one, next to whom was Diana, and Heliet led up
Clarice to her side. They faced the dais, so that Clarice could watch
its distinguished occupants at her pleasure. Tables for meals, at that
date, were simply boards placed on trestles, and removed when the repast
was over. On the table at the dais was silver plate, then a rare
luxury, restricted to the highest classes, the articles being spoons,
knives, plates, and goblets. There were no forks, for only one fork had
ever then been heard of as a thing to eat with, and this had been the
invention of the wife of a Doge of Venice, about two hundred years
previous, for which piece of refinement the public rewarded the lady by
considering her as proud as Lucifer. Forks existed, both in the form of
spice-forks and fire-forks, but no one ever thought of eating with them
in England until they were introduced from Italy in the reign of James
the First, and for some time after that the use of them marked either a
traveller, or a luxurious, effeminate man. Moreover, there were no
knives nor spoons provided for helping one's self from the dishes. Each
person had a knife and spoon for himself, with which he helped himself
at his convenience. People who were very delicate and particular wiped
their knives on a piece of bread before doing so, and licked their
spoons all over. When these were the practices of fastidious people,
the proceedings of those who were not such may be discreetly left to
imagination. The second table was served in a much more ordinary
manner. In this instance the knife was iron and the spoon pewter, the
plate a wooden trencher (never changed), and the drinking-cup of horn.
In the midst of the table stood a pewter salt-cellar, formed like a
castle, and _very_ much larger than we use them now.

This salt-cellar acted as a barometer, not for weather, but for rank.
Every one of noble blood, or filling certain offices, sat above the
salt.

With respect to cooking our fathers had some peculiarities. They ate
many things that we never touch, such as porpoises and herons, and they
used all manner of green things as vegetables. They liked their bread
hot from the oven (to give cold bread, even for dinner, was a shabby
proceeding), and their meat much underdone, for they thought that
overdone meat stirred up anger. They mixed most incongruous things
together; they loved very strong tastes, delighting in garlic and
verjuice; they never appear to have paid the s