gns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to
Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons in
the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials,
and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the
Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux
deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in
1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, ou il y a ij balays et X
perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the
dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the
celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver
forks to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork
of gold to take sops from wine (a prendre la soupe ou vin). They appear to
have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to
lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in
decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the
highest classes; hence their comparative rarity.--Ed.]

[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]

Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first
taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence--

--the laudable use of forks,
To the sparing of napkins.

This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the
traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. He positively claims this
immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this
FORKED _cutting of meat,_ not only while I was in Italy, but also in
Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of
forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where
some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as
an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a
curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St.
Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old
members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their
fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the
dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the
First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and
novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the
Restoration! On th