CHANGES IN ENGLISH DOMESTIC MANNERS DURING THE PERIOD
BETWEEN THE REFORMATION AND THE COMMONWEALTH.--THE
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S HOUSE.--ITS HALL.--THE FIREPLACE
AND FIRE.--UTENSILS.--COOKERY.--USUAL HOURS FOR
MEALS.--BREAKFAST.--DINNER, AND ITS FORMS AND CUSTOMS.--THE
BANQUET.--CUSTOM OF DRINKING HEALTHS.
The Reformation brought with it, or at all events it was coeval with,
a general revolution in society. Although the nobility still kept
up much of their ancient state, feudalism was destroyed during the
reigns of the first two Tudors, while the lower and middle classes of
the population were rising in condition and in the consciousness of
their own importance, and with this rise came an increase of domestic
comforts and social development. It was on the ruins of the monastic
property, confiscated by Henry VIII., that the English gentlemen
gained their highest position, and, by their independence of the old
aristocracy, they assisted in finally breaking its power, and thus
gave a new character to English society, which at the same time was
experiencing influences that came successively from without. Till the
reign of Elizabeth, and after her accession to the throne, there was
a close connection with the Netherlands and Germany, and we imported
most of our novelties and fashions from our Protestant neighbours on
the continent; whilst, from Elizabeth’s reign onwards, and with little
intermission to the present time, France has been our principal model
for imitation. This is a point which is the more necessary to be
observed in treating of this subject, because during the period between
the Reformation and the Commonwealth, the art of engraving in this
country had been carried to little perfection, and was comparatively
rarely practised, and we are obliged to look for our pictorial
illustrations of manners to the works of foreign artists.
[Illustration: _No. 277. Houses in the Streets of a Town, Fifteenth
Century._]
In towns, domestic architecture experienced no great change in the
course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Small narrow streets,
with buildings chiefly of the class we term half-timber houses--the
best of which had their lower story of stone, while those above, each
projecting beyond the one below it, consisted of a timber framework
filled up with bricks--occupied the greater part of the town, and
gave it a compact appearance which was quite inconsistent with our
modern notions of sanitary arrangement. In the interior the rooms
were generally small and dark, but domestic comfort seems not to have
been so much overlooked as we are in the habit of supposing. Our cut
No. 277, taken from an engraving in the English edition of Barclay’s
“Ship of Fools,” 1570, gives us a good representation of the general
appearance of houses in a town at that period. In the country a greater
change had taken place in all but the houses of the peasantry. The
older castles had become obsolete, and, with the increasing power
and efficiency of the laws, it was no longer necessary to consult
strength before convenience. The houses of the gentry were, however,
still built of considerable extent, and during the sixteenth century
the older domestic arrangements were only slightly modified. Now,
however, instead of seeking a strong position, people chose situations
that were agreeable and healthful, where they might be protected from
inclemency of weather, and where gardens and orchards might be planted
advantageously. Thus, like the earlier monastic edifices, a gentleman’s
house was built more frequently on low ground than on a hill.
[Illustration: _No. 278. The “Hundred Men’s Hall,” at St. Cross, near
Winchester._]
In the sixteenth century, the hall continued to hold its position as
the great public apartment of the house, and in its arrangements it
still differed little from those of an earlier date; it was indeed
now the only part of the house which had not been affected by the
increasing taste for domestic privacy. We have many examples of the
old Gothic hall in this country, not only as it existed and was used
in the sixteenth century, but, in some cases, especially in colleges,
still used for its original purposes. One of the simplest, and at the
same time best, examples is found in the Hospital of St. Cross, near
Winchester, and a sketch of the interior, as represented in our cut
No. 278, will serve to give a general notion of the arrangements of
this part of the mansion in former days. As the hall was frequently the
scene of festivities of every description, a gallery for the musicians
was considered one of its necessary appendages. In some cases, as at
Madresfield in Worcestershire, a gallery ran round two or more sides of
the hall; but generally the music gallery occupied one end of the hall,
opposite the dais. Under it was a passage, separated from the hall by
a wooden screen, usually of panel-work, and having on the opposite
side the kitchen and buttery. In the large halls, the fireplace still
frequently occupied the centre of the hall, where there was a small,
low platform of stone. This is distinctly seen in the preceding view
of the interior of the hall of St. Cross. In our cut No. 279 we give
another example of this kind of fireplace, from the hall at Penshurst
in Kent, where it is still occupied by the iron dogs, or andirons, that
supported the fuel. It may be observed that these latter, in the north
of England and in some other parts, were called cobirons.
[Illustration: _No. 279. Fireplace in the Great Hall at Penshurst,
Kent._]
The implements attached to the fireplace had hitherto been few in
number, and simple in character, but they now became more numerous.
In the inventories previous to the sixteenth century they are seldom
mentioned at all, and the glossaries speak only of tongs and bellows.
In the will of John Baret of Bury, made in 1463, “a payre of tongys
and a payre belwys” are mentioned. John Hedge, a large householder of
the same town in 1504, speaks of “spytts, rakks, cobernys, aundernnys,
trevettes, tongs, with all other iryn werkes moveabyll within my house
longying.” This would seem to show that cobirons and andirons were
not identical, and it has been supposed that the former denomination
belonged more particularly to the rests for supporting the spit.
