A dinner scene on a smaller scale is represented in our next cut (No. 292), copied from one in which Albert Durer represents Herodias dancing and performing before Herod at his solitary meal. This pageantry at dinner was succeeded, and apparently soon superseded, in the higher society by masques after dinner, which continued to be very fashionable until the breaking out of the civil commotions in the middle of the seventeenth century. During the period of the Protectorate and the Commonwealth, the forms of eating and drinking were much simplified, and all that expensive ostentation, which had arisen in the high times of feudal power, and had become burthensome to the aristocracy after it had been weakened by the reigns of the Tudors, disappeared.

The regular order of service at dinner seems to have been still three courses, each consisting of a number and variety of dishes, according to the richness of the entertainment. To judge from the early cookery books, which have been described in a former chapter, our ancestors, previous to the sixteenth century, in the better classes of society, were not in the habit of placing substantial joints on the table, but instead of them had a great variety of made dishes, a considerable proportion of which were eaten with a spoon. At the tables of the great, there was a large attendance of servants, and the guests were counted off not, as before, in couples, but in fours, each four being considered as one party, under the title of a mess, and probably having a dish among them, and served by one attendant. This custom is often alluded to in the dramatists, and it is hardly necessary to observe that it was the origin of our modern term in the army. The plate, as well as the porcelain and earthenware, used at table during the greater part of this period, was so richly diversified, that it would require a volume to describe it, nor would it be easy to pick out a small number of examples that might illustrate the whole. Our cut No. 293 represents a peculiar article of this period, which is not undeserving of remark, two knife-cases, made of leather, stamped and gilt.

From what has been said, it will be seen that our popular saying of “the roast beef of old England,” is not so literally true as we are accustomed to suppose. While, however, the style of living we have been describing prevailed generally among the higher ranks and the richer portion of the middle classes, particularly in towns, that of the less affluent classes remained simple and even scanty, and a large portion of the population of the country probably indulged in flesh meat only at intervals, or on occasions when they received it in their lord’s kitchen or hall. A few plain jugs, such as those represented in our cut No. 294, taken from a wooden sculpture in the church of Kirby Thorpe, in Yorkshire, with platters or trenchers in pewter or wood, formed the whole table service of the inferior classes. It was the revolution in the middle of the seventeenth century which first abolished this extravagant ostentation, and brought into fashion a plainer table and more substantial meats. A foreigner, who had been much in England in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and published his observations in French at the Hague in 1698, tells us that the English of that period were great eaters of meat—“I have heard,” says he, “of many people in England who have never eaten bread, and ordinarily they eat very little; they nibble sometimes a little bit, while they eat flesh by great mouthfuls. Generally speaking, the tables are not served with delicacy in England. There are some great lords who have French and English cooks, and where you are served much in the French fashion; but among persons of the middle condition of which I am speaking, they have ten or twelve sorts of common meat, which infallibly come round again in their turns at different times, and of two dishes of which their dinner is composed, as for instance, a pudding, and a piece of roast beef. Sometimes they will have a piece boiled, and then it has always lain in salt some days, and is flanked all round with five or six mounds of cabbage, carrots, turnips, or some other herbs or roots, seasoned with salt and pepper, with melted butter poured over them. At other times they will have a leg of mutton, roasted or boiled, and accompanied with the same delicacies; poultry, sucking pigs, tripe, and beef tongues, rabbits, pigeons, all well soaked with butter, without bacon. Two of these dishes, always served one after the other, make the ordinary dinner of a good gentleman, or of a good burgher. When they have boiled meat, there is sometimes somebody who takes a fancy to broth, which consists of the water in which the meat has been boiled, mixed with a little oatmeal, with some leaves of thyme, or sage, or other such small herbs. The pudding is a thing which it would be difficult to describe, on account of the diversity of sorts. Flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, fat, marrow, rasins, &c. &c., are the more common ingredients of a pudding. It is baked in an oven; or boiled with the meat; or cooked in fifty other fashions. And they are grateful for the invention of puddings, for it is a manna to everybody’s taste, and a better manna than that of the dessert, inasmuch as they are never tired of it. Oh! what an excellent thing is an English pudding! To come in pudding time, is a proverbial phrase, meaning, to come at the happiest moment in the world. Make a pudding for an Englishman, and you will regale him be he where he will. Their dessert needs no mention, for it consists only of a bit of cheese. Fruit is only found at the houses of great people, and only among few of them.” The phrase, “to come in pudding time,” occurs as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The absence of the dessert at the English table, of which the writer just quoted complains, arose from the abandonment in the middle of the seventeenth century of an old custom. In the earlier part of that century, and in the century previous, when the company rose from the dinner-table, they proceeded to what was then called the banquet, which was held in another apartment, and often in an arbour in the garden, or, as it was called, the garden-house. The banquet of an earlier period, the fifteenth century, was, as we have already seen, a meal after supper. In Massinger’s play of the “City Madam,” a sumptuous dinner is described as follows:— The dishes were raised one upon another,
As woodmongers do billets, for the first,
The second, and third course; and most of the shops
Of the best confectioners in London ransack’d
To furnish out a banquet.
In another of Massinger’s dramas, one of the characters says:— We’ll dine in the great room, but let the musick
And banquet be prepared here.
It appears, therefore, that the banquet was often accompanied with music. At the banquet the choice wines were brought forth, and the table was covered with pastry and sweetmeats, of which our forefathers at this period appear to have been extremely fond. A usual article at the banquet was marchpanes, or biscuits made of sugar and almonds, in different fanciful forms, such as men, animals, houses, &c. There was generally one at least in the form of a castle, which the ladies and gentlemen were to batter to pieces in frolic, by attacking it with sugar-plums. Taylor, the water-poet, calls them— Castles for ladies, and for carpet knights,
Unmercifully spoil’d at feasting fights,
Where battering bullets are fine sugred plums.
On festive occasions, and among people who loved to pass their time at table, the regular banquet seems to have been followed by a second, or, as it was called, a rere-banquet. These rere-banquets are mentioned by the later Elizabethan writers, generally as extravagances, and sometimes with the epithet of “late,” so that perhaps they took the place of the soberer supper. People are spoken of as taking “somewhat plentifully of wine” at these rere-banquets. The rere-supper was still in use, and appears also to have been a meal distinguished by its profusion both in eating and drinking. It was from the rere-supper that the roaring-boys, and other wild gallants of the earlier part of the seventeenth century, sallied forth to create noise and riot in the streets.

