INTERIOR OF ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE
Reference has already been made to the use of rushes for covering floors. It was thought to be a piece of unnecessary luxury on the part of Wolsey when he caused the rushes at Hampton Court to be changed every day. From a letter of Erasmus to Dr. Francis, Wolsey's physician, it would appear that the lowest layer of rushes—the top only being renewed—was sometimes unchanged for years—the latter says "twenty years," which seems hardly credible—becoming a receptacle for beer, grease, fragments of victuals, and other organic matters.
Perfumes were used for neutralizing the foul odors that resulted from this filthiness. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, says: "The smoke of juniper is in great request with us at Oxford, to sweeten our chambers." [See also [page 25] above.]
From the correspondence of the Earl of Shrewsbury with Lord Burleigh, during the confinement of Mary Queen of Scots at Sheffield Castle, in 1572, we learn that she was to be removed for five or six days "to cleanse her chamber, being kept very uncleanly."
In a memoir written by Anne, Countess of Dorset, in 1603, we read: "We all went to Tibbals to see the King, who used my mother and my aunt very graciously; but we all saw a great change between the fashion of the Court as it was now and of that in the Queen's, for we were all lousy by sitting in Sir Thomas Erskine's chambers."
FOOD AND DRINK.
The food of the common people was better in some respects than it is nowadays, and better than it was in Continental countries. Harrison says that whereas what he calls "white meats"—milk, butter, and cheese—were in old times the food of the upper classes, they were in his time "only eaten by the poor," while all other classes ate flesh, fish, and "wild and tame fowls."
Wheaten bread, however, was little known except to the rich, the bread of the poor being made of rye or barley, and, in times of scarcity, of beans, oats, and even acorns.