The schoolmaster of Bury, in 1552, bequeathed to his hostess, “my
cobbornes, the fire pany (? _pan_), and the tonges.” If we turn to the
north, we find in the collection of wills published by the Surtees
Society a more frequent enumeration of the fire implements. William
Blakeson, prebendary of Durham, possessed in 1549 only “a payre
of cobyrons and one payre of tongys.” In 1551, William Lawson, of
Newcastle-on-Tyne, had in his hall “one yryn chymney, and a poor, with
one paire of tonges,” which are valued at the rather high sum of thirty
shillings. This is the first mention of the iron chimney, or grate,
but it occurs continually after the middle of the sixteenth century.
In 1557, the “iron chymney” of the parish clerk of St. Andrew’s in
Newcastle was valued at twenty shillings. The fire implements in the
hall of the farm-house at West Runcton near Northallerton, in 1562,
were “j. cryssett, ij. rachyncrokes, j. pair of tonges, one paire
off cobyrons, j. speitt, one paire off potes.” We find the cresset
frequently included among the implements attached to the fireplace.
The racking-crook was the pothook. In 1564, John Bynley, minor canon
of Durham, had in his hall “one iron chimney, with a bake (_back_),
porre (a _por_, or _poker_), tongs, fier shoel (_fire shovel_), spette
(_spit_), and a littell rake pertening thereto.” The fire-irons in the
hall of Margaret Cottam, widow, of Gateshead, in 1564, were “one iron
chimney, one porr, one payre of toynges, gibcrokes, rakincroke, and
racks.” The gibcrokes was probably a sort of pothook or jack. Nearly
the same list of articles occurs frequently in subsequent inventories.
In 1567, a housekeeper of Durham had among other such articles “a
gallous (_gallows_) of iron with iiij. crocks.” The gallows was, of
course, the cross-bar of iron, which projected across the chimney, and
from which the crooks or chains with hooks at the end for sustaining
pots were suspended; as the gallows turned upon hinges, the pot could
be moved over the sire, or from it, at pleasure, without being taken
from the hook, and as the crooks, of which there were usually more
than one, were of different lengths, the pot might be placed lower
to the fire or higher from it, at will. From the character of some
of these adjuncts to the fireplace, it is evident that the hall fire
was frequently used for cooking. The sixteenth century was the period
at which ornamentation was carried to a very high degree in every
description of household utensil, and to judge from the valuation
of some of these articles in the inventories, they were no doubt of
elegant or elaborate work. Numerous examples of ornamental ironwork,
specially applied to fire-dogs or andirons, will be found in Mr. M. A.
Lower’s interesting paper on the ironworks of Sussex; and many others,
still more elaborate, are preserved in some of our old gentlemen’s
houses in different parts of the country; but this ornamentation was
carried to a far higher degree in the great manufactories on the
continent, from whence our countrymen in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries obtained a large portion of their richer furniture. The
figure in the middle of the group of fire-irons represented in our cut
No. 280, is an example of a fire-dog of this elaborate description,
preserved in the collection of count Brancaleoni, in Paris, whence
also the other articles in the cut are taken. Most of them explain
themselves; the implement to the right is a somewhat singularly formed
pair of tongs; that immediately beneath the fire-dog is an instrument
for moving the logs of wood which then served as fuel. As a further
example of the remarkable manner in which almost every domestic article
was at this period adorned, we may point out a box-iron, for ironing
linen, &c. (cut No. 281), which is also preserved in one of the French
collections; such an article was of course not made to be exposed
to the action of the fire, and this circumstance gave rise to the
contrivance of forming it into a box, with a separate iron which was to
be heated and placed inside.428
[Illustration: _No. 280. Ornamental Fire-irons, Sixteenth Century._]
[Illustration: _No. 281. A Box-iron, Sixteenth Century._]
[Illustration: _No. 282. Fireplace and Pothook._]
The fire-irons, as we find them enumerated in writings or pictured in
engravings, appear to have formed the same list, or nearly so, though
of course differing in form and ornament according to the varying
fashions of the day, until at a considerably later period they were
reduced to the modern trio of shovel, poker, and tongs. The single
pothook, with a contrivance for lengthening it and shortening it,
is shown in our cut No. 282, taken from one of the remarkable wood
engravings in “Der Weiss Kunig,”--a series of prints illustrative
of the youthful life of Maximilian I. of Germany, who ascended the
imperial throne in 1493. The engravings are of the sixteenth century,
and the form of the fireplace belongs altogether to the age of the
Renaissance. The gallows, with its pothooks or crokes of different
lengths, appears in our cut No. 283, taken from Barclay’s “Ship of
Fools,” the edition of 1570, though the design is somewhat older. The
method of attaching the crooks to one side of the fireplace, when not
in use, is exhibited in this engraving, as also the mode in which
other smaller utensils were attached to the walls. In this latter
instance there are no dogs or andirons in the fireplace, but the pot
or boiler is simply placed upon the fire, without other support. There
were, however, other methods of placing the pot upon the fire; and in
one of the curious wooden sculptures in the church of Kirby Thorpe,
in Yorkshire, representing a cook cleaning his dishes, the boiler is
placed over the fire in a sort of four-legged frame, as represented in
the annexed cut No. 284.