One of the great characteristics of the dinner-table at this period was the formality of drinking, especially that of drinking healths, so much cried down by the Puritans. This formality was enforced with great strictness and ceremony. It was not exactly the modern practice of giving a toast, but each person in turn rose, named some one to whom he individually drank (not one of the persons present), and emptied his cup. “He that begins the health,” we are told in a little book published in 1623, “first, uncovering his head, he takes a full cup in his hand, and setting his countenance with a grave aspect, he craves for audience; silence being once obtained, he begins to breathe out the name, per-adventure, of some honourable personage, whose health is drunk to, and he that pledges must likewise off with his cap, kiss his fingers, and bow himself in sign of a reverent acceptance. When the leader sees his follower thus prepared, he sups up his broth, turns the bottom of the cup upward, and, in ostentation of his dexterity, gives the cup a phillip to make it cry twango. And thus the first scene is acted. The cup being newly replenished to the breadth of a hair, he that is the pledger must now begin his part, and thus it goes round throughout the whole company.” In order to ascertain that each person had fairly drunk off his cup, in turning it up he was to pour all that remained in it on his nail, and if there were too much to remain as a drop on the nail without running off, he was made to drink his cup full again. This was termed drinking on the nail, for which convivialists invented a mock Latin phrase, and called it drinking super nagulum, or super-naculum.

