Part 15

Few objects of antiquarian curiosity acquired more notoriety than a bedstead or bed, of unusually large dimensions, preserved at Ware, twenty miles from London, on the road to Cambridge. Shakspeare employs it as an object of comparison in his play of _Twelfth Night_, bearing date 1614, where Sir Toby Belch says: "As many lies as will lie in this sheet of paper, though the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England." (Act iii. sc. 2.) Nares, in his _Glossary_, says: "This curious piece of furniture is said to be still in being, and visible at the Crown or at the Bull in Ware. It is reported to be twelve feet square, and to be capable of holding twenty or twenty-four persons." And he refers to Chauncey's _Hertfordshire_ for an account of the bed receiving at once twelve men and their wives, who lay at the top and bottom in this mode of arrangement,--first two men, then two women, and so on alternately,--so that no man was near to any woman but his wife. Clutterbuck, in his History, places the great bed at the Saracen's Head Inn, where a large bedstead is preserved. It is twelve feet square, of carved oak, and has the date 1463 painted on the back; but the style of the carving is Elizabethan--a century later, at least. It was _traditionally_ sold among other movables which belonged to Warwick, the King-maker, at Ware Park, to suit which story the date is thought to have been painted. Again, it is placed at three inns--the Crown, the Bull, and Saracen's Head, at Ware, each of which may have had its "great bed."

Formerly, wealthy persons travelled with their bed in their carriage. Mr. Beckford, of Fonthill, was, probably, the last person who so travelled, in England, some forty years since, when the writer's informant saw the unpacking of the bed, at the inn-door, at Salt Hill.

The Warming-pan did not make its appearance till the Tudor times. In the inventory of the goods of Sir William More, of Loseley, in Surrey, A.D. 1556, occurs "a warmynge," considered to be a warming-pan, and the earliest recorded mention of that article. The old warming-pans were often engraved with armorial bearings, mottoes, and inscriptions. In the _Welsh Levite tossed in a Blanket_, 1691, we read: "Our garters, bellows, and warming-pans wore godly mottoes, &c." We find a warming-pan engraved with the arms of the Commonwealth, and the motto: "ENGLANDS . STATS . ARMES." Another warming-pan has the royal arms, C. R. and "FEARE GOD HONNOR YE KINGE. 1662." Some years ago, there was purchased at the village of Whatcote, in Warwickshire, a warming-pan engraved with a dragon, and the date 1601; probably brought from Compton Wyniatt, the ancient seat of the Earl (now Marquis) of Northampton; the supporters of the Compton family being dragons.

The seats were mostly forms, but Chairs were sometimes used. A MS. of the fourteenth century has this item:--"To put wainscote above the dais in the king's hall, and to make a fine large and well sculptured chair." The early chair was a single seat without arms. The fauldsteuel (fauteuil in modern French) was originally a folding stool of the curule form, but afterwards the form alone was preserved; examples remain from the time of Dagobert up to a late period. Dagobert's seat is considered by some to be of much greater antiquity than his time, and the back and arms are certainly of a later period than the rest. The so-called Glastonbury chair is much to be commended for simplicity of form, perfect strength, and adaptation for comfort.

In the earlier times, chairs and benches were not stuffed but had cushions to sit upon and cloths spread over them: afterwards, as the workmanship improved, they were stuffed and covered with tapestry, leather, or velvet. The forms and workmanship of these seats were generally very rude, but the stuffs that covered them were of great richness and value, and tastefully trimmed with fringes and gimps, fastened with large brass studs or nails.

The description of the furniture in the great chamber at Hengrave, the seat of Sir Robert Kytson, _temp._ Henry VII., enumerates very minutely the various articles; among which are, the carpet, the tables, the cupboards, the chairs, the stools, two great chairs, silk and velvet coverings, curtains to the windows and doors, a great screen, the fire-irons, branches for lights, &c.

