House-furnishing in the Middle Ages
An accomplished illustrator of our Domestic History in describing the mode of furnishing houses in the Middle Ages, tells us that there were tables of Cyprus and other rare woods, carved cabinets, desks, chess-boards, and, above all, the Bed—the most important piece of furniture in the house, and of which Ralph Lord Basset said, “Whoever shall bear my surname and arms, according to my will, shall have my great bed for life.” There was the “standing bed,” and the “truckle bed;” on the former lay the lord, and on the latter his attendant. In the daytime the truckle bed, on castors, was rolled under the standing bed. The posts, head-boards, and canopies or spervers of bedsteads were sometimes carved, or painted in colours, but they are generally represented covered by rich hangings. King Edward III. bequeathed to his heir an entire bed marked with the arms of France and England, and Richard, Earl of Arundel, to his wife Philippa, a blue bed, marked with his arms, and the arms of his late wife; to his son Richard a standing bed called clove, also a bed of silk embroidered with the arms of Arundel and Warren; to his son Thomas, his blue bed of silk embroidered with griffins, &c.
The great chamber was often used as a sleeping-room by night and a reception-room by day. Shaw, in his Decorations of the Middle Ages, gives the interior of a chamber in which Isabella of Bavaria receives from Christine of Pisa her volume of poems. The Queen is seated on a couch covered with a stuff in red and gold, and there is a bed in the room furnished with the same material, to which are attached three shields of arms. The walls of the chamber were either hung with tapestry or painted with historical subjects. Chaucer, in his Dream, fancies himself in a chamber—
“Full well depainted,
And al the walles with colors fine
Were painted to the texte and glose,
And all the Romaunte of the Rose.”
The beds of the better classes were sumptuous and comfortable. Mattresses were used, but sometimes, to receive the bed, loose straw was spread on the sacking. The order for making the royal savage’s own lair says, “A yoman with a daggar is to searche the strawe of the kynges bedde that there be none untreuth therein—the bedde of downe to be cast upon that.” The lower classes were contented with straw alone; but, as appears from Holinshed’s account, more from an ignorant contempt for a pleasant bed, and a soft pillow, than from lack of means to obtain the indulgence. The windows had curtains, and were glazed in the manner described by Erasmus; but in inferior dwellings, such as those of copyholders and the like, the light-holes were filled with linen, or with a shutter.
Early in the fourteenth century one Thomas Blaket, or Blanket, of Bristol, introduced the woollen fabric which still goes by his name. The word worsted comes from the village so named, near Norwich, where that kind of stuff began to be extensively manufactured for wall-hangings in the fourteenth century. A still richer fabric similarly used, called baudekin, a kind of brocade, is said to have derived its name from Baldacus, in Babylon, whence, says Blount, it was originally brought.
Few objects of antiquarian curiosity acquired more notoriety than a bedstead or bed, of unusually large dimensions, preserved at Ware, twenty miles from London, on the road to Cambridge. Shakspeare employs it as an object of comparison in his play of Twelfth Night, bearing date 1614, where Sir Toby Belch says: “As many lies as will lie in this sheet of paper, though the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England.” (Act iii. sc. 2.) Nares, in his Glossary, says: “This curious piece of furniture is said to be still in being, and visible at the Crown or at the Bull in Ware. It is reported to be twelve feet square, and to be capable of holding twenty or twenty-four persons.” And he refers to Chauncey’s Hertfordshire for an account of the bed receiving at once twelve men and their wives, who lay at the top and bottom in this mode of arrangement,—first two men, then two women, and so on alternately,—so that no man was near to any woman but his wife. Clutterbuck, in his History, places the great bed at the Saracen’s Head Inn, where a large bedstead is preserved. It is twelve feet square, of carved oak, and has the date 1463 painted on the back; but the style of the carving is Elizabethan—a century later, at least. It was traditionally sold among other movables which belonged to Warwick, the King-maker, at Ware Park, to suit which story the date is thought to have been painted. Again, it is placed at three inns—the Crown, the Bull, and Saracen’s Head, at Ware, each of which may have had its “great bed.”
Formerly, wealthy persons travelled with their bed in their carriage. Mr. Beckford, of Fonthill, was, probably, the last person who so travelled, in England, some forty years since, when the writer’s informant saw the unpacking of the bed, at the inn-door, at Salt Hill.