This custom of pledging in drinking was as old as the times of the Anglo-Saxons, when it existed in the “wæs heil” and “drinc heil,” commemorated in the story of the British Vortigern and the Saxon Rowena, and it is alluded to in several ballads of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as in that of “King Edward and the Shepherd,” where the man who drinks pledges his companion with the word “passelodion,” and the other replies by “berafrynde,” and in that of “The Kyng and the Hermyt,” where the words of pledging and reply are “fusty bandyas,” and “stryke pautnere.” Both these ballads are printed in Hartshorne’s “Ancient Metrical Tales.” The drinking of the healths of absent individuals appears to have been introduced at a later period, and was carried to its greatest degree of extravagance on the continent. The person whose health a man gave was usually expected to be his mistress; and in France he was expected, in doing this, to drink as many times his glass or cup full of wine as there were letters in her name. Thus, in Ronsard’s “Bacchanales,” the gallant drinks nine times to his mistress Cassandre, because there were nine letters in her name:— Neuf fois, au nom de Cassandre,
Je vois prendre
Neuf fois du vin du flacon;
Affin de neuf fois le boire
En memoire
Des neuf lettres de son nom.
And a less celebrated poet, of a rather later date, Guillaume Colletet, in a piece entitled “Le Trebuchement de l’Ivrongne,” printed at Paris in 1627, introduces one of his personages drinking six times to his mistress, because her name was Cloris:—

The manner of pledging at table, as it still existed in England, is described rather ludicrously in the “Memoires d’Angleterre,” of the year 1698, already quoted. “While in France,” the author says, “the custom of drinking healths is almost abolished among people of any distinction, as being equally importunate and ridiculous, it exists here in all its ancient force. To drink at table, without drinking to the health of some one in especial, among ordinary people, would be considered as drinking on the sly, and as an act of incivility. There are in this proceeding two principal and singular grimaces, which are universally observed among people of all orders and all sorts. It is, that the person to whose health another drinks, if he be of inferior condition, or even equal, to that of him who drinks, must remain as inactive as a statue while the drinker drinks. If, for instance, he is in the act of taking something from a dish, he must suddenly stop, return his fork or spoon to its place, and wait, without stirring more than a stone, until the other has drunk; after which, the second grimace is to make him an inclinabo, at the risk of dipping his perriwig in the gravy in his plate. I confess that, when a foreigner first sees these manners, he thinks them laughable. Nothing appears so droll as to see a man who is in the act of chewing a morsel which he has in his mouth, of cutting his bread, of wiping his mouth, or of doing anything else, who suddenly takes a serious air, when a person of some respectability drinks to his health, looks fixedly at this person, and becomes as motionless as if a universal paralysis had seized him, or he had been struck by a thunderbolt. It is true that, as good manners absolutely demand this respectful immobility in the patient, it requires also a little circumspection in the agent. When any one will drink to the health of another, he must fix his eye upon him for a moment, and give him the time, if it be possible, to swallow his morsel.” It is hardly necessary to observe that this custom is the origin of our modern practice of “taking wine” with each other at table, which is now also becoming obsolete.

CHAPTER XXII.
HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE.—THE PARLOUR.—THE CHAMBER.

As social peace and security became more established in the country, people began to be more lavish in all the articles of household furniture, which thus became much more numerous during the period of which we are now treating. It also went through its fashions and its changes, but in the progress of these changes it became less ponderous and more elegant. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, and perhaps later in some parts of the island, where social progress was slower, the old arrangements of a board laid upon trestles for a table still prevailed, though it was gradually disappearing; and, although the term of “laying” the board in a literal sense was no longer applicable, it has continued to be used figuratively, even to our own times. Richard Kanam, of Soham, in the county of Cambridge, whose will was proved so late as the 12th of April, 1570, left, among other household furniture, “one table with a payer of tressels, and a thicke forme.” The first step in the change from tables of this kind appears to have been to fix the trestles to the board, thus making it a permanent table. The whole was strengthened by a bar running from trestle to trestle, and ornamental wood-work was afterwards substituted in place of the trestles. A rather good example of a table of this description is given in the cut on the preceding page (No. 295), taken from that well-known publication, the “Stultifera Navis” of Sebastian Brandt. This, however, was a clumsy construction, and it soon gave way to the table with legs, the latter being usually turned on the lathe, and sometimes richly carved. This carving went out of use in the unostentatious days of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, to make way for plain table legs, and it never quite recovered its place.

