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.
[Illustration: _No. 81. An Anglo-Norman House._]
[Illustration: _No. 82. The Hall and Chamber._]
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.
[Illustration: _No. 83. The Knights in waiting._]
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.
[Illustration: _No. 84. Seal of W. Moraunt._]
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._
[Illustration: _No. 85. Ancient Manor-House, Millichope, Shropshire._]
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.
[Illustration: _No. 86. Plan of Ground-Floor of House at Millichope._]
[Illustration: _No. 87. Plan of the Upper Floor._]
[Illustration: _No. 88. Inside of Window at Millichope._]
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.
[Illustration: _No. 89. A Cupboard Door._]
[Illustration: _No. 90. The Cellarer of St. Alban’s._]
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.
[Illustration: _No. 91. Alan Middleton._]
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._
[Illustration: _No. 92. Walter de Hamuntesham attacked by a Mob._]
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.
[Illustration: _No. 93. A Perche._]
[Illustration: _No. 94. Another Perche._]
[Illustration: _No. 95. Scene in a Chamber._]
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.
[Illustration: _No. 96. A Bench on Trestles._]
[Illustration: _No. 97. A Table on Trestles._]