The Warming-pan did not make its appearance till the Tudor times. In the inventory of the goods of Sir William More, of Loseley, in Surrey, a.d. 1556, occurs “a warmynge,” considered to be a warming-pan, and the earliest recorded mention of that article. The old warming-pans were often engraved with armorial bearings, mottoes, and inscriptions. In the Welsh Levite tossed in a Blanket, 1691, we read: “Our garters, bellows, and warming-pans wore godly mottoes, &c.” We find a warming-pan engraved with the arms of the Commonwealth, and the motto: “englands. stats. armes.” Another warming-pan has the royal arms, C. R. and “feare god honnor ye kinge. 1662.” Some years ago, there was purchased at the village of Whatcote, in Warwickshire, a warming-pan engraved with a dragon, and the date 1601; probably brought from Compton Wyniatt, the ancient seat of the Earl (now Marquis) of Northampton; the supporters of the Compton family being dragons.
The seats were mostly forms, but Chairs were sometimes used. A MS. of the fourteenth century has this item:—“To put wainscote above the dais in the king’s hall, and to make a fine large and well sculptured chair.” The early chair was a single seat without arms. The fauldsteuel (fauteuil in modern French) was originally a folding stool of the curule form, but afterwards the form alone was preserved; examples remain from the time of Dagobert up to a late period. Dagobert’s seat is considered by some to be of much greater antiquity than his time, and the back and arms are certainly of a later period than the rest. The so-called Glastonbury chair is much to be commended for simplicity of form, perfect strength, and adaptation for comfort.
In the earlier times, chairs and benches were not stuffed but had cushions to sit upon and cloths spread over them: afterwards, as the workmanship improved, they were stuffed and covered with tapestry, leather, or velvet. The forms and workmanship of these seats were generally very rude, but the stuffs that covered them were of great richness and value, and tastefully trimmed with fringes and gimps, fastened with large brass studs or nails.
The description of the furniture in the great chamber at Hengrave, the seat of Sir Robert Kytson, temp. Henry VII., enumerates very minutely the various articles; among which are, the carpet, the tables, the cupboards, the chairs, the stools, two great chairs, silk and velvet coverings, curtains to the windows and doors, a great screen, the fire-irons, branches for lights, &c.
The floors, which at an early period were laid with rushes, were at a later one covered with a carpet, called the bord carpet. Still, carpets were used very early in the castles and mansions of the wealthy. The manufacture of carpets is of great antiquity: we read of them in the sacred writings, they were found in the ruins of Pompeii, they were introduced from the East to Spain, from Spain they passed to France and England, and when Eleanor of Castile arrived in London, in 1255, the rooms of her abode were covered with carpets; they were used generally in the palace in the reign of Edward III. Turkey carpets were first advertised for sale in London in 1660. The manufacture of carpets was introduced into France by the celebrated Colbert, in 1664. A manufactory was opened in England during the reign of Henry VIII., but this branch of industry was not permanently established until 1685, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove half a million of Protestants from France, many of whom, settling in this country, established the manufacture of carpets. Brussels carpets were introduced from Tournay into Kidderminster, in 1745.
We have already described the Hall. At the further end of this apartment was generally placed a cupboard called the “Court cupboard,” in which the service of plate, such as salvers and gold drinking cups, were arranged on shelves or stages, answering in some respects to our sideboards of the present day. These cupboards, though originally of rude construction, afterwards became elaborate and beautiful pieces of furniture, richly carved in oak: they are often alluded to in old documents. On grand occasions temporary stages, as cupboards, were also erected. At the marriage of Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII., in the hall was a triangular cupboard, five stages high, set with plate valued at 1,200l. entirely ornamental; and in the “utter chamber,” where the princess dined, was another cupboard set with gold plate, garnished with stones and pearls, valued at 20,000l.
In the inventory of Skipton Castle, in Yorkshire, the furniture of the great hall is thus given:—“Imprimis, 7 great pieces of hangings, with the Earl’s arms at large in every one of them, and powdered with the several coates of the house. 3 long tables on standard frames, 6 long forms, 1 short ditto, 1 Court cupboard, 1 fayre brass lantern, 1 iron cradle with wheels for charcoal, 1 almes tubb, 20 long pikes.”
There is no mention of Mirrors, but they were used at this time, though very small, and of metal polished. The coffre or chest which contained the ladies’ trousseaux, was subsequently much ornamented. The wardrobes, so called, were generally small rooms fitted with cupboards called armoiries. In 1253, “the sheriff of Southampton was ordered to make in the king’s upper wardrobe, in Winchester Castle, where the king’s cloths were deposited, two cupboards or armoiries, one on each side of the fireplace, with arches and a certain partition of board across the same wardrobe.”50