We have seen already that in the latter part of the previous century, in the chairs and stools, the joinery work of Flanders was taking the place of the older rude and clumsy seats. This taste still prevailed in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, and a large proportion of the furniture used in this country, as well as of the earthenware and other household implements, during the greater part of that century, were imported from Flanders and the Netherlands. Hence, in the absence of engravings at home, we are led to look at the works of the Flemish and German artists for illustrations of domestic manners at this period. The seats of the description just mentioned were termed joint (or joined) stools or chairs. A rather fine example of a chair of this work, which is, as was often the case, three-cornered, is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, where it is reported to have been the chair of Henry VIII., on what authority I know not. It is represented in our cut No. 296. These “joined” chairs and stools were laid aside for furniture of a more elegant form, which was used during the reign of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, and of which examples are so common that it is hardly necessary to give one here. This fashion appears to have been brought from France. An example of rather peculiar style is given in our cut No. 297, taken from a picture executed in 1587, representing Louis de Gonzagues, duke of Nivernois.

Hitherto the cushions were merely adjuncts to the chairs, but by another advance in convenience the cushion was soon made as a part of the chair or stool, which at the same time became simpler in form again. Our cut No. 298, taken from one of the prints of Abraham Bosse, dated in 1633, represents the general character of the chairs and stools used in France at that date, as they are drawn in the works of this artist, and also the manner in which they were arranged round a room when not in use. On the left appears the end of a cushioned bench, which was generally of the length of two or three stools, and appears as a common article of furniture. Among other articles of furniture now introduced was the couch, or, as we should call it, the sofa. This was called, in the age of Shakespeare, a day-bed, and appears to have been in some discredit, as an article indicating excess of luxury. Large cupboards, usually termed court-cupboards, and often very richly carved, were now in general use, for containing, under lock and key, the plate and other valuables. In allusion to the carvings on these cupboards, which usually consisted of faces more or less grotesque, and not very artistically executed, Corbet, in his “Iter Boreale,” speaks of a person—

The sixteenth century was especially the age of tapestries, and no gentleman could consider his rooms furnished if they wanted these important adjuncts. They were now elaborately worked into great historical pictures, sacred or profane, or mythological or other subjects, to suit the varieties of tastes. Sir John Elyot, in his “Governor,” reminds his readers that “semblable decking oughte to bee in the house of a noblemanne, or man of honoure; I meane concerning ornaments of hall and chambers in arras, painted tables, and images concernynge historyes, wherein is represented some monument of vertue most cunningly,” &c. At the commencement of the seventeenth century this practice was already beginning to go out of fashion, and it was not long afterwards that it was entirely laid aside: and the walls were again covered with panels, or painted or whitewashed, and adorned with pictures. In our last cut, of the date of 1633, we see the walls thus decorated with paintings.

The rapid social revolution which was now going on, gradually produced changes in most of the articles of domestic economy. Thus, the old spiked candlestick was early in the century superseded by the modern socket candlestick. The chandelier represented in our cut No. 299, taken from one of Albert Durer’s prints of the Life of the Virgin, published in 1509, in its spikes for the candles and its other characteristics, belongs to a ruder and earlier style of household furniture, and has nothing in common with the rich chandeliers which now began to be used.