[Illustration: _No. 283. The Fireplace and its uses._]
[Illustration: _No. 284. A Cook cleaning his Dishes._]
Early in the seventeenth century the fireplace had taken nearly its
present form, although the dogs or andirons had not yet been superseded
by the grate, which, however, had already come into use. This later
form of the fireplace is shown in our cut No. 285, taken from one of an
interesting series of prints, executed by the French artist, Abraham
Bosse, in the year 1633. It represents a domestic party frying fritters
in Lent. One of the dogs is seen at the foot of the opening of the
fireplace.
[Illustration: _No. 285. Frying Fritters._]
In the sixteenth century, the articles of furniture in the hall
continued to be much the same as in the century preceding. It continued
to be furnished with hangings of tapestry, but they seem not always to
have been in use; and they were still placed not absolutely against
the wall, but apparently at a little distance from it, so that people
might conceal themselves behind them. If the hall was not a very large
one, a table was placed in the middle, with a long bench on each
side. There was generally a cupboard, or a “hutch,” if not more, with
side tables, one or more chairs, and perhaps a settle, according to
the taste or means of the possessor. We hear now also of tables with
leaves, and of folding tables, as well as of counters, or desks, for
writing, and dressers, or small cupboards. The two latter articles
were evidently, from their names, borrowed from the French. Cushions
were also kept in the hall, for the seats of the principal persons
of the household, or for the females. The furniture of the hall of
William Lawson, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1551, consisted of one table
of wainscot, valued at twenty shillings, two double counters, valued
together at thirty shillings, a drawer and two forms, estimated at five
shillings, two cushions and two chairs, also valued at five shillings,
five other cushions, valued at twelve shillings, two carpet cloths and
a cupboard cloth, valued together at ten shillings, and the hangings
in the hall, estimated to be worth fifty shillings. This seems to have
been a very well furnished hall; that of Robert Goodchild, parish
clerk of St. Andrew’s in Newcastle, in 1557, contained an almery (or
large cupboard), estimated at ten shillings; a counter “of the myddell
bynde,” six shillings; a cupboard, three shillings and fourpence; five
basins and six lavers, eight shillings; seventeen “powder (_pewter_)
doblers,” seventeen shillings; six pewter dishes and a hand-basin,
five shillings; six pewter saucers, eighteen pence; four pottle pots,
five shillings and fourpence, three pint pots and three quart pots,
three shillings; ten candlesticks, six shillings; a little pestle and
a mortar, two shillings; three old chairs, eighteen pence; six old
cushions, two shillings; and two counter-cloths. Much of the furniture
of English houses at this time was imported from Flanders. Jane Lawson,
in the year last mentioned, had in her hall at Little Burdon in
Northumberland, “Flanders counters with their carpets.” She had also
in the hall, a long side table, three long forms and another form,
two chairs, three stools, six new cushions and three old cushions,
and an almery. The whole furniture of the hall of the rectory house
of Sedgefield in Durham, which appears to have been a large house
and well entertained, consisted of a table of plane-tree with joined
frame, two tables of fir with frames, two forms, a settle, and a pair
of trestles. The hall of Bertram Anderson, a rich and distinguished
merchant and alderman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1570, was furnished
with two tables with the carpets (_table-covers_), three forms, one
dozen cushions, half-a-dozen green cushions, one counter with the
carpet, two “basinges” (_basins_), and two covers, one chair, and one
little chair. This is a striking proof of the rarity of chairs even
at this late date. Buffet stools, which are supposed to be the stools
with a flat top and a hole in the middle through which the hand
might be passed to lift them, are also mentioned among the articles
of furniture in the hall at this period. The furniture of the hall
at the manor-house of Croxdale, in the county of Durham, in the year
1571, consisted of one cupboard, one table, two buffet stools, and one
chair; yet Salvin of Croxdale was looked upon as one of the principal
gentry of the Palatinate. In enumerating the furniture of the ancient
hall, we must not forget the arms which were usually displayed there,
especially by such as had dependent upon them a certain number of
men whom it was their duty or their pride to arm. The hall of a rich
merchant of Newcastle, named John Wilkinson, contained in 1571, the
following furniture: one almery, one table of wainscot, one counter,
one little counter, one dresser of wainscot, one “pulk,” three chairs,
three forms, three buffet stools, six cushions of tapestry, six old
cushions of tapestry, six green cushions, two long carpet cloths, two
short carpet cloths, one say carpet cloth, the “hyngars” in the hall,
on the almery head one basin and ewer, one great charger, three new
“doblers,” one little chest for sugar, and one pair of wainscot tables;
and of arms, two jacks, three sallets of iron, one bow and two sheaves
of arrows, three bills, and two halberts. Some of the entries in these
inventories are amusing; and, while speaking of arms, it may be stated,
that a widow lady of Bury, Mary Chapman, who would appear to have been
a warlike dame, making her will in 1649, leaves to one of her sons,
among other things, “also _my_ muskett, rest, bandileers, sword, and
headpiece, _my_ jacke, a fine paire of sheets, and a hutche.” In 1577,
Thomas Liddell, merchant of Newcastle, had in his hall, “three tables
of waynscoot, sex qwyshons of tapestery, a cowborde, three wainscoot
formes, two chayrs, three green table clothes, fower footstoles, sixe
quyshons, two candlesticks, a louckinge glasse, sexe danske pootts of
powther (_pewter_), two basings, and two vewers (_ewers_), a laver
and a basinge, fyve buffatt stules.” It is curious thus to trace the
furniture of the hall at different periods, and compare them together;
and we cannot but remark from the frequency with which the epithet
_old_ is applied to different articles, towards the end of the century
that the hall was beginning rapidly to fall into disuse. The cause of
this was no doubt the increasing taste for domestic retirement, and
the wish to withdraw from the publicity which had always attended the
hall, and it gradually became the mere entrance lobby of the house,
the place where strangers or others were allowed to remain until their
presence had been announced, which is the sense in which we commonly
use the word hall, as part of the house, at the present day. In the
enumeration of the parts of a house given in the English edition
of Comenius’s “Janua Linguarum,” in the middle of the seventeenth
century, there is no mention of a hall. “A house,” we are told in this
quaint book, “is divided into inner rooms, such as are the entry, the
stove, the kitchen, the buttery, the dining-room, the gallery, the
bed-chamber, with a privy made by it; baskets are of use for carrying
things to and fro; and chests (which are made fast with a key) for
keeping them. The floor is under the roof. In the yard is a well, a
stable, and a bath. Under the house is the cellar.”
