Macrobius wrote, in the fifth century A. D., that the ancients did not consider themselves as either welcome or safe at a banquet unless the salt and the shrines of their gods were placed upon the table; the former indicating a cordial greeting, and the latter being a guarantee of protection.
The ancient “Boke of Keruynge” says: “Than set your salt on the ryght syde where your soverayne shall sytte, and on ye lefte syde the salte set your trenchours.”
Mediæval salt-cellars were often elaborate pieces of silver. In Paul Lacroix’s “Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages” are illustrations of an enameled silver salt-cellar with six facings, representing the labors of Hercules, which was made at Limoges for the French king, Francis I., in the early part of the sixteenth century. At Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, England, is preserved an elegantly wrought silver and golden salt-cellar which belonged to Matthew Parker, who was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1558.[339]
In the “Art Journal” (vol. xxxix. 1887) is a description of the state salt-cellar of Mostyn Hall, Flintshire, North Wales, which had been recently discovered in an ancient chest. This magnificent piece of plate, which bears the London date-mark 1586-87, is eighteen and one half inches in height and of cylindrical form, surmounted by a vase, and richly ornamented with groups of fruit, foliage, animals, and birds.
In mediæval England the chief salt-cellar was sometimes in the form of a silver ship, thus suggesting both the briny deep and the craft which sails thereon.
King Henry III. ordered twenty silver salts in the year 1243.[340]
In the room containing the crown jewels, in the Tower of London, are to be seen eleven magnificent golden salt-cellars, the oldest dating from the reign of Elizabeth. Of these the so-called state salt-cellar, which is a model of the White Tower, was presented by the city of Exeter to King Charles II., and was used at coronation banquets.
Descriptions and illustrations of old English salt-cellars of different epochs are to be found in a volume entitled “Old English Plate,” by Wilfred Joseph Cripps, M. A., F. S. A., London, 1886; and in “Old Plate,” by J. H. Buck, New York, 1888. In the former work mention is made of a magnificent salt-cellar, “in the form of an olifaunt,” the property of John, Earl of Warrenes, in 1347; and another, “in the shape of a dog,” belonging to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, in 1380.
From an early period until the close of the seventeenth century, the rank of guests at a banquet in wealthy households, as in the halls of country squires, in England, was indicated by the situation of their places at table with reference to the massive silver centre-pieces which contained the salt,[341] sometimes called the “salt-vat” or “salt-foot.”
At the head of the table, which was called the board’s end, and “above the salt,” sat the host and his more distinguished guests; and during the reigns of Henry VII. and VIII. it was enjoined upon the ushers to see that no person occupied a higher place than he was entitled to. Probably no penalty was imposed upon guests who unwittingly selected a more honorable seat than their rank warranted, other than removal to a lower position. But in the less civilized era of the eleventh century, the laws of King Canute provided that any person sitting at a banquet above his position should be “pelted out of his place by bones, at the discretion of the company, without the privilege of taking offense.”[342]