The parlour appears in the sixteenth century to have been a room the particular use of which was in a state of transition. Subsequently, as domestic life assumed greater privacy than when people lived publicly in the hall, the parlour became the living room; but in the sixteenth century, though in London it was already used as the dining-room, in the country it appears to have been considered as a sort of amalgamation of a store-room and a bedroom. This is best understood from the different inventories of its furniture which have been preserved. In 1558, the parlour of Robert Hyndmer, rector of Sedgefield, in the county of Durham, contained—“a table with a joined frame, two forms, and a carpet; carved cupboards; a plain cupboard; nine joined stools; hangings of tapestry; and a turned chair.” In the parlour at Hilton Castle, in the same county, in 1559, there were—“one iron chimney, two tables, one counter, two chairs, one cupboard, six forms, two old carpets, and three old hangings.” In 1564, Margaret Cottom, a widow of Gateshead, had in her parlour—“one inner bed of wainscot, a stand, a bed, a presser of wainscot, three chests, a Dantzic coffer;” a considerable quantity of linen and cloth of different kinds, and for different purposes; “tallow candles, and wooden dishes, a feather bed, a bolster, and a cod (pillow), two coverlets, two happgings (coverlets of a coarser kind), three blankets, three cods (pillows), with an old mattress; five cushions, a steel cap, and a covering; a tin bottle, a cap-case with a lock.” In the house of William Dalton, a wealthy merchant of Durham in 1556, the parlour must have been very roomy indeed to contain all the “household stuff” which it holds in the inventory, namely, “a chimney, with a pair of tongs; a bedstead close made; a feather bed, a pair of sheets, a covering of apparels, an ‘ovese’ bed, a covering wrought of silk; a cod (pillow), and a pillow-bere; a trundle-bed, a feather bed, a twilt (quilt), a happing (coverlet), and a bolster; a stand-bed, a feather-bed, a mattress, a pair of blankets, a red covering, a bolster, and curtains; eight cods, and eight pillow-beres; seven pair of linen sheets; eight pair of strakin (a sort of kersey) sheets; six pair of harden (hempen) sheets; thirteen yards of diaper tabling; ten yards and a half of table-cloth; twenty-one yards of towelling; four hand towels; two dozen napkins; five pillow-beres; two head sheets; a pair of blankets; two ‘overse’ beds, and three curtains; a cupboard; a table, with a carpet; a counter, with a carpet; a Dantzic chest; a bond chest; a bond coffer; an ambry; a long settle, and a chair; three buffet stools; a little stool; two forms; red hangings; a painted cloth; three chests; a stand-bed, a pair of blankets, two sheets, a covering, and two cods; an ‘ambre call.’” In 1567, the parlour at Beaumont Hill, a gentleman’s house in the north, contained the following furniture:—“One trundle bed, with a feather bed; two coverlets, a bolster, two blankets, two carpet table cloths, two coverlets, one presser, a little table, one chest, three chairs, and three forms.” In other inventories, down to the end of the century, we find the parlour continuing to be stored in this indiscriminate manner.

This period also differs from former periods in the much greater number of beds, and greater abundance of bed-furniture, we find in the houses. We have often several beds in one chamber. Few of the principal bedrooms had less than two beds. The form of the bedstead was now almost universally that with four posts. Still in the engravings of the sixteenth century, we find the old couch-bed represented. Such appears to be the bed in our cut No. 300, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems,” an English book printed at Leyden in 1586. We have here another, and rather a late example, of the manner in which money was hoarded up in chests in the chambers. The couch-bed is still more distinctly shown in our cut No. 301, taken from Albert Durer’s print of St. Jerome, dated in 1511. This print is remarkable for its detail of the furniture of a bed-chamber, and especially for the manner in which the various smaller articles are arranged and suspended to the walls. Not the least remarkable of these articles is the singular combination of a clock and an hour glass, which is placed against the wall as a time-piece. This seems, however, to have been not uncommon. A time-piece of the same kind is represented in our cut No. 302, which is taken from a print of St. Jerome at prayer, by Hans Springen Kelle, without date, but evidently belonging to the earlier half of the sixteenth century. The method of suspending or attaching to the walls the smaller articles in common use, such as scissors, brushes, pens, papers, &c., is here the same as in the former. Our next cut (No. 303), from a print by Aldegraver, dated in 1553, represents evidently a large four-post bedstead, which is remarkable for its full and flowing curtains. The plate appears here to be kept in the bed-chamber. Chests, cupboards, presses, &c., become now very numerous in the bedrooms, and we begin to meet with tables and chairs more frequently. In 1567, the principal chamber in the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Hutton, at Hunwick, contained the following articles:—“In napery, in linen sheets, sixteen pair; certain old harden (hempen) sheets, and sixteen pillowberes; two Dantzic chests, a little chest bound with iron, a candle chest, and another old chest; a press with two floors and five doors; a folding table, seven little cushions, and two long cushions of crool (a sort of fine worsted) wrought with the needle, and a carpet cloth that is in working with crools for the same; six feather beds, with six bolsters, and a coarse feather-bed tick; eight mattresses, and nine bolsters; twelve pillows, twelve pair of blankets, and six happings; twenty coverlets, three coverings for beds of tapestry, and two of dornix (Tournay); a carpet cloth of tapestry work, five yards long, and a quarter deep; five standing beds, with cords; two testers with curtains of saye, and two testers with curtains of crool.” In the principal chamber in the house of lady Catherine Hedworth, in 1568, the following furniture is enumerated:—“One trussing bed, one feather bed, one pair of blankets, one pair of sheets, one bolster, one pillow with a housewife’s covering, four pillows, two Flanders chests, one almery, two cupboards, three coffers, two cupboard stools, three buffet forms, one little buffet stool, two little coffers, five mugs, three old cushions.” The principal chamber of Thomas Sparke, suffragan bishop of Berwick, whose goods were appraised in 1572, was furnished with the following articles:—“A stand-bed, with a testron of red saye and fringe, and a truckle-bed; a Cypres chest, a Flanders chest, a desk, three buffet stools; the said chamber hung with red saye.” At Crook Hall, in the suburbs of Durham, in 1577, the principal chamber contained three beds; another chamber contained four beds; and a third two beds. These lists furnish good illustrations of the various prints from which we have already given some sketches.