[Illustration: _No. 286. A Folding Table._]
It has already been remarked that tables with leaves began to be
mentioned frequently after the commencement of the sixteenth century.
Andrew Cranewise, of Bury, in 1558, enumerates “one cupborde in the
hall, one plaine table with one leafe.” He speaks further on, in the
same will, of “my best folte (_fold or folding_) table in the hall,
and two great hutches.” In 1556, Richard Claxton, of Old Park, in the
county of Durham, speaks of a “folden table” in the parlours, which was
valued at two shillings. These folding tables appear to have been made
in a great variety of forms, some of which were very ingenious. Our
cut No. 286 represents a very curious folding table of the sixteenth
century, which was long preserved at Flaxton Hall, in Suffolk, but
perished in the fire when that mansion was burnt a few years ago. As
represented in the cut, which shows the table folded up so as to be
laid aside, the legs pull out, and the one to the right fits into the
lion’s mouth, and is secured by the pin which hangs beside it.
[Illustration: _No. 287. Cresset and Moon._]
The methods of lighting the hall at night were still rather clumsy,
and not very perfect. Of course, when the apartment was very large,
a few candles would produce comparatively little effect, and it was
therefore found necessary to use torches, and inflammable masses of
larger size. One method of supplying the deficiency was to take a small
pan, or portable fireplace, filled with combustibles, and suspend it
in the place where light was required. Such a receptacle was usually
placed at the top of a pole, for facility of carrying about, and was
called a cresset, from an old French word which meant a night-lamp.
The cresset is mentioned by Shakespeare and other writers as though it
were chiefly used in processions at night, and by watchmen and guides.
The first figure in our cut No. 287, taken from Douce’s “Illustrations
of Shakespeare,” represents one of the cressets carried by the marching
watch of London in the sixteenth century. From the continual mention
of the cresset along with the fire-irons of the hall, in the wills
published by the Surtees Society, we can hardly doubt its being used,
at least in the north of England, for lighting the hall itself. An
improvement of the common cresset consisted in enclosing the flame,
by whatever material it was fed, in a case made of some transparent
substance, such as horn, and thus making it neither more nor less than
a large lantern fixed on the end of a pole. The form of this implement
was generally globular, and, no doubt from its appearance when carried
in the night, it was denominated a _moon_. The “moon” was carried by
servants before the carriages of their masters, to guide them along
country lanes, and under other similar circumstances. The second figure
in our cut No. 287 represents a “moon” which was formerly preserved at
Ightham Moat House, in Kent; the frame was of brass, and the covering
of horn. To assist in lighting the hall, sometimes candlesticks were
fixed to the walls round the hall, and this perhaps will explain the
rather large number of candlesticks sometimes enumerated among the
articles in that part of the house. In our cut No. 282, we have an
example of a candlestick placed on a frame, which, turning on a pivot
or hinges, may be turned back against the wall when not in use.
During the period of which we are now speaking, almost everything
connected with the table underwent great change. This was least the
case with regard to the hours of meals. The usual hour of breakfast was
seven o’clock in the morning, and seems scarcely to have varied. During
the sixteenth century, the hour of dinner was eleven o’clock, or just
four hours after breakfast. “With us,” says Harrison in his description
of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle, “the nobilitie,
gentrie, and students (he means the Universities), doo ordinarilie go
to dinner at eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or between
five and sixe, at afternoone.” Before the end of the century, however,
the dinner hour appears to have varied between eleven and twelve.
In a book entitled the “Haven of Health,” written by a physician
named Cogan, and printed in 1584, we are told: “When foure houres
be past after breakefast, a man may safely take his dinner, and the
most convenient time for dinner is about eleven of the clocke before
noone. The usual time for dinner in the universities is at eleven, or
elsewhere about noon.” In Beaumont and Fletcher, the hour of dinner was
still eleven; “I never come into my dining-room,” says Merrythought, in
the “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” “but at eleven and six o’clock.”
