richly carved and emblazoned with heraldic insignia, formed one of its most striking features. The top-beam of the hall,' in allusion to the position of his coat of arms, was a symbolical manner of drinking the health of the master of the house. At the upper end of this chamber, furthest from the entrance, the floor was usually raised a step, and this part was styled the dais, or high pace. On one side of the dais was a deep embayed window, reaching nearly down to the floor; the other windows ranged along one or both sides of the hall, at some height above the ground, so as to leave room for wainscoting or arras below them. They were enriched with stained glass, representing the armorial bearings of the family, their connections, and royal patrons, and between the windows were hung full-length portraits of the same persons. The royal arms usually occupied a conspicuous station at either end of the room. The head table was laid for the lord and principal guests on the raised pace, parallel with the upper end wall, and other tables were ranged along the sides for inferior visiters and retainers. Tables, so placed, were said to stand banquet-wise.' In the centre of the hall was the rere-dosse, or fireiron, against which faggots were piled, and burnt upon the stone floor, the smoke passing through an aperture in the roof immediately overhead, which was generally formed into an elevated lantern, a conspicuous ornament to the exterior of the building. In later times, a wide arched fire-place was formed in the wall on one side of the room. Mr. Hunt quotes a pleasing passage from an old religious writer, of the date of 1511, from which it appears that the hall fire was discontinued at Easter-day, then called "God's Sondaye.' Ye knowe well that it is the maner at this daye to do the fire out of the hall, and the black wynter brondes, and all thynges that is foule with fume and smoke, shall be done awaye; and there the fire was shall be gayly arrayed with fayre floures, and strewed with green ryshes all aboute.'* 'The lords of manours,' says Aubrey, did eate in their great gothicque halls, at the high table or oreile, the folk at the side tables. The meate was served up by watchwords. Jacks are but an invention of the other daye; the poor boys did turn the spitts, and licked the dripping-pan, and grew to be huge lusty knaves. The body of the servants were in the great hall, as now in the guard-chamber, privychamber, &c. The hearth was commonly in the midst, as at colleges, whence the saying, "round about our coal fire." Here, in the halls, were the mummings, cob-loaf stealing, and great number of old Christmas playes performed. In great houses were lords of misrule during the twelve dayes after Christmas. The halls of justices of * Exemplars, p. 120. peace peace were dreadful to behold. The screenes were garnished with corslets and helmets gaping with open mouth, with coates of mail, lances, pikes, halberts, brown-bills, battle-axes, bucklers, and the modern callivers, petronells and (in King Charles's time) muskets and pistolls.'* The halls, in fact, of our colleges, at either university, and the inns of court, still remain, as in Aubrey's time, accurate examples of the ancient baronial and conventual halls; preserving, not merely their original form and appearance, but the identical arrangement and service of the tables. Even the central fire is, in some instances, kept up, being of charcoal, burnt in a large brazier, in lieu of the rere-dosse. In other respects, probably little, if any thing, has been altered since the Tudor æra; and those who are curious to know the mode in which our ancestors dined in the reign of the Henries and Edwards, may be gratified by attending that meal in the great halls of Christchurch or Trinity, and tasking his imagination to convert the principal and fellows at the upper table, into the stately baron, his family, and guests, and the gowned commoners, at the side tables, into the liveried retainers. The service of the kitchen, butteries, and cellars, is conducted, at the present day, in every point, precisely according to ancient unvaried custom. The hall, such as we have described it, is found in every old English mansion down to the Elizabethan period; and there is scarcely any finer example left than that of Longleat, in spite of its Italianized exterior. But about that time, or still earlier, the nobles began to disuse the custom of dining in company with their retainers and household in the great hall, and a separate apartment was reserved for the use of the family, and called the diningparlour, or banqueting-room. This change of manners seems to have partly taken place by the time of Henry VIII., since it was then made a subject of complaint that the hall,' at court in particular, was not duly kept.' In the ordinances of Eltham, 1526, complaint is made, that sundry noblemen, gentlemen, and others, doe much delight and use to dine in corners and secret places, not repairing to the high chamber, nor hall, &c.' Peers, in attendance at court, or in parliament, as well as all the officers of the royal household, had the privilege of eating in the hall with their retainers, the number of the latter being expressly stipulated, according to their rank or office, as appears in the Liber Niger Domus Regis,' the book of household regulations of Edward IV.; 'a duke,' it is there said, ' shall have etyng in the hall one knyghte, a chapleyn, iii squyers, iiii yeomen,' and so on, down to a baron, * Aubrey MS. who who is allowed 'etyng for a gentelman and a yoman.' This privilege was called avoir bouche a court.' The whole list of persons havingetyng in the hall' is enormous, and makes it clear, that the magnificent hall at Westminster, built for this use, by Edward II., must have had its spacious area completely crowded at times when the king had summoned his peers around him. The great hall of Eltham, also probably built by the same monarch, is but little inferior in grandeur to that of Westminster. The chapel was another principal feature in the early English residence of every class. It usually formed one side of the first court, and was occasionally quite detached from the main building. Both the hall and chapel were often overlooked from windows in galleries and upper rooms. Archbishop Parker, in a letter dated 1573, says, If it please her Majesty, she may come in through my gallerie, and see the disposition of the hall at dynnertime, at a window opening thereunto.' The other apartments were the great chamber, or withdrawing room, usually reserved for state occasions, and hung with tapestry, and the gallery, appropriated to the reception of visiters, to amusement, and indoors exercise. This was a long room with several bay or oriel windows, projecting externally, and forming agreeable nooks for private conversation within. The gallery was often embellished with royal or family portraits, maps, and genealogical tables. The larger houses had, in addition to these apartments, the smaller in their stead, the parlours-sometimes divided into summer and winter parlours. Of these rooms, some were hung with arras, others wainscoted in small panels of richly grained oak. Aubrey says, the drapery moulding in wainscot is peculiar to the time of Henry VII. and VIII. In the halls and parlours there were wrote texts of Scripture, and good sentences on the painted cloths, which does something evidence the piety of those days, more than now.' The ceilings were framed into panels by moulded ribs, enriched with bosses and pendants at their intersections. When plaster was substituted for timber in the ceilings, the patterns became more intricate, and the ornaments still more numerous. 