Our cut No. 304 represents the usual form of the bedstead in the seventeenth century, and the process of “making” the bed; it is taken from a print by the French artist, Abraham Boste, of the date 1631. Another of his prints, of the same date, has furnished us with a sketch of a bedroom party (cut No. 305), which is no unapt illustration of domestic manners in the seventeenth century. It represents a custom which prevailed especially in France. A woman, after childbirth, kept her room in state, and with great ceremony, and received there daily her female acquaintances, who passed the afternoon in gossip. This practice, and especially the conversation which took place at it, were frequent subjects of popular satire, and formed the groundwork of one of the most celebrated books of the reign of Louis XIII., entitled “Les Caquets de l’Accouchée,” first published in 1622. An edition of this curious satire has been recently published by M. Ed. Fournier, in the introduction to which, as well as in the text, the reader will find abundant information on this subject.

CHAPTER XXIII.
OCCUPATIONS OF THE LADIES.—GAMES AND ENJOYMENTS.—ROUGHNESS OF ENGLISH SPORTS AT THIS PERIOD.—THE HOT-HOUSES, OR BATHS.—THE ORDINARIES.—DOMESTIC PETS.—TREATMENT OF CHILDREN.—METHODS OF LOCOMOTION.—CONCLUSION.

During the period at which we are now arrived, almost all the relations of domestic life underwent a great change, and nothing hardly could produce a wider difference than that between the manners and sentiments of the reign of Henry VII., and those of Charles II. This was especially observable in the occupations of the female sex, which were becoming more and more frivolous. At the earlier portion of the period referred to, women in general were confined closely to their domestic labours, in spinning, weaving, embroidering, and other work of a similar kind. A hand-loom was almost a necessary article of furniture in a well regulated household, and spinning was so universal an occupation, that we read sometimes of an apartment in the house set apart for it—a family spinning room. Even to this present day, in legal language, the only occupation acknowledged, as that of an unmarried woman, is that of a spinster. Our cut (No. 306) represents a party of ladies at their domestic labours; it is taken from Israel van Mechelin’s print of “The Virgin Ascending the Steps of the Temple,” where this domestic scene is introduced in a side compartment. Two are engaged at the distaff, the old poetical emblem of the sex. Another is cutting out the cloth for working, with a pair of shears of very antiquated form. The shape of the three-cornered joined chair in this group is worthy of remark. The female in our cut No. 307 is also seated in a chair of rather peculiar construction, though it has occurred before at an earlier period (cut No. 245, p. 375), and we meet with it again in our next cut (No. 308). It is what was sometimes called a folding chair. This cut is taken from one of the illustrations to the English edition of Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly,” printed in 1676, but it is a copy of the earlier originals. The great weaving establishments in England appear to have commenced in the sixteenth century, with the Protestant refugees from France and the Netherlands.

The old domestic games continued to be practised in the middle and upper classes of society, although they were rather extensively superseded by the pernicious rage for gambling which now prevailed throughout English society. This practice had been extending itself ever since the beginning of the fifteenth century, and had been accompanied with another evil practice among the ladies, that of drinking. It need hardly be observed that these two vices furnished constant themes to the dramatists and satirists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the example set by the court under James I. caused them to increase greatly, and they rose to the highest pitch of extravagance under Charles II. Barclay’s “Ship of Fools” (the early English edition) has furnished us with the group of female gamesters, represented in our cut No. 308. It will be seen that the ladies are playing with cards and dice, and that the ale jug is introduced as an accompaniment. In fact we must look upon it as a tavern party, and the round table, as far as we can judge, appears to be fixed in the ground. The same book furnishes us with an illustration (cut No. 309), in which two gamblers are quarrelling over a game at backgammon. A child is here the jug-bearer or guardian of the liquor. Our cut No. 310 represents a gambling scene of a rather later period, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems,” printed in 1586; dice are here the implements of play.