“What hour is’t, Lollis?” asks a character in the “Changeling,” by
their contemporary Middleton. “Towards eating-hour, sir.” “Dinnertime?
thou mean’st twelve o’clock.” And other writers at the beginning of the
seventeenth century speak of twelve o’clock and seven as the hours of
dinner and supper. This continued to be the usual hour of dinner at the
close of the same century.
During the reign of Elizabeth, and afterwards, persons of both sexes
appear to have broken their fast in the same substantial manner as
was observed by the Percies at the beginning of the century, and
as described in a previous chapter; yet, though generally but four
hours interposed between this and the hour of dinner, people seem to
have thought it necessary to take a small luncheon in the interval,
which, no doubt from its consisting chiefly in drinking, was called
a _bever_. “At ten,” says a character in one of Middleton’s plays,
“we drink, that’s mouth-hour; at eleven, lay about us for victuals,
that’s hand-hour; at twelve, go to dinner, that’s eating-hour.” “Your
gallants,” says Appetitus, in the old play of “Lingua,” “never sup,
breakfast, nor bever without me.”
[Illustration: _No. 288. A Basin and Ewer, Sixteenth Century._]
The dinner was the largest and most ceremonious meal of the day. The
hearty character of this meal is remarked by a foreign traveller in
England, who published his “Mémoires et Observations” in French in
1698. “Les Anglois,” he tells us, “mangent beaucoup à diner; ils
mangent à reprises, et remplissent le sac. Leur souper est leger.
Gloutons à midi, fort sobres au soir.” In the sixteenth century, dinner
still began with the same ceremonious washing of hands as formerly;
and there was considerable ostentation in the ewers and basins used
for this purpose. Our cut No. 288 represents ornamental articles of
this description, of the sixteenth century, taken from an engraving in
Whitney’s “Emblems,” printed in 1586. This custom was rendered more
necessary by the circumstance that at table people of all ranks used
their fingers for the purposes to which we now apply a fork. This
article was not used in England for the purpose to which it is now
applied, until the reign of James I. It is true that we have instances
of forks even so far back as the pagan Anglo-Saxon period, but they
are often found coupled with spoons, and on considering all the
circumstances, I am led to the conviction that they were in no instance
used for feeding, but merely for serving, as we still serve salad and
other articles, taking them out of basin or dish with a fork and spoon.
In fact, to those who have not been taught the use of it, a fork must
necessarily be a very awkward and inconvenient instrument. We know that
the use of forks came from Italy, the country to which England owed
many of the new fashions of the beginning of the seventeenth century.
It is curious to read Coryat’s account of the usage of forks at table
as he first saw it in that country in the course of his travels. “I
observed,” says he, “a custome in all those Italian cities and townes
through which I passed, that is not used in any other country that
I saw in my travels, neither doe I thinke that any other nation of
Christendome doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian, and also most
strangers that are commorant in Italy, doe alwaies at their meales
use a little forke, when they cut their meate. For while with their
knife which they hold in one hande they cut the meat out of the dish,
they fasten their forke, which they hold in their other hande, upon
the same dish, so that whatsoever he be that sitting in the company
of any others at meale, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meate
with his fingers, from which all at the table do cut, he will give
occasion of offence unto the company, as having transgressed the lawes
of good manners, insomuch that for his error he shall be at the least
brow-beaten, if not reprehended in wordes. This forme of feeding I
understand is generally used in all places of Italy, their forkes being
for the most part made of yron or steele, and some of silver, but those
are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their curiosity is,
because the Italian cannot by any means indure to have his dish touched
with fingers, seeing all men’s fingers are not alike cleane. Hereupon
I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this forked
cutting of meate, not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany,
and oftentimes in England since I came home; being once quipped for
that frequent using of my forke by a certain learned gentleman, a
familiar friend of mine, one Mr. Lawrence Whittaker, who in his merry
humour doubted not to call me at table _furcifer_, only for using a
forke at feeding, but for no other cause.” _Furcifer_, in Latin, it
need hardly be observed, meant literally one who carries a fork, but
its proper signification was, a villain who deserves the gallows.
The usage of forks thus introduced into England, appears soon to
have become common. It is alluded to more than once in Beaumont
and Fletcher, and in Ben Jonson, but always as a foreign fashion.
In Jonson’s comedy of “The Devil is an Ass,” we have the following
dialogue:--
Meerc. _Have I deserv’d this from you two, for all My pains at
court to get you each a patent?_
Gilt. _For what?_
Meerc. _Upon my project o’ the forks._
Sle. _Forks? what be they?_
Meerc. _The laudable use of forks,_
_Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy,_
_To th’ sparing o’ napkins._
In fact the new invention rendered the washing of hands no longer so
necessary as before, and though it was still continued as a polite form
before sitting down to dinner, the practice of washing the hands after
dinner appears to have been entirely discontinued.
[Illustration: _No. 289. A Dinner Party in the Seventeenth Century._]
Our cut No. 289, taken from the English edition of the Janua Linguarum
of Comenius, represents the forms of dining in England under the
Protectorate. It will be best described by the text which accompanies
it in the book, and in which each particular object is mentioned.