6 The staircase in the older houses was carried up in a separate turret, generally circular, the steps being of stone running round a central pillar, and the outer handrail grooved into the substance of the wall. In the castle of Amboise, built on a high cliff above the Loire, the principal entrance to the castle from the level of the river below, is by means of a circular tower of this kind, containing a spiral road, (it cannot be called a staircase, having no steps,) accessible for horses and even carriages. In the reign of Elizabeth, staircases first became splendid ornamental features in houses, houses, being framed of wood, enriched with massive handrails and balustrades curiously carved, as were also the bracketed string-boards and soffits. The newels at every landing supported the figures of heraldic animals or other devices, as well as pendant ornaments at their lower extremity. The effect of these elaborate staircases was highly ornamental and characteristic; and their introduction is always advisable when that style of building is attempted. That the whole interior of a modern house should be made to correspond precisely with the external architecture is unnecessary, and would be highly inconvenient. The space occupied by the great hall would be thrown away on an apartment now never applied to its ancient purposes, from the total change in domestic habits. And for this reason it is that the attempt to give the appearance and proportions of the ancient hall to the modern vestibule which goes by that name, is usually a failure. The idea of fitness and utility is wanting. The room we know not to be applied to the purposes of the old hall, and the association is therefore injured if not destroyed. The gallery is, perhaps, one of the characteristic features of old interiors most suited for adoption in our modern residences. When employed as a corridor for communication with the principal range of apartments, whether below stairs or above, it becomes equally ornamental and useful. Its lofty embayed windows, emblazoned with armorial coats, its vaulted or fretted ceiling, with the full-length portraits, old highbacked chairs, couches, coffers, and cabinets, which form the appropriate furniture of its walls, compose a rich substitute for the more homely passage, and an agreeable place for indoors exercise and amusement. In the architectural enrichments throughout the house, a correct taste will always keep up the character of the prevailing style; as in the ceilings, chimney-pieces, stoves, doors, bookshelves, and other fixtures. And fortunately each style and age affords its peculiar and beautiful models for these purposes; and the valuable publications of Mr. Pugin and others have enabled our artisans in wood, plaster, or metal, to execute with the utmost correctness the details of the most elegant ancient designs. But in moveable furniture a much greater latitude may fairly be allowed. Indeed, if we were to confine ourselves strictly to that which was used by our ancestors, our modern notions of comfort must be woefully foregone. Heavy tables formed of planks laid upon trestles, massy oak benches or stools for seats, and floors strewed with straw, formed the accommodation which satisfied the princes and prelates of our early history. In no point, certainly, has there been so signal an improvement in modern times, as in the the ordinary domestic furniture. The artisan now enjoys luxuries of this kind, which were, but three centuries ago, beyond the reach of the crowned head. Even in the time of Elizabeth, the comfort of a carpet was seldom felt, and the luxury of a fork wholly unknown. Rushes commonly supplied the place of the former, and the fingers were the invariable substitutes for the latter. Harrison, writing in the time of Elizabeth, thus describes the furniture in use immediately before his time. Our fathers (yea, we ourselves also) have lien full oft vpon straw pallets, or rough mats, covered onlie with a sheete, vnder coverlets made of dogswain or hopharlots, (I use their own terms,) and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers, or the good man of the house, had, within seven yeares after his marriage, purchased a mattresse or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne, that, peradventure, lay seldom in a bed of down or whole feathers. As for servants, if they had any sheet above them it was well; for seldom had they any under their bodies to keep them from the pricking strawes that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and rased their hardened hides.' The lateness of the period at which the luxurious improvements in furniture were introduced is shown in Sir John Harrington's amusing reproaches of the error rather than austerytie' of those sticklers for old customs who looked upon cushions and carpets as heretical innovations. He asks Doth it not as well become the state of the chamber to have easye quilted and lyned forms and stools for the lords and ladyes to sit on, as great plank forms, that two yeomen can scant remove out of their places; and waynscot stooles so hard, that since great breeches were layd aside, men can scant indewr to sitt on?' But though the balance in point of comfort is infinitely in favour of modern upholstery, on the other hand the splendour of our hangings, bed furniture, and plate, is far inferior to that of the earlier periods. Carved and inlaid bedsteads, with hangings of cloth of gold, paled with white damask and black velvet, and embroidered with heraldic badges; blue velvet powdered with silver lions; black satin, with gold roses and escutcheons of arms; tapestry of cloths of gold and silver for hanging on the walls; gold plate, enamelled with precious stones, and cloths of gold for covering tables,-these are pomps and vanities occurring in every page of the elder time-and no doubt their effect must have exceeded in magnificence anything we see or hear of in the present day. These gorgeous moveables' descended from generation to generation, and every ancient will is filled with bequests and inventories of them. Indeed, in the times that preceded the invention of those ingenious improvements upon the financial arrange VOL. XLV. NO. XC. 2 L ments |