£s.d.
Fourteen pewter dishes, little and great350
Three ditto basons, one salt seller, one pye plate090
Four chamber potts, one warming pan of brasse0150
Two pewter flagons, a little one and a greate one05
Two smoothing-irons, three pewter quart potts076
Three pewter pint potts, 1½ pint pot and two muck potts069
Four old pewter saucers and ½ doz. plates060
Six dozen wooden trenchers, three tin cover lids080
Two frying pans, five spitts, two dripin pans, iron and tin126
One puding pan of tin, one greate brasse kettle, three iron potts, one brasse skillett1160
Two copper saucepans, one little iron kettle060
Two pair iron pott hookes, a jack with a wt of 56 lbs.1140
Two pair andirons, one brasse ladle, one iron beefe forke106
Two pair of tongs, one fire shovell, a long bar of iron046
One iron chaine in the chimney and three pot hangers0156
One bellows, a board to whet knives upon010
Two copper pots, two brass candlesticks, six tin candlesticks0100

Plate XLVI.—“Buire,” by Mosyn, Auricular Style.

Silverware was an important item in the possessions of the merchant class as well as the nobility. In 1682, we find the following items in the inventory of a prosperous butcher:

£s.d.
Twenty-two silver spoons, one silver forke, three silver gobletts, one ditto tankard, one ditto mustard pot, one ditto cup with two eares, five silver small cuppes, one ditto, one goblet, two ditto salt sellars, one ditto cup, two ditto saucers, one ditto cup, one ditto spice box, a Cornelia tree cup with silver, two ditto dishes, weight in all ten pounds4800
A silver girdle with hanging keys, one ditto with three chaines with hookes, one gold bodkin, two silver bodkins, “silver for my booke with a chaine,” silver to a belt for a sworde140
One silver hat band0136
One silver tumbler100
One silver bell0180
One silver watch100
Two pair silver buckles080
Fourteen gold rings1076
One pair silver buttons, and one silver knife0120

No view of a Dutch interior of the seventeenth century would be complete if it neglected to take into consideration the family pets. These are very much in evidence in the pictures, by Dutch masters. These consist of monkeys, parrots, peacocks, pheasants, cats and dogs.

The monkey is quite a privileged character. Sometimes he is perched on the top of a spinet and sometimes on a kas or a chimney-piece.

The masters of vessels that sailed the Eastern Seas, both English and Dutch, were commissioned by nobles and potentates to bring home rare animals. In 1609, for instance, the East India Company issued letters for reserving “all strange fowls and beasts to be found there,” for the Council. In 1623, we find a note that to the governor of the Company a “Caccatoa” was sent from Batavia. The cockatoo is a familiar resident in Dutch homes. He and other kinds of parrots, domiciled in wicker and wire cages, are very much in evidence in the genre pictures of the age. The golden and silver pheasants were also privileged members of the household, and were allowed the freedom of the hall. Sometimes we see them perched on cornices, and sometimes strutting on the tiled floor. The monkey, which played so important a part in the “singerie” decoration of the late Louis Quatorze, Régence and Louis Quinze periods, was imported in considerable numbers. A gossipy journal—Le Courrier du temps, conducted by Fouquet de Croissy who undertook to tell the secret happenings in the court of every prince in Europe—records the following item of news from Amsterdam, under date of September 1, 1649:

“This week several ships have arrived here from the Indies. Among the other riches with which the good agent was charged, he has brought a dozen of the rarest and most beautiful monkeys that have ever been seen in these parts. Cardinal Mazarin has sent for them to put them in his wardrobe and anti-chambers to divert those who pay court to him and to judge the affection they have for his service by the civility and good treatment of the animals, the favourites of his Eminence, receive from them.”

CHAPTER IX
DUTCH FURNITURE UNDER FRENCH AND ORIENTAL INFLUENCE.