“When a feast is made ready,” we are told, “the table is covered
with a carpet and a table-cloth by the waiters, who besides lay the
trenchers, spoons, knives, with little forks, table napkins, bread,
with a saltsellar. Messes are brought in platters, a pie in a plate.
The guests being brought in by the host, wash their hands, out of
a laver or ewer, over a hand-basin, or bowl, and wipe them with a
hand-towel; then they sit at the table on chairs. The carver breaketh
up the good cheer, and divideth it. Sauces are set amongst roste-meat
in sawsers. The butler filleth strong wine out of a cruse, or wine-pot,
or flagon, into cups, or glasses, which stand on a cup-board, and
he reacheth them to the master of the feast, who drinketh to his
guests.” It will be observed that one salt-cellar is here placed in
the middle of the table. This was the usual custom; and, as one long
table had been substituted for the several tables formerly standing
in the hall, the salt-cellar was considered to divide the table into
two distinct parts, guests of more distinction being placed above the
salt, while the places below the salt were assigned to inferiors and
dependants. This usage is often alluded to in the old dramatists.
Thus, in Ben Jonson, it is said of a man who treats his inferiors with
scorn, “he never drinks _below the salt_,” _i.e._, he never exchanges
civilities with those who sit at the lower end of the table. And in
a contemporary writer, it is described as a mark of presumption in
an inferior member of the household “to sit above the salt.” Our cut
No. 290, taken from an engraving by the French artist, Abraham Bosse,
published in 1633, represents one of the first steps in the laying out
of the dinner-table. The plates, it will be seen, are laid, and the
salt-cellar is duly placed in the middle of the table. The servant is
now placing the napkins--
_The pages spred a table out of hand,_
_And brought forth nap’ry rich, and plate more rich._
--Harrington’s Ariosto, lxii. 71.
[Illustration: _No. 290. Laying out the Dinner-table, 1633._]
The earlier half of the sixteenth century was the period when the
pageantry of feasting was carried to its greatest degree of splendour.
In the houses of the noble and wealthy, the dinner itself was laid out
with great pomp, was almost always accompanied with music, and was
not unfrequently interrupted with dances, mummings, and masquerades.
A picture of a grand feast carried on in this manner is given in one
of the illustrations to the German work on the exploits of the emperor
Maximilian, published at the time under the title of “Der Weiss
Kunig.” An abridged copy of this engraving is given in our cut No.
291. The table profusely furnished, the rich display of plate on the
cupboards, the band in front, and the mummers entering the hall, are
all strikingly characteristic of the age. The dresser, or cupboard,
was now one of the great means of display among the higher orders of
society, who invested vast wealth in its furniture, consisting of
vessels made of the precious metals and of crystal, sometimes set with
precious stones, and often adorned with the most beautiful sculpture,
or moulded into singular or elaborate forms. So much attention was
given to the arrangement of the plate on the dresser, and to the
ceremonies attending it, that it was made a point of etiquette how
many steps, or gradations, on which the rows of plate were raised one
above another, members of each particular rank of society might have
on their cupboards. Thus, a prince of royal blood only might have five
steps to his cupboard; four were allowed to nobles of the highest rank,
three to nobles under that of duke, two to knights-bannerets, and one
to persons who were merely of gentle blood. These rules, however, were
probably not universally obeyed. It was the duty of the butler to have
charge of the plate in the hall, and his station there was usually at
the side of the cupboard, as in the engraving taken from “Der Weiss
Kunig” (No. 291). Comparatively few examples of the domestic plate of
an early period have survived the revolutions of so many ages, during
which they were often melted for the metal, and those which remain
are chiefly in the possession of corporations or public bodies; but
several fine collections of the ornamental plate of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries have been made, and among these one of the best
and most interesting is that of the late lord Londesborough, now in the
possession of lady Londesborough.[54]
[Illustration: _No. 291. Mummers at a Feast._]
A dinner scene on a smaller scale is represented in our next cut (No.
292), copied from one in which Albert Durer represents Herodias dancing
and performing before Herod at his solitary meal. This pageantry at
dinner was succeeded, and apparently soon superseded, in the higher
society by masques after dinner, which continued to be very fashionable
until the breaking out of the civil commotions in the middle of the
seventeenth century. During the period of the Protectorate and the
Commonwealth, the forms of eating and drinking were much simplified,
and all that expensive ostentation, which had arisen in the high times
of feudal power, and had become burthensome to the aristocracy after it
had been weakened by the reigns of the Tudors, disappeared.
[Illustration: _No. 292. Herodias dancing before Herod._]
The regular order of service at dinner seems to have been still three
courses, each consisting of a number and variety of dishes, according
to the richness of the entertainment. To judge from the early cookery
books, which have been described in a former chapter, our ancestors,
previous to the sixteenth century, in the better classes of society,
were not in the habit of placing substantial joints on the table, but
instead of them had a great variety of made dishes, a considerable
proportion of which were eaten with a spoon. At the tables of the
great, there was a large attendance of servants, and the guests were
counted off not, as before, in couples, but in fours, each four being
considered as one party, under the title of a _mess_, and probably
having a dish among them, and served by one attendant. This custom
is often alluded to in the dramatists, and it is hardly necessary to
observe that it was the origin of our modern term in the army. The
plate, as well as the porcelain and earthenware, used at table during
the greater part of this period, was so richly diversified, that it
would require a volume to describe it, nor would it be easy to pick
out a small number of examples that might illustrate the whole. Our
cut No. 293 represents a peculiar article of this period, which is not
undeserving of remark, two knife-cases, made of leather, stamped and
gilt.
