The parlour seems to have been ornamented with more care, and to have been better furnished than the hall. This apartment appears to have been placed sometimes on the ground floor, and sometimes on the floor above, and large houses had usually two or three parlours. It had often windows in recesses, with fixed seats on each side; and the fireplace was smaller and more comfortable than that of the hall. As carpets came into more general use, the parlour was one of the first rooms to receive this luxury. In the inventory I have already quoted from the “New Retrospective Review,” the following articles of furniture are described as being in the parlour— A hanging of worsted, red and green.
A cupboard of ash-boards.
A table, and a pair of trestles.
A branch of latten, with four lights.
A pair of andirons.
A pair of tongs.
A form to sit upon.
And a chair.
This will give us a very good idea of what was the usual furniture of the parlour in the fifteenth century. The only movable seats are a single bench, and one chair—perhaps a seat with a back like that shown above. The table was even here formed by laying a board upon trestles. The cupboard was peculiar to this part of the house; many of my readers will probably remember the parlour cupboards in our old country houses, the branched candlestick of metal, suspended from the ceiling, and the tongs and andirons for the fire.
The principal articles of furniture in the parlour are all exhibited in illuminations in manuscripts of the same period. The “hanging of worsted” was, of course, a piece of tapestry for the wall, or for some part of the wall, for the room was in many, perhaps in most, cases, only partially covered. Sometimes, indeed, it appears only to have been hung up on occasions, perhaps for company, when it seems to have been placed behind the chief seat.[50] The wall itself was frequently adorned with paintings, in common houses rude and merely ornamental, while in others of a better class they represented histories, scenes from romances, and religious subjects, much like those exhibited on the tapestries themselves. In the cut annexed ([No. 242]), taken from a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the romance of “Lancelot,” in the National Library at Paris, No. 6784, we have a representation of a parlour with wall paintings of this kind. Morgan le Fay is showing king Arthur the adventures of Lancelot, which she had caused to be painted in a room in her palace. Paintings of this kind are very often alluded to in the old writers, especially in the poets, as every one knows who has read the “Romance of the Rose,” the works of Chaucer, or that singular and curious poem, the “Pastyme of Pleasure,” by Stephen Hawes. Chaucer, in his “Dream,” speaks of—
A chamber paint
Full of stories old and divers,
More than I can as now reherse.
No. 242. Morgan le Fay showing king Arthur the Paintings of the Adventures of Lancelot.
There was in the castle of Dover an apartment called Arthur’s Hall, and another named Guenevra’s Chamber, which have been supposed to be so called from the subjects of the paintings with which they were decorated; and a still more curious illustration of the foregoing drawing is furnished by an old house of this period still existing in New Street, Salisbury, a room in which preserves its painting in distemper, occupying the upper part of the wall, like the story of Lancelot in the pictures of the room of Morgan le Fay. We give a sketch of the side of this room occupied by the painting in the accompanying cut ([No. 243]). It occupies the space above the fireplace, and the windows looking into the street, but it has been much damaged by modern alterations in the house. The subject, as will at once be seen, was of a sacred character—the offering of the three kings.
No. 243. Wall-Paintings still remaining in a House at Salisbury.
The window to the left of the fireplace, which is one of the original windows of this house, has a deep sill, or seat, which was intended as one of the accommodations for sitting down. This was not unfrequently made with a recess in the middle, so as to form a seat on each side, on which two persons might sit face to face, and which was thus more convenient both for conversation, and for looking through the window at what was going on without. This appears to have been a favourite seat with the female part of the household when employed in needlework and other sedentary occupations. There is an allusion to this use of the window sill in the curious old poem of the “Lady Bessy,” which is probably somewhat obscured by the alterations of the modern copyist; when the young princess kneels before her father, he takes her up and seats her in the window:—
I came before my father the king,
And kneeled down upon my knee;
I desired him lowly of his blessing,
And full soon he gave it unto me.
And in his arms he could me thring,
And set me in a window so high.