A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages

by Thomas Wright

No. 285. Frying Fritters.

In the sixteenth century, the articles of furniture in the hall continued to be much the same as in the century preceding. It continued to be furnished with hangings of tapestry, but they seem not always to have been in use; and they were still placed not absolutely against the wall, but apparently at a little distance from it, so that people might conceal themselves behind them. If the hall was not a very large one, a table was placed in the middle, with a long bench on each side. There was generally a cupboard, or a “hutch,” if not more, with side tables, one or more chairs, and perhaps a settle, according to the taste or means of the possessor. We hear now also of tables with leaves, and of folding tables, as well as of counters, or desks, for writing, and dressers, or small cupboards. The two latter articles were evidently, from their names, borrowed from the French. Cushions were also kept in the hall, for the seats of the principal persons of the household, or for the females. The furniture of the hall of William Lawson, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1551, consisted of one table of wainscot, valued at twenty shillings, two double counters, valued together at thirty shillings, a drawer and two forms, estimated at five shillings, two cushions and two chairs, also valued at five shillings, five other cushions, valued at twelve shillings, two carpet cloths and a cupboard cloth, valued together at ten shillings, and the hangings in the hall, estimated to be worth fifty shillings. This seems to have been a very well furnished hall; that of Robert Goodchild, parish clerk of St. Andrew’s in Newcastle, in 1557, contained an almery (or large cupboard), estimated at ten shillings; a counter “of the myddell bynde,” six shillings; a cupboard, three shillings and fourpence; five basins and six lavers, eight shillings; seventeen “powder (pewter) doblers,” seventeen shillings; six pewter dishes and a hand-basin, five shillings; six pewter saucers, eighteen pence; four pottle pots, five shillings and fourpence, three pint pots and three quart pots, three shillings; ten candlesticks, six shillings; a little pestle and a mortar, two shillings; three old chairs, eighteen pence; six old cushions, two shillings; and two counter-cloths. Much of the furniture of English houses at this time was imported from Flanders. Jane Lawson, in the year last mentioned, had in her hall at Little Burdon in Northumberland, “Flanders counters with their carpets.” She had also in the hall, a long side table, three long forms and another form, two chairs, three stools, six new cushions and three old cushions, and an almery. The whole furniture of the hall of the rectory house of Sedgefield in Durham, which appears to have been a large house and well entertained, consisted of a table of plane-tree with joined frame, two tables of fir with frames, two forms, a settle, and a pair of trestles. The hall of Bertram Anderson, a rich and distinguished merchant and alderman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1570, was furnished with two tables with the carpets (table-covers), three forms, one dozen cushions, half-a-dozen green cushions, one counter with the carpet, two “basinges” (basins), and two covers, one chair, and one little chair. This is a striking proof of the rarity of chairs even at this late date. Buffet stools, which are supposed to be the stools with a flat top and a hole in the middle through which the hand might be passed to lift them, are also mentioned among the articles of furniture in the hall at this period. The furniture of the hall at the manor-house of Croxdale, in the county of Durham, in the year 1571, consisted of one cupboard, one table, two buffet stools, and one chair; yet Salvin of Croxdale was looked upon as one of the principal gentry of the Palatinate. In enumerating the furniture of the ancient hall, we must not forget the arms which were usually displayed there, especially by such as had dependent upon them a certain number of men whom it was their duty or their pride to arm. The hall of a rich merchant of Newcastle, named John Wilkinson, contained in 1571, the following furniture: one almery, one table of wainscot, one counter, one little counter, one dresser of wainscot, one “pulk,” three chairs, three forms, three buffet stools, six cushions of tapestry, six old cushions of tapestry, six green cushions, two long carpet cloths, two short carpet cloths, one say carpet cloth, the “hyngars” in the hall, on the almery head one basin and ewer, one great charger, three new “doblers,” one little chest for sugar, and one pair of wainscot tables; and of arms, two jacks, three sallets of iron, one bow and two sheaves of arrows, three bills, and two halberts. Some of the entries in these inventories are amusing; and, while speaking of arms, it may be stated, that a widow lady of Bury, Mary Chapman, who would appear to have been a warlike dame, making her will in 1649, leaves to one of her sons, among other things, “also my muskett, rest, bandileers, sword, and headpiece, my jacke, a fine paire of sheets, and a hutche.” In 1577, Thomas Liddell, merchant of Newcastle, had in his hall, “three tables of waynscoot, sex qwyshons of tapestery, a cowborde, three wainscoot formes, two chayrs, three green table clothes, fower footstoles, sixe quyshons, two candlesticks, a louckinge glasse, sexe danske pootts of powther (pewter), two basings, and two vewers (ewers), a laver and a basinge, fyve buffatt stules.” It is curious thus to trace the furniture of the hall at different periods, and compare them together; and we cannot but remark from the frequency with which the epithet old is applied to different articles, towards the end of the century that the hall was beginning rapidly to fall into disuse. The cause of this was no doubt the increasing taste for domestic retirement, and the wish to withdraw from the publicity which had always attended the hall, and it gradually became the mere entrance lobby of the house, the place where strangers or others were allowed to remain until their presence had been announced, which is the sense in which we commonly use the word hall, as part of the house, at the present day. In the enumeration of the parts of a house given in the English edition of Comenius’s “Janua Linguarum,” in the middle of the seventeenth century, there is no mention of a hall. “A house,” we are told in this quaint book, “is divided into inner rooms, such as are the entry, the stove, the kitchen, the buttery, the dining-room, the gallery, the bed-chamber, with a privy made by it; baskets are of use for carrying things to and fro; and chests (which are made fast with a key) for keeping them. The floor is under the roof. In the yard is a well, a stable, and a bath. Under the house is the cellar.”