The floors, which at an early period were laid with rushes, were at a later one covered with a carpet, called the bord carpet. Still, carpets were used very early in the castles and mansions of the wealthy. The manufacture of carpets is of great antiquity: we read of them in the sacred writings, they were found in the ruins of Pompeii, they were introduced from the East to Spain, from Spain they passed to France and England, and when Eleanor of Castile arrived in London, in 1255, the rooms of her abode were covered with carpets; they were used generally in the palace in the reign of Edward III. Turkey carpets were first advertised for sale in London in 1660. The manufacture of carpets was introduced into France by the celebrated Colbert, in 1664. A manufactory was opened in England during the reign of Henry VIII., but this branch of industry was not permanently established until 1685, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove half a million of Protestants from France, many of whom, settling in this country, established the manufacture of carpets. Brussels carpets were introduced from Tournay into Kidderminster, in 1745.

We have already described the Hall. At the further end of this apartment was generally placed a cupboard called the "Court cupboard," in which the service of plate, such as salvers and gold drinking cups, were arranged on shelves or stages, answering in some respects to our sideboards of the present day. These cupboards, though originally of rude construction, afterwards became elaborate and beautiful pieces of furniture, richly carved in oak: they are often alluded to in old documents. On grand occasions temporary stages, as cupboards, were also erected. At the marriage of Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII., in the hall was a triangular cupboard, five stages high, set with plate valued at 1,200_l_. entirely ornamental; and in the "utter chamber," where the princess dined, was another cupboard set with gold plate, garnished with stones and pearls, valued at 20,000_l_.

In the inventory of Skipton Castle, in Yorkshire, the furniture of the great hall is thus given:--"Imprimis, 7 great pieces of hangings, with the Earl's arms at large in every one of them, and powdered with the several coates of the house. 3 long tables on standard frames, 6 long forms, 1 short ditto, 1 Court cupboard, 1 fayre brass lantern, 1 iron cradle with wheels for charcoal, 1 almes tubb, 20 long pikes."

There is no mention of Mirrors, but they were used at this time, though very small, and of metal polished. The coffre or chest which contained the ladies' trousseaux, was subsequently much ornamented. The wardrobes, so called, were generally small rooms fitted with cupboards called armoiries. In 1253, "the sheriff of Southampton was ordered to make in the king's upper wardrobe, in Winchester Castle, where the king's cloths were deposited, two cupboards or armoiries, one on each side of the fireplace, with arches and a certain partition of board across the same wardrobe."[50]

FOOTNOTES:

[50] Loseley, the fine old domain of the Mores, mentioned in a preceding page (180), lies between two and three miles south-west of Guildford. It had, no doubt, from an early period, its manse, or capital dwelling-house, fortified by a moat, according to the custom of the feudal ages. This dwelling has long since been destroyed, and the present mansion at Loseley is of the age of Elizabeth, and was built between 1562 and 1568. The principal entrance opens into the Hall, but was originally at the end of the passage between the screens which divide the Hall from the Kitchen and Butteries. Latin inscriptions were placed over the doors: that over the Kitchen door was "_Fami, non Gulæ_" (To hunger, not to gluttony); over the Buttery door, "_Siti, non Ebrietati_" (To thirst, not to drunkenness); and over the Parlour door, "_Probis, non Pravis_" (To the virtuous, not the wicked). The finest apartment is the Withdrawing-room, a splendid example of the decorative style of the early part of Elizabeth's reign. It exhibits a rich cornice, on which is the _rebus_ of the More family, a mulberry-tree. The wainscoting is panelled, and the ceiling ornamented with pendent drops and Gothic tracery. The chimney-piece is elaborately enriched: the lower story is Corinthian; and the upper division, or mantel, has grotesque caryatides, supporting a fascia and cornice. The intermediate panelling is emblazoned with the arms of the Mores, which also enrich the glazing of the mullioned windows. In the gallery of the mansion were formerly two gilt chairs with cushions worked by Queen Elizabeth. Here, in 1603, Sir George More entertained King James I. and his Queen.

DRESS.--PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.

