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.
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.
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.
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.