on the return of their
masters. For though the nobles had begun to remove the martial fronts
of their castles, and endeavoured to render them more commodious, yet
in architecture the nation participated neither the spirit nor the
taste of its sovereign. The mansions of the gentlemen were, we are
told, still sordid; the huts of the peasantry poor and wretched. The
former were generally thatched buildings composed of timber, or, where
wood was scarce, of large posts inserted in the earth, filled up in
the interstices with rubbish, plastered within, and covered on the
outside with coarse clay. The latter were light frames, prepared in
the forest at small expense, and when erected, probably covered with
mud. In cities the houses were constructed mostly of the same
materials, for bricks were still too costly for general use; and the
stories seem to have projected forward as they rose in height,
intercepting sunshine and air from the streets beneath. The apartments
were stifling, lighted by lattices, so contrived as to prohibit the
occasional and salutary admission of external air. The floors were of
clay, strewed with rushes, which often remained for years a receptacle
of every pollution.[112]

In an inventory of the goods and chattels of Sir Andrew Foskewe,
Knight, dated in the 30th year of King Henry the Eighth, are the
following furnitures. We select the hall and the best parlour, in
which he entertained company, first premising that he possessed a
large and noble service of rich plate worth an amazing sum, and so
much land as proved him to be a wealthy man:--

"The hall.--A hangin of greine say, bordered with darneng (or
needlework); item a grete side table, with standinge tressels; item a
small joyned cuberde, of waynscott, and a short piece of counterfett
carpett upon it; item a square cuberde, and a large piece of
counterfett wyndowe, and five formes, &c.

"Perler.--Imprim., a hangynge of greene say and red, panede; item a
table with two tressels, and a greyne verders carpet upon it; three
greyne verders cushyns; a joyned cupberd, and a carpett upon it; a
piece of verders carpet in one window, and a piece of counterfeit
carpett in the other; one Flemishe chaire; four joyned stooles; a
joyned forme; a wyker skryne; two large awndyerns, a fyer forke, a
fyer pan, a payer of tonges; item a lowe joyned stole; two joyned
foote-stoles; a rounde table of cipress; and a piece of counterfeitt
carpett upon it; item a paynted