From the old accounts of the Laundry we gather some idea of mediæval clothing and personal cleanliness. Four shirts was a large allowance for a nobleman in the fifteenth century; and youths of noble rank were sent to college without a change of linen. It is upon record that Bishop Swinfield, for himself and his whole household, in the thirteenth century, only spent forty-three shillings and twopence for washing; and the Duke of Northumberland's establishment, in the time of Henry VIII. consisting of one hundred and seventy persons, only cost forty shillings for the laundry expenses of a whole year. On the other hand, the institution of "tubbing" was not unknown. Baths are frequently mentioned in the romances, and are occasionally depicted in illuminations. They were large tubs with a curtain over them, after the manner of a modern French bed.

With respect to what we now call "comfort," it is certain that all the appliances of tapestried hangings were far inferior to the modern devices of double walls, sashes, and French casements, &c. as means of excluding draughts of air. But then the costume was suited to the houses. The modern drawing-room life was scarcely possible in a mediæval mansion. It was a necessity to dress more warmly; and, as may be seen in very many mediæval illuminations, almost every one, of either sex, went with covered heads. Just in the same way, in a modern farm-house or cottage, it is common enough for hats and bonnets to be worn habitually indoors.

The flannel in general use, the wadded petticoats, and worsted stuffs and brocaded silks (so thick as almost to stand alone) for gowns, were much better calculated to resist cold and damp than the cobweb fabrics worn by modern females; and the men's clothes were of a more substantial texture, and made much fuller than the scanty modern corresponding garments of thin superfine broadcloth. The thick woollen dresses of the monks also were well contrived for preserving a comfortable portable climate. No part but the face was exposed to the external air, and this was protected by the cowl, so that they were always defended from currents of cold air in the cloisters and vaulted aisles of the now desolate monastic edifices.

Woollen cloths were long the chief material of male and female attire. When new the nap was generally very long; and after being worn for some time it was customary to have it shorn; indeed, this process was repeated as often as the stuff would bear it. Thus we find the Countess of Leicester sending Hicque, the tailor, to London, to get her robes reshorn. Among the materials for dress mentioned, are linen, sindon, which has been variously interpreted to mean satin or very fine linen; scarlet and rayed or striped cloths, of Flemish, French, or Italian make; _pers_, or blue cloth, for the manufacture of which Provence was famous; russet, say or serge, and blanchet or blanket, a name which, it is believed, was given to flannel. The furs named are squirrel and miniver.

Among the minor objects of personal use which appear to have belonged to Margaret de Bohun, in the fifteenth century, the "poume de ambre," or scent-ball, in the composition of which ambergris formed a principal ingredient, deserves notice; this being, perhaps, the earliest evidence of its use. We here learn also that a nutmeg was occasionally used for the like purpose; it was set with silver, decorated with stones and pearls, and was evidently an object rare and highly prized. Amongst the valuable effects of Henry V. according to an inventory dated A.D. 1423, are enumerated a musk-ball of gold, weighing eleven pounds, and another of silver-gilt. At a later period the Pomander was very commonly worn as the pendant of a lady's girdle. The _peres de eagle_ were the stones supposed to be found in the nest of the eagle, to which various medicinal and talismanic properties were attributed. Nor are we cognizant of an earlier mention of coral than that which occurs in this inventory: namely, the paternoster of coral, with large gilded beads, which belonged to Margaret de Bohun, and the three branches of coral which Alianmore de Bohun possessed. Among her effects also is the wooden table "painted for an altar;" it formed part of the movable chapel furniture which persons of rank took with them on journeys, or used when, through infirmity, the badness of roads, or some other cause, valid in those days, they were prevented from attending public worship. Licences to use such portable altars are of frequent occurrence on the older episcopal registers.