A very curious piece of painted glass, now in the possession of Mr. Fairholt, of German manufacture, and forming part, apparently, of a series illustrative of the history of the Prodigal Son, represents a party of gamblers, of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, in which they are playing with two dice. It is copied in our cut No. 311. The original bears the inscription, “Jan Van Hassell Tryngen sin hausfrau,” with a merchant’s mark, and the date, 1532. Three dice, however, continued to be used long after this, and are, from time to time, alluded to during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

I have, in a former chapter, traced the history of playing-cards down to the latter half of the fifteenth century. After that time, they are frequently mentioned. They formed the common amusement in the courts of Scotland and England under the reigns of Henry VII. and James IV.; and it is recorded that when the latter monarch paid his first visit to his affianced bride, the young princess Margaret of England, “he founde the quene playing at the cardes.”

In Germany at this time card-playing was carried to an extravagant degree, and it became an object of attack and satire to the reformers among the clergy. Our cut No. 312 represents a German card-party in a tavern, taken from an early painted coffer in the Museum of Old German Art at Nuremberg. The design of the cards is that of packs of fancifully ornamented cards made in Germany at the close of the fifteenth century. The German satirists of that age complain that the rage for gambling had taken possession of all classes of society, and levelled all ranks, ages, and sexes; that the noble gambled with the commoner, and the clergy with the laity. Some of the clerical reformers declared that card-playing as well as dice was a deadly sin, and others complained that this love of gambling had caused people to forget all honourable pursuits.

A similar outcry was raised in our own country; and a few years later it arose equally loud. A short anonymous poem on the ruin of the realm, belonging apparently to the earlier part of the reign of Henry VIII. (MS. Harl. No. 2252, fol. 25, v^o), complains of the nobles and gentry:— Before thys tyme they lovyd for to juste,
And in shotynge chefely they sett ther mynde,
And ther landys and possessyons now sett they moste,
And at cardes and dyce ye may them ffynde.
“Cardes and dyce” are from this time forward spoken of as the great blot on contemporary manners; and they seem for a long time to have driven most other games out of use. Roy, in his remarkable satire against cardinal Wolsey, complains that the bishops themselves were addicted to gambling:— To play at the cardes and dyce
Some of theym are no thynge nyce,
Both at hasard and mom-chaunce.
The rage for cards and dice prevailed equally in Scotland. Sir David Lindsay’s popish parson, in 1535, boasts of his skill in these games:— Thoch I preich nocht, I can play at the caiche;
I wot there is nocht ane amang yow all
Mair ferylie can play at the fute-ball;
And for the cartis, the tabels, and the dyse,
Above all parsouns I may beir the pryse.
The same celebrated writer, in a poem against cardinal Beaton, represents that prelate as a great gambler:—

Though gardening and horticulture in general, as arts, were undergoing considerable improvement during this period, the garden itself appears to have been much more neglected, except as far as it was the scene of other pastimes. A bowling-green was the most important part of the pleasure garden in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and bowls, and exercises of a similar character, were the favourite amusements of all classes. The gardens themselves, which were apart from the house, and made more retired by lofty walls enclosing them, were usually adorned with alcoves and summer-houses, or, as they were then more usually termed, garden-houses, but these were chiefly celebrated, especially in the seventeenth century, as places of intrigue. There are continual allusions to this usage in the popular writers of the time. Thus, one of the personages in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Woman Hater” exclaims, “This is no garden-house: in my conscience she went forth with no dishonest intent.” And, in the play of the “Mayor of Quinsborough,”— Poor soul, she’s entic’d forth by her own sex
To be betray’d to man, who in some garden-house,
Or remote walk, taking his lustful time,
Binds darkness on her eyes, surprises her.
A character in another old play, “The London Prodigal,” seeking employment of a rather equivocal character, says, “Now God thank you, sweet lady, if you have any friend, or garden-house, where you may employ a poor gentleman as your friend, I am yours to command in all secret service.”