No. 286. A Folding Table.

It has already been remarked that tables with leaves began to be mentioned frequently after the commencement of the sixteenth century. Andrew Cranewise, of Bury, in 1558, enumerates “one cupborde in the hall, one plaine table with one leafe.” He speaks further on, in the same will, of “my best folte (fold or folding) table in the hall, and two great hutches.” In 1556, Richard Claxton, of Old Park, in the county of Durham, speaks of a “folden table” in the parlours, which was valued at two shillings. These folding tables appear to have been made in a great variety of forms, some of which were very ingenious. Our cut No. 286 represents a very curious folding table of the sixteenth century, which was long preserved at Flaxton Hall, in Suffolk, but perished in the fire when that mansion was burnt a few years ago. As represented in the cut, which shows the table folded up so as to be laid aside, the legs pull out, and the one to the right fits into the lion’s mouth, and is secured by the pin which hangs beside it.

No. 287. Cresset and Moon.

The methods of lighting the hall at night were still rather clumsy, and not very perfect. Of course, when the apartment was very large, a few candles would produce comparatively little effect, and it was therefore found necessary to use torches, and inflammable masses of larger size. One method of supplying the deficiency was to take a small pan, or portable fireplace, filled with combustibles, and suspend it in the place where light was required. Such a receptacle was usually placed at the top of a pole, for facility of carrying about, and was called a cresset, from an old French word which meant a night-lamp. The cresset is mentioned by Shakespeare and other writers as though it were chiefly used in processions at night, and by watchmen and guides. The first figure in our cut No. 287, taken from Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” represents one of the cressets carried by the marching watch of London in the sixteenth century. From the continual mention of the cresset along with the fire-irons of the hall, in the wills published by the Surtees Society, we can hardly doubt its being used, at least in the north of England, for lighting the hall itself. An improvement of the common cresset consisted in enclosing the flame, by whatever material it was fed, in a case made of some transparent substance, such as horn, and thus making it neither more nor less than a large lantern fixed on the end of a pole. The form of this implement was generally globular, and, no doubt from its appearance when carried in the night, it was denominated a moon. The “moon” was carried by servants before the carriages of their masters, to guide them along country lanes, and under other similar circumstances. The second figure in our cut [No. 287] represents a “moon” which was formerly preserved at Ightham Moat House, in Kent; the frame was of brass, and the covering of horn. To assist in lighting the hall, sometimes candlesticks were fixed to the walls round the hall, and this perhaps will explain the rather large number of candlesticks sometimes enumerated among the articles in that part of the house. In our cut [No. 282], we have an example of a candlestick placed on a frame, which, turning on a pivot or hinges, may be turned back against the wall when not in use.

During the period of which we are now speaking, almost everything connected with the table underwent great change. This was least the case with regard to the hours of meals. The usual hour of breakfast was seven o’clock in the morning, and seems scarcely to have varied. During the sixteenth century, the hour of dinner was eleven o’clock, or just four hours after breakfast. “With us,” says Harrison in his description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle, “the nobilitie, gentrie, and students (he means the Universities), doo ordinarilie go to dinner at eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or between five and sixe, at afternoone.” Before the end of the century, however, the dinner hour appears to have varied between eleven and twelve. In a book entitled the “Haven of Health,” written by a physician named Cogan, and printed in 1584, we are told: “When foure houres be past after breakefast, a man may safely take his dinner, and the most convenient time for dinner is about eleven of the clocke before noone. The usual time for dinner in the universities is at eleven, or elsewhere about noon.” In Beaumont and Fletcher, the hour of dinner was still eleven; “I never come into my dining-room,” says Merrythought, in the “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” “but at eleven and six o’clock.” “What hour is’t, Lollis?” asks a character in the “Changeling,” by their contemporary Middleton. “Towards eating-hour, sir.” “Dinnertime? thou mean’st twelve o’clock.” And other writers at the beginning of the seventeenth century speak of twelve o’clock and seven as the hours of dinner and supper. This continued to be the usual hour of dinner at the close of the same century.

During the reign of Elizabeth, and afterwards, persons of both sexes appear to have broken their fast in the same substantial manner as was observed by the Percies at the beginning of the century, and as described in a previous chapter; yet, though generally but four hours interposed between this and the hour of dinner, people seem to have thought it necessary to take a small luncheon in the interval, which, no doubt from its consisting chiefly in drinking, was called a bever. “At ten,” says a character in one of Middleton’s plays, “we drink, that’s mouth-hour; at eleven, lay about us for victuals, that’s hand-hour; at twelve, go to dinner, that’s eating-hour.” “Your gallants,” says Appetitus, in the old play of “Lingua,” “never sup, breakfast, nor bever without me.”