John Evelyn, regretting "the simple manners that prevailed in his younger days, and which were now fast fading away," thus describes old-fashioned country life about the middle of the seventeenth century:--

"Men courted and chose their wives for their modesty, frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other economical virtues then in reputation; and the young damsels were taught all these in the country and in their parents' houses. They had cupboards of ancient, useful plate, whole chests of damask for tables, and stores of fine Holland sheets, white as the driven snow, and fragrant of rose and lavender for the bed; and the sturdy oaken bedstead and furniture of the house lasted one whole century; the shovel-board and other long tables, both in hall and parlour, were as fixed as the freehold; nothing was movable save joint-stools, the black jacks, silver tankards, and bowls.... The virgins and young ladies of that golden age, _quæsiverunt lanam et linum_, put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained they the needle; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the managery of the family, and gave presages of making excellent wives. Their retirements were devout and religious books, and their recreations in the distillatory, the knowledge of plants and their virtues, for the comfort of their poor neighbours and use of their family, which wholesome, plain diet and kitchen physic preserved in perfect health." As the quaint old ballad hath it--

"They wore shoes of a good broad heel, And stockings of homely blue; And they spun them upon their own wheel, When this old hat was new."

PINS AND PIN-MONEY.

Metal pins are said to have been introduced into this country from France in the fifteenth century: as an article of commerce they are not mentioned in our statutes until the year 1483. Before this date, we are told that ladies were accustomed to fasten their dresses by means of skewers of boxwood, ivory, or bone; this statement has been doubted, but we are assured that, to this day, the Welsh use as a pin the thorn from the hedge.

Stow assigns the first manufacture of metal pins in England to the year 1543; and they seem to have been then so badly made that in the thirty-fourth year of King Henry VIII. (1542-3), Parliament enacted that none should be sold unless they be "double-headed, and have the headdes soudered faste to the shanke of the pynne." In short, the head of the pin was to be well smoothed, the shank well shapen, and the point well rounded, filed, canted, and sharpened. The Act of Parliament, however, appears to have produced no good effect, for in the thirty-seventh year of the same reign it was repealed.

The manufacture of pins was introduced into several towns of Great Britain by individuals who, in some cases, are called the inventors of the article. The pin-makers of former days seem to have been a body somewhat difficult to please, of whom Guillim, in his _Display of Heraldry_, writes:--"The Society of Pinmen and Needlers, now ancient, or whether incorporated, I find not, but only that, in the year 1597, they petitioned the Lord Treasurer against the bringing in of foreign pins and needles, which did much prejudice to the calling." The Pinners' Company was incorporated by Charles I. in 1636; the Hall is on part of the ancient Priory of the Augustine, or Austin Friars; it has been, since the reign of Charles II., let as a Dissenting meeting-house: it is in Pinners'-hall-court, Old Broad-street.

The manufacture of pins formed early a lucrative branch of trade. Sixty thousand pounds, annually, is said to have been paid for them to foreign makers, in the early years of Queen Elizabeth; but, as we have seen, long before the decease of that princess, they were manufactured in this country in great quantities; and in the time of James I., the English artisan is regarded to have "exceeded every foreign competitor in the production of this diminutive, though useful article of dress."

Pennant, in his description of old London Bridge, states that "most of the houses were tenanted by pin or needle makers, and economical ladies were wont to drive from the St. James's end of the town to make cheap purchases." But Thomson, in his minute _Chronicles of London Bridge_, does not mention pin-makers among the trades common on the bridge; haberdashers, who came here _late_ from the Chepe, however, sold pins.

Yet vast quantities of early pins have been recovered from the Thames near the site of the old Bridge. In 1864, Mr. Burnell exhibited to the British Archæological Association fifteen brass pins, varying in length from one inch and three-eighths to five inches and a half, stated to have been found on the paper on which they now are, in a cellar on the northern bank of the Thames, in excavating for the foundations of the South-Eastern Railway bridge. Most, if not all, of these pins have solid globose heads. At the same meeting, Mr. Syer Cuming exhibited two brass pins recovered from the mud of the Thames some years since. One is little less than two inches and a half in length, the other full seven inches and three-quarters long. The heads of both are formed with spiral wire; the shortest being globose, the other somewhat flattened. Mr. Cuming stated that quantities of such early pins as those then produced have been found in and along the banks of the river, some of them measuring upwards of a foot in length. These great pins may have been employed in securing the wide-spreading head-dresses of the Middle Ages, and fastening the ends of the pillow-case, a use not quite obsolete in the time of Swift, who speaks of "corking pins," for this purpose, in his _Directions to Servants_.

