[32] In the noble park of Cowdray, the home of the Montagues, Queen
Elizabeth, in 1591, killed three or four deer with her cross-bow, while
on a visit to Lord Montague. Three deaths in one family by drowning, and
the almost total destruction of a fine mansion by fire, within the
memory of living man, are enough to make one tread the beautiful grounds
of Cowdray with feelings of awe, and to invest it with a superstitious
melancholy. Three hundred years ago, however, there was no more festive
house in England, when "three oxen and 120 geese" figured in its bill of
fare for breakfast. The then proprietor was a strict disciplinarian, and
the "Orders and Rules of Sir Anthony Browne" curiously illustrate the
domestic economy of a great man's family in the sixteenth century,
especially as regards its important departments of the "ewerye" and the
"buttyre," and those pet officers, "my server" and "my
carver."--_Quarterly Review_, 1861.
[33] "The cat's behind the _buttery_-shelf."--_Old Ditty._
[34] _Saturday Review_, 1861.
[35] There is an oft-quoted passage in the Aubrey MSS. which may be
appositely represented here as a life-like picture of the economy of the
Hall: "The lords of manouers did eate in their great gothicque halls, at
the high tables or oreile, the folk at the side-tables. The meat was
served up by watchwords. Jacks are but an invention of the other days;
the poor boys did turn the spitts, and licked the dripping-pan, and grew
to be huge lusty knaves. The body of the servants were in the Great
Hall, as now in the guard-chamber, privy-chamber, &c. The hearth was
commonly in the midst, as at colleges, whence the saying, 'round about
our coal-fire.' Here, in the Halls were the mummings, cob-loaf stealing,
and great number of old Christmas playes performed. In great houses were
lords of misrule during the twelve dayes after Christmas. The halls of
justices were dreadful to behold. The screens were garnished with
corslets and helmets gaping with open mouth, with coates of mail,
lances, pikes, halberts, brown-bills, battle-axes, bucklers, and the
modern callivers, petronells, and (in King Charles's time) muskets and
pistolls."
[36] _Saturday Review_, 1859.
[37] Abridged from a paper in _Once a Week_, 1860.
[38] _Saturday Review_, 1859.
[39] In times anterior to this date, the greater part of the City was
built of wood. The houses being roofed with straw, reeds, &c. frequent
fires took place, owing to this mode of building: thus, in the first
year of the reign of Stephen, a conflagration spread from London Bridge
to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand. Thenceforth, the
houses were built of stone, covered and protected by thick tiles against
the fury of fire, whenever it arose. The change from wood to stone dates
from this period.
[40] _Something for Everybody, and a Garland for the Year._ By the
Author of the present volume. Pp. 170-176, Second Edition.