, who was attacked and grievously wounded by the rabble of St. Alban’s, while standing up for the rights and liberties of the church. He appears (cut No. 92) to be attempting to gain shelter in a house, which also has a soler.

There was one fixture in the interior of the house, which is frequently mentioned in old writers, and must not be overlooked. It was frequently called a _perche_ (_pertica_), and consisted of a wooden frame fixed to the wall, for the purpose of hanging up articles of clothing and various other things. The curious tract of Alexander Neckam, entitled _Summa de nominibus utensilium_, states that each chamber should have two perches, one on which the domestic birds, hawks and falcons, were to sit, the other for suspending shirts, kerchiefs, breeches, capes, mantles, and other articles of clothing. In reference to the latter usage, one of the mediæval Latin poets has the memorial line--

_Pertica diversos pannos retinere solebat._

Our cut No. 93, taken from a manuscript of the _Roman de la Rose_, written in the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the National Library in Paris (No. 6985, fol. 2, v^o), represents a perche, with two garments suspended upon it. The one represented in our next cut (No. 94) is of rather a different form, and is made to support the arms of a knight, his helmet, sword, and shield, and his coat of mail; but how the sword and helmet are attached to it is far from clear. This example is taken from an illuminated manuscript of a well-known work by Guillaume de Deguilleville, _Le Pelerinage de la Vie humaine_, of the latter end of the fourteenth century, also preserved in the French National Library (No. 6988): another copy of the same work, preserved in the same great collection (No. 7210), but of the fifteenth century, gives a still more perfect representation of the perche, supporting, as in the last example, a helmet, a shield, and coats of mail. In the foreground, a queen is depositing the staff and scrip of a hermit in a chest, for greater security. This subject is represented in our cut No. 95.

Furniture of every kind continued to be rare, and chairs were by no means common articles in ordinary houses. In the chambers, seats were made in the masonry by the side of the windows, as represented in our cut No. 88, and sometimes along the walls. Common benches were the usual seats, and these were often formed by merely laying a plank upon two trestles. Such a bench is probably represented in the accompanying cut (No. 96), taken from a manuscript of the romance of Tristan, of the fourteenth century, preserved in the National Library at Paris (No. 7178). Tables were made in the same manner. We now, however, find not unfrequent mention of a _table dormant_ in the hall, which was of course a table fixed to the spot, and which was not taken away like the others: it was probably the great table of the _dais_, or upper end of the hall. To “begin the table dormant” was a popular phrase, apparently equivalent to taking the first place at the feast. Chaucer, in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, describing the profuse hospitality of the Frankeleyn, says--

_His table dormant in his halle alway_
_Stood redy covered al the longe day._

Yet, during the whole of this period, it continued to be the common practice to make the table for a meal, by merely laying a board upon trestles. The second cut on the preceding page (No. 97) is a very curious representation of such a table, from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (MS. Arch. A. 154). It must be understood that the objects which are ranged alternately with the drinking-vessels are loaves of bread, not plates.