[Illustration: _No. 293. Knife-cases._]
[Illustration: _No. 294. Drinking Vessels._]
From what has been said, it will be seen that our popular saying of
“the roast beef of old England,” is not so literally true as we are
accustomed to suppose. While, however, the style of living we have
been describing prevailed generally among the higher ranks and the
richer portion of the middle classes, particularly in towns, that of
the less affluent classes remained simple and even scanty, and a large
portion of the population of the country probably indulged in flesh
meat only at intervals, or on occasions when they received it in their
lord’s kitchen or hall. A few plain jugs, such as those represented
in our cut No. 294, taken from a wooden sculpture in the church of
Kirby Thorpe, in Yorkshire, with platters or trenchers in pewter or
wood, formed the whole table service of the inferior classes. It was
the revolution in the middle of the seventeenth century which first
abolished this extravagant ostentation, and brought into fashion a
plainer table and more substantial meats. A foreigner, who had been
much in England in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and
published his observations in French at the Hague in 1698, tells us
that the English of that period were great eaters of meat--“I have
heard,” says he, “of many people in England who have never eaten bread,
and ordinarily they eat very little; they nibble sometimes a little
bit, while they eat flesh by great mouthfuls. Generally speaking, the
tables are not served with delicacy in England. There are some great
lords who have French and English cooks, and where you are served much
in the French fashion; but among persons of the middle condition of
which I am speaking, they have ten or twelve sorts of common meat,
which infallibly come round again in their turns at different times,
and of two dishes of which their dinner is composed, as for instance,
a pudding, and a piece of roast beef. Sometimes they will have a piece
boiled, and then it has always lain in salt some days, and is flanked
all round with five or six mounds of cabbage, carrots, turnips, or
some other herbs or roots, seasoned with salt and pepper, with melted
butter poured over them. At other times they will have a leg of mutton,
roasted or boiled, and accompanied with the same delicacies; poultry,
sucking pigs, tripe, and beef tongues, rabbits, pigeons, all well
soaked with butter, without bacon. Two of these dishes, always served
one after the other, make the ordinary dinner of a good gentleman,
or of a good burgher. When they have boiled meat, there is sometimes
somebody who takes a fancy to broth, which consists of the water in
which the meat has been boiled, mixed with a little oatmeal, with some
leaves of thyme, or sage, or other such small herbs. The pudding is
a thing which it would be difficult to describe, on account of the
diversity of sorts. Flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, fat, marrow,
rasins, &c. &c., are the more common ingredients of a pudding. It is
baked in an oven; or boiled with the meat; or cooked in fifty other
fashions. And they are grateful for the invention of puddings, for it
is a manna to everybody’s taste, and a better manna than that of the
dessert, inasmuch as they are never tired of it. Oh! what an excellent
thing is an English pudding! _To come in pudding time_, is a proverbial
phrase, meaning, to come at the happiest moment in the world. Make
a pudding for an Englishman, and you will regale him be he where he
will. Their dessert needs no mention, for it consists only of a bit of
cheese. Fruit is only found at the houses of great people, and only
among few of them.” The phrase, “to come in pudding time,” occurs as
early as the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The absence of the dessert at the English table, of which the writer
just quoted complains, arose from the abandonment in the middle of
the seventeenth century of an old custom. In the earlier part of that
century, and in the century previous, when the company rose from the
dinner-table, they proceeded to what was then called the _banquet_,
which was held in another apartment, and often in an arbour in the
garden, or, as it was called, the garden-house. The _banquet_ of an
earlier period, the fifteenth century, was, as we have already seen, a
meal after supper. In Massinger’s play of the “City Madam,” a sumptuous
dinner is described as follows:--
_The dishes were raised one upon another,_
_As woodmongers do billets, for the first,_
_The second, and third course; and most of the shops_
_Of the best confectioners in London ransack’d_
_To furnish out a banquet._
In another of Massinger’s dramas, one of the characters says:--
_We’ll dine in the great room, but let the musick_
_And banquet be prepared here._
It appears, therefore, that the banquet was often accompanied with
music. At the banquet the choice wines were brought forth, and the
table was covered with pastry and sweetmeats, of which our forefathers
at this period appear to have been extremely fond. A usual article at
the banquet was marchpanes, or biscuits made of sugar and almonds, in
different fanciful forms, such as men, animals, houses, &c. There was
generally one at least in the form of a castle, which the ladies and
gentlemen were to batter to pieces in frolic, by attacking it with
sugar-plums. Taylor, the water-poet, calls them--
_Castles for ladies, and for carpet knights,_
_Unmercifully spoil’d at feasting fights,_
_Where battering bullets are fine sugred plums._
On festive occasions, and among people who loved to pass their time at
table, the regular banquet seems to have been followed by a second, or,
as it was called, a _rere-banquet_. These rere-banquets are mentioned
by the later Elizabethan writers, generally as extravagances, and
sometimes with the epithet of “late,” so that perhaps they took the
place of the soberer supper. People are spoken of as taking “somewhat
plentifully of wine” at these rere-banquets. The rere-supper was still
in use, and appears also to have been a meal distinguished by its
profusion both in eating and drinking. It was from the rere-supper
that the roaring-boys, and other wild gallants of the earlier part of
the seventeenth century, sallied forth to create noise and riot in the
streets.
