pious, or instructive,
or amorous mottoes, suited to the taste of the society in which they were
produced. Such circular plates are now well known to antiquaries under
the name of "roundels," and were at one time generally supposed by them
to have been used as cards for fortune-telling, or playing with at
questions and answers. More sober research into their origin and use
shows that they were painted and decorated with conventional patterns by
nuns, who left blank spaces for the mottoes, to be supplied by the more
learned monks; and a set of these roundels generally consisted of twelve.
As specimens of the style of these mottoes about the time of Henry VII.
or VIII. the following may be taken:--

"Wheresoever thou traveleste,
Este, