[HOUSE-FURNISHING IN THE MIDDLE AGES.]
n accomplished illustrator of our Domestic History in describing the mode of furnishing houses in the Middle Ages, tells us that there were tables of Cyprus and other rare woods, carved cabinets, desks, chess-boards, and, above all, the Bed—the most important piece of furniture in the house, and of which Ralph Lord Basset said, "Whoever shall bear my surname and arms, according to my will, shall have my great bed for life." There was the "standing bed," and the "truckle bed;" on the former lay the lord, and on the latter his attendant. In the daytime the truckle bed, on castors, was rolled under the standing bed. The posts, head-boards, and canopies or spervers of bedsteads were sometimes carved, or painted in colours, but they are generally represented covered by rich hangings. King Edward III. bequeathed to his heir an entire bed marked with the arms of France and England, and Richard, Earl of Arundel, to his wife Philippa, a blue bed, marked with his arms, and the arms of his late wife; to his son Richard a standing bed called clove, also a bed of silk embroidered with the arms of Arundel and Warren; to his son Thomas, his blue bed of silk embroidered with griffins, &c.
The great chamber was often used as a sleeping-room by night and a reception-room by day. Shaw, in his Decorations of the Middle Ages, gives the interior of a chamber in which Isabella of Bavaria receives from Christine of Pisa her volume of poems. The Queen is seated on a couch covered with a stuff in red and gold, and there is a bed in the room furnished with the same material, to which are attached three shields of arms. The walls of the chamber were either hung with tapestry or painted with historical subjects. Chaucer, in his Dream, fancies himself in a chamber—
"Full well depainted,
And al the walles with colors fine
Were painted to the texte and glose,
And all the Romaunte of the Rose."
The beds of the better classes were sumptuous and comfortable. Mattresses were used, but sometimes, to receive the bed, loose straw was spread on the sacking. The order for making the royal savage's own lair says, "A yoman with a daggar is to searche the strawe of the kynges bedde that there be none untreuth therein—the bedde of downe to be cast upon that." The lower classes were contented with straw alone; but, as appears from Holinshed's account, more from an ignorant contempt for a pleasant bed, and a soft pillow, than from lack of means to obtain the indulgence. The windows had curtains, and were glazed in the manner described by Erasmus; but in inferior dwellings, such as those of copyholders and the like, the light-holes were filled with linen, or with a shutter.
Early in the fourteenth century one Thomas Blaket, or Blanket, of Bristol, introduced the woollen fabric which still goes by his name. The word worsted comes from the village so named, near Norwich, where that kind of stuff began to be extensively manufactured for wall-hangings in the fourteenth century. A still richer fabric similarly used, called baudekin, a kind of brocade, is said to have derived its name from Baldacus, in Babylon, whence, says Blount, it was originally brought.
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."