No. 92. Walter de Hamuntesham attacked by a Mob.
Our cut [No. 93], taken from a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, written in the fourteenth century, and now preserved in the National Library in Paris (No. 6985, fol. 2, vo), represents a perche, with two garments suspended upon it. The one represented in our next cut ([No. 94]) is of rather a different form, and is made to support the arms of a knight, his helmet, sword, and shield, and his coat of mail; but how the sword and helmet are attached to it is far from clear. This example is taken from an illuminated manuscript of a well-known work by Guillaume de Deguilleville, Le Pelerinage de la Vie humaine, of the latter end of the fourteenth century, also preserved in the French National Library (No. 6988): another copy of the same work, preserved in the same great collection (No. 7210), but of the fifteenth century, gives a still more perfect representation of the perche, supporting, as in the last example, a helmet, a shield, and coats of mail. In the foreground, a queen is depositing the staff and scrip of a hermit in a chest, for greater security. This subject is represented in our cut [No. 95].
| No. 93. A Perche. | No. 94. Another Perche. |
No. 95. Scene in a Chamber.
Furniture of every kind continued to be rare, and chairs were by no means common articles in ordinary houses. In the chambers, seats were made in the masonry by the side of the windows, as represented in our cut [No. 88], and sometimes along the walls. Common benches were the usual seats, and these were often formed by merely laying a plank upon two trestles. Such a bench is probably represented in the accompanying cut ([No. 96]), taken from a manuscript of the romance of Tristan, of the fourteenth century, preserved in the National Library at Paris (No. 7178). Tables were made in the same manner. We now, however, find not unfrequent mention of a table dormant in the hall, which was of course a table fixed to the spot, and which was not taken away like the others: it was probably the great table of the dais, or upper end of the hall. To “begin the table dormant” was a popular phrase, apparently equivalent to taking the first place at the feast. Chaucer, in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, describing the profuse hospitality of the Frankeleyn, says— His table dormant in his halle alway
Stood redy covered al the longe day.
Yet, during the whole of this period, it continued to be the common practice to make the table for a meal, by merely laying a board upon trestles. The second cut on the preceding page ([No. 97]) is a very curious representation of such a table, from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (MS. Arch. A. 154). It must be understood that the objects which are ranged alternately with the drinking-vessels are loaves of bread, not plates.
No. 96. A Bench on Trestles.