Amid the gaiety which was so especially characteristic of this age, a spirit of vulgar barbarity had arisen and spread itself very widely, and the popular games most practised were in general coarse and cruel. A foreign writer already quoted, but one who was evidently a very unprejudiced observer, has left us some rather amusing remarks on this subject which are worthy of being repeated. “The English,” he says, “have games which are peculiar to them, or at least, which they affect and practise more than people do elsewhere. To see cocks fight is a royal pleasure in England. Their combats of bulls and dogs, of bears and dogs, and sometimes of bulls and bears, are not combats to the last gasp, like those of cocks. Everything that is called fighting is a delicious thing to an Englishman. If two little boys quarrel in a street, the passers stop, make in a moment a ring round them, and encourage them to settle it by blows of the fist. If it comes to fighting, each takes off his cravat and his jacket, and gives them in charge to one of the company; then begin the blows of the fist, in the face if possible, the blows of the foot on their shins, the pulling of one another by the hair, &c. The one who has knocked the other down, may give him one blow or two when he is down, but no more, and every time the one who is down will rise, the other must return to the combat as long as he pleases. During the combat, the circle of spectators encourage the combatants to the great joy of their hearts, and never separate them, so long as things are done according to rule. And these spectators are not only other children, and street porters, but all sorts of respectable people, some of whom make their way through the crowd to see nearer, others mount upon the shops, and all would pay for places, if stages could be built up in a moment. The fathers and mothers of the little boys who are fighting look on like the others, and encourage the one who gives way, or is wanting in strength. These kind of combats are less frequent among grown-up men than among children, but they are not uncommon. If the driver of a hackney-coach has a dispute about his fare, with a gentleman whom he has carried, and the gentleman offers to settle the dispute by fighting, the coachman agrees to it willingly. The gentleman takes off his sword, disposes of it in some shop with his walking-stick, his gloves, and his cravat, and fights in the manner I have described. If the coachman is well beaten, which is almost always the case, he is considered as paid; but if he beats, he who is beaten must pay the sum that was in question, and that which caused the quarrel. I once saw the late duke of Grafton fighting in the open street in the middle of the Strand with a coachman, whom he thrashed in a terrible manner. In France, we treat such kind of people with blows of a stick or, sometimes, of the flat of the sword; but in England that is never done; they never use a sword or stick against those who are not similarly armed; and if any unlucky foreigner (for it would never come into the mind of an Englishman) should strike with the sword any one who had not got one, it is certain that in an instant a hundred persons would fall upon him, and perhaps beat him so that he would never recover. Wrestling is also one of the diversions of the English, especially in the northern provinces. Ringing the bells is one of their great pleasures, especially in the country; there is a way of doing it, but their peal is quite different from those of Holland and the Low Countries. In winter football is a useful and charming exercise; it is a ball of leather, as large as a man’s head, and filled with wind; it is tossed with the feet in the streets. To expose a cock in a place, and kill it at a distance of forty or fifty paces with a stick, is also a very diverting thing; but this pleasure only belongs to a certain season. This also is the case with the dances of the milkwomen, with the throwing at one another of tennis-balls by girls, and with divers other little exercises.” Such was the rude character of the amusement of all classes of our population during the seventeenth century.

The ladies still had their household pets, though they varied sometimes in their character, which perhaps arose in some measure from the circumstance that the discovery of or increased communication with distant countries, brought the knowledge of animals and birds which were not so well known before. Thus, in the sixteenth century, monkeys appear to have been much in fashion as domestic favourites, and we not unfrequently find them in prints in attendance upon ladies. Since the discovery of the West Indies, and the voyages of the Portuguese to the coast of Africa, parrots had become much more common than formerly. In pictures of the period of which we are speaking, we often find these, as well as smaller domestic birds, in cages of various forms. In our cut No. 313, taken from Whitney’s “Emblems” (printed in 1585), we have a parrot in its cage, and a small bird (perhaps meant for a canary), the latter of which is drawing up its water to drink in a manner which has been practised in modern times, and supposed to be a novelty. It is very unsafe indeed to assume that any ingenious contrivances of this kind are modern, for we often meet with them unexpectedly at a comparatively early date.