stors married the Protector's
daughter. The ornament has no particular style, and it may be taken for
granted that the period of the Commonwealth was not marked by any progress
in decorative art. The above illustration, however, proves that there were
exceptions to the prevalent Puritan objection to figure ornament. In one
of Mrs. S.C. Hall's papers, "Pilgrimages to English Shrines," contributed
in 1849 to "The Art Journal," she describes the interior of the house
which was built for Bridget, the Protector's daughter, who married General
Ireton. The handsome oak staircase had the newels surmounted by carved
figures, representing different grades of men in the General's army--a
captain, common soldier, piper, drummer, etc, etc., while the spaces
between the balustrades were filled in with devices emblematical of
warfare, the ceiling being decorated in the fashion of the period. At the
time Mrs. Hall wrote, the house bore Cromwell's name and the date 1630.

We may date from the Commonwealth the more general use of chairs; people
sat as they chose, and no longer regarded the chair as the lord's place. A
style of chair, which we still recognise as Cromwellian, was also largely
imported from Holland about this time--plain square backs and seats
covered with brown leather, studded with brass nails. The legs, which are
now generally turned with a spiral twist, were in Cromwell's time plain
and simple.

The residence of Charles II. abroad, had accustomed him and his friends to
the much more luxurious furniture of France and Holland. With the
Restoration came a foreign Queen, a foreign Court, French manners, and
French literature. Cabinets, chairs, tables, and couches, were imported
into England from the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal; and our
craftsmen profited by new ideas and new patterns, and what was of equal
consequence, an increased demand for decorative articles of furniture. The
King of Portugal had ceded Bombay, one of the Portuguese Indian stations,
to the new Queen, and there is a chair of this Indo-Portuguese work,
carved in ebony, now in the museum at Oxford, which was given by Charles
II. either to Elias Ashmole or to Evelyn: the illustration on the next
page shews all the details of the carving. Another woodcut, on a smaller
scale, represents a similar chair grouped with a settee of a like design,
together with a small folding chair which Mr. G.T. Robinson, in his
article on "Seats," has described as It