For some time after their introduction pins must have been costly, for we find that they were acceptable New Year's gifts to ladies, and that presents of money were made for buying pins; whence money set apart for the use of ladies received the name of _pin-money_.

In France, three centuries ago, there was a tax for providing the queen with pins; from whence the term of _pin-money_ has been, undoubtedly, applied by us to that provision for married women, with which the husband is not to interfere. In Bellon's _Voyages_, 1553, we read:--"Quand nous donnons l'argent a quelque chambrière, nous _disons pour ses épingles_."

Pins must soon have been made and sold at a very cheap rate, to justify the common remark, "Not worth a pin," and equivalent expressions in some of our early writers, such as Tusser:

"His fetch is to flatter, to get what he can; His purpose once gotten, a _pin_ for thee than."

Pins are of various sizes, from the blanket-pin, three inches in length, to the smallest ribbon-pins, of which 300,000 only weigh one pound. Insect-pins, used by entomologists, are of finer wire than ordinary pins, and vary in length from three inches to a size smaller than ribbon-pins. It has been calculated that ten tons of pins are made every week in England alone, requiring from fourteen to fifteen tons of brass-wire.

"What becomes of all the pins?" a question every day asked, received an answer, a few years since, upon the opening of an old sewer for repair, in Rea-street, Birmingham. At the bottom of it was a deposit as hard as the "slag" from a blast furnace, and in this deposit a vast number of pins were embedded: a piece about the size of a man's fist bristled with them, and this was but a specimen of a great mass of such matter. In another way, too, the deposit was a curiosity; for, independently of the pins, it inclosed a heterogeneous collection of old pocket-knives, marbles, buttons, &c.

Anciently, there were local springs, known as _Pin Wells_, in passing which the country maids dropped into the water a crooked pin to propitiate the fairy of the well. In some places, rich and poor believed this superstition.

PROVISIONS:

BREAD-MAKING, GROCERY, AND CONFECTIONERY.

Under the designation of _Panis_, Mr. Hudson Turner thinks that grain and flour, as well as bread, were included. It would appear that bread of different degrees of fineness was used. Thus, in the Household Expenses of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, third daughter of King John, and wife of the celebrated Simon de Montfort, 1265, "the earliest known memorial of the domestic expenditure of an English subject," we find that there was "bread purchased for the Countess," and "bread for the kitchen." Loaves or cakes were made of bolted flour, are twice mentioned, as well as cakes, or wastells, perhaps biscuits; on one occasion half a quarter of flour is set down for pastry. It is inferred that the bread generally used in the family was made of a mixture of wheat and rye. As the dogs were fed with corn, it may be concluded that the servants fared no worse: at any rate there is no distinct notice of bread made of barley, oats, or the more inferior grain which were commonly used in France and other countries.

It is not clear that their bread was leavened with yeast, as that article occurs but once, and then in connexion with malt. The price of the quarter of wheat or rye varied from 5_s_. to 5_s_. 8_d_.; of oats, from 2_s_. to 2_s_. 4_d_.; twenty-five quarters, however, were bought at Sandwich, at 1_s_. 10_d_. When grain was brought from the Countess' manors, some of the prices were rather below the average. The bailiff of Chalton was allowed 5_s_. the quarter for wheat, 4_s_. for barley, and 2_s_. 4_d_. for oats; the bailiff of Braborne had 4_s_. 4_d_. for wheat, and 1_s_. 3_d_. for oats.

The Manchet is a fine white roll, named, according to Skinner, from _michette_, French; or from _main_, because small enough to be held in the hand:

"No manchet can so well the courtly palate please As that made of the meal fetch'd from my fertil leaze."

Drayton's _Polyolbion_.

Here are two olden recipes for manchets:

"_Lady of Arundel's Manchet._--Take a bushel of fine wheat-flour, twenty eggs, three pound of fresh butter; then take as much salt and barm as to the ordinary manchet; temper it together with new milk pretty hot, then let it lie the space of half an hour to rise, so you may work it up into bread, and bake it: let not your oven be too hot."--_True Gentlewoman's Delight_, 1676.