It is true that there is a court at Montacute, but it is enclosed by an open balustrade and not by solid buildings; it is there for delight and not for defence, and everything in the planning shows that the builder considered he could occupy his house in security.

On the top floor, over the hall and running from end to end of the building, is the gallery; it is lighted at each end and down so much of the side as is not blocked by the wings of the house, which of course it cuts off from the staircases and the other rooms. The treatment of the elevations is as symmetrical as that of the plan (Fig. 48). The area of window space is in excess of that of wall space, the strings are of some depth and of classic profile, and the whole appearance contrasts strongly with that of Hengrave. Along the topmost floor in the spaces between the windows are eight statues, which, with a ninth in the central gable, are said to represent those Nine Worthies whom Holofernes and his companions tried to represent in a more dramatic manner before the Princess of France and her lively attendants.

It has already been observed that the plan of Montacute is shaped roughly like the letter H. This type of plan is very frequent, and is the same in its essence as the E plan, of which many writers have made more than is needful. The 133 plan is in fact the same as the H with the side strokes curtailed. To make a just comparison, either the centre stroke of the 133 should be omitted or it should be added to the cross of the H, inasmuch as it represents the projecting porch, which was present equally in each arrangement. The fact that the 133 plan resembles the first letter of Elizabeth is probably a coincidence merely, and not a compliment to the queen. At the same time it would have been quite in accordance with the spirit of the time to have taken such a way of expressing loyalty, only in that case we should have expected to find fewer plans of the H variety, and more of the other; but as a matter of fact there are few, if any, houses with a perfectly straight front such as the back of the 133 demands.

At Barlborough, in Derbyshire (1583), we get again a different type. The house is built round a court, but an extremely small one, now filled with a modern staircase (Fig. 49). All the windows look out into the open country. Instead of extending itself along the ground, the house provides its accommodation by extending itself vertically, and the kitchen and servants' rooms are placed in the basement. This was an idea introduced, it is said, from Italy, but it is one which, though sometimes met with, did not commend itself to Elizabethan builders when space was plentiful. The hall is on the principal floor, and is approached from outside up a long flight of steps. The screens led to the staircase which penetrated to the kitchen in the basement. The hall had its bay window at the daïs end, from which the great chamber was approached. We have still, therefore, the old idea of the hall as a living room, and part of a series of rooms communicating with each other; not yet as an entrance from which the living rooms are approached.

The detail at Barlborough is of a simple kind; the house was not of a large size and did not require much elaboration (Fig. 50). The actual classic treatment is confined to the front door, which is flanked with columns. The parapet is battlemented, the strings are narrow, and the windows are not overwhelming in size. The roof is flat, and there are none of the gables which are so marked a feature of the time. Picturesqueness of outline, however, which was always sought for, is here obtained by carrying up the bay windows as turrets, a treatment which lends much distinction to an otherwise simple exterior.

Twelve years later than Barlborough we get at Doddington, in Lincolnshire (1595), a plan which reverts to the type of Montacute (Fig. 51). It has the usual characteristics of the simplest kind—wings one room thick; the entrance at the end of the hall, leading on the left to the buttery, pantry, and kitchens; the parlour at the head of the hall, and the principal staircase adjacent. Here, however, as at Montacute, the hall is only one storey in height; it has a room above it—the great chamber: and on the top floor the gallery extends over the whole central part from wing to wing.

There is an entrance court in front of the house enclosed by a wall. It is approached through one of the quaint gatehouses of the time, which were a reminiscence of a more turbulent state of society, when it was necessary for all who went to the house to do so under the eye of the porter, but which in the calmer times of Elizabeth were occupied by some of the numerous functionaries who ministered to the pleasures of the rich. The detail at Doddington is of the plainest, the only attempt at richness being round the front door. The windows are of reasonable size, the strings are narrow, and are all of the same quasi-classic profile. The parapet is perfectly plain, and the roof is without gables, the skyline being broken, as at Barlborough, with turrets, formed by carrying up the porch and the two projections in the internal angles of the front (Plate XXI.). The house is an example of a plain and business-like type, which may be accounted for by the fact that it was built for a business man, one Thomas Tailor, registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln.

With the opening of the new century we get at Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire (1602-10), a repetition of the same leading idea which we have been following for a hundred and fifty years (Fig. 52). We have the screens at the end of the hall, the kitchens on the left, and the bay window, the family rooms and grand staircase at the head of the hall. The family apartments have increased in number. The tendency was towards having separate apartments for various uses, and on plans of the time we not infrequently find a "dining parlour" specially named. The introduction of this refinement marks the dwindling importance of the hall. The latter is ceasing to be the centre of family life, and becoming merely an entrance. The daïs end is no longer the comfortable place it was, with its bay window and the fireplace close by: it is becoming pierced with doors, and draughty. The family find it more comfortable to have a separate room for their meals, and the servants' quarters are becoming more self-contained. The old usages of the hall are being discontinued.

This change is quite apparent in the last plan of the series, that of Aston Hall, in Warwickshire (1618-35). The hall is still central, the kitchen is in one wing, the family rooms in the other, supplemented by a row at the back of the hall (Fig. 53). But the hall itself is now merely an entrance—it has ceased to be a living-room; it is entered from the middle of the side, no longer at the end, where indeed the fireplace now finds itself: there is no daïs and no bay window. This is a revolution which it has taken more than a century to produce, counting from the first appearance of the Italian influence. The change no doubt was effected from the inside more than the out: from the gradual alteration of habits, rather than from the wish to Italianize our English plans. But the two tendencies co-operated with each other and combined to lead English designers further and further away from the old traditions.

Although the hall shows a departure from the old lines of planning, the general arrangement adheres to them. The symmetrical wings, the mullioned windows, the turrets (Fig. 54), the forecourt with its lodges at the corners, and the open arcade on the south front, are all in keeping with Elizabethan and Jacobean methods, and offer a striking contrast to the work at Rainham Hall, in Norfolk, which was built by Inigo Jones in 1630, five years before Aston was finished.

The disappearance of the hall as a living-room, and its adoption as a vestibule, mark a great change in our domestic architecture. The tie with the mediæval past is loosened, and with the almost contemporaneous departure of the mullioned window it is severed altogether; there is nothing now to prevent English designers from assimilating their buildings ever more and more to the models which they sought direct in Italy, without being diverted from their purpose by what they passed in intermediate countries.