One of the great characteristics of the dinner-table at this period
was the formality of drinking, especially that of drinking healths,
so much cried down by the Puritans. This formality was enforced with
great strictness and ceremony. It was not exactly the modern practice
of giving a toast, but each person in turn rose, named some one to whom
he individually drank (not one of the persons present), and emptied
his cup. “He that begins the health,” we are told in a little book
published in 1623, “first, uncovering his head, he takes a full cup in
his hand, and setting his countenance with a grave aspect, he craves
for audience; silence being once obtained, he begins to breathe out
the name, per-adventure, of some honourable personage, whose health
is drunk to, and he that pledges must likewise off with his cap, kiss
his fingers, and bow himself in sign of a reverent acceptance. When the
leader sees his follower thus prepared, he sups up his broth, turns the
bottom of the cup upward, and, in ostentation of his dexterity, gives
the cup a phillip to make it cry twango. And thus the first scene is
acted. The cup being newly replenished to the breadth of a hair, he
that is the pledger must now begin his part, and thus it goes round
throughout the whole company.” In order to ascertain that each person
had fairly drunk off his cup, in turning it up he was to pour all that
remained in it on his nail, and if there were too much to remain as a
drop on the nail without running off, he was made to drink his cup full
again. This was termed drinking on the nail, for which convivialists
invented a mock Latin phrase, and called it drinking _super nagulum_,
or _super-naculum_.
This custom of pledging in drinking was as old as the times of the
Anglo-Saxons, when it existed in the “wæs heil” and “drinc heil,”
commemorated in the story of the British Vortigern and the Saxon
Rowena, and it is alluded to in several ballads of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, as in that of “King Edward and the Shepherd,”
where the man who drinks pledges his companion with the word
“passelodion,” and the other replies by “berafrynde,” and in that of
“The Kyng and the Hermyt,” where the words of pledging and reply are
“fusty bandyas,” and “stryke pautnere.” Both these ballads are printed
in Hartshorne’s “Ancient Metrical Tales.” The drinking of the healths
of absent individuals appears to have been introduced at a later
period, and was carried to its greatest degree of extravagance on the
continent. The person whose health a man gave was usually expected to
be his mistress; and in France he was expected, in doing this, to drink
as many times his glass or cup full of wine as there were letters in
her name. Thus, in Ronsard’s “Bacchanales,” the gallant drinks nine
times to his mistress Cassandre, because there were nine letters in her
name:--
_Neuf fois, au nom de Cassandre,_
_Je vois prendre_
_Neuf fois du vin du flacon;
Affin de neuf fois le boire_
_En memoire_
_Des neuf lettres de son nom._
And a less celebrated poet, of a rather later date, Guillaume Colletet,
in a piece entitled “Le Trebuchement de l’Ivrongne,” printed at Paris
in 1627, introduces one of his personages drinking six times to his
mistress, because her name was Cloris:--
_Six fois je m’en vas boire au beau nom de Cloris,_
_Cloris, le seul desir de ma chaste pensée._
The manner of pledging at table, as it still existed in England, is
described rather ludicrously in the “Memoires d’Angleterre,” of the
year 1698, already quoted. “While in France,” the author says, “the
custom of drinking healths is almost abolished among people of any
distinction, as being equally importunate and ridiculous, it exists
here in all its ancient force. To drink at table, without drinking to
the health of some one in especial, among ordinary people, would be
considered as drinking on the sly, and as an act of incivility. There
are in this proceeding two principal and singular grimaces, which are
universally observed among people of all orders and all sorts. It is,
that the person to whose health another drinks, if he be of inferior
condition, or even equal, to that of him who drinks, must remain as
inactive as a statue while the drinker drinks. If, for instance, he
is in the act of taking something from a dish, he must suddenly stop,
return his fork or spoon to its place, and wait, without stirring
more than a stone, until the other has drunk; after which, the second
grimace is to make him an _inclinabo_, at the risk of dipping his
perriwig in the gravy in his plate. I confess that, when a foreigner
first sees these manners, he thinks them laughable. Nothing appears
so droll as to see a man who is in the act of chewing a morsel which
he has in his mouth, of cutting his bread, of wiping his mouth, or of
doing anything else, who suddenly takes a serious air, when a person
of some respectability drinks to his health, looks fixedly at this
person, and becomes as motionless as if a universal paralysis had
seized him, or he had been struck by a thunderbolt. It is true that,
as good manners absolutely demand this respectful immobility in the
_patient_, it requires also a little circumspection in the _agent_.
When any one will drink to the health of another, he must fix his eye
upon him for a moment, and give him the time, if it be possible, to
swallow his morsel.” It is hardly necessary to observe that this custom
is the origin of our modern practice of “taking wine” with each other
at table, which is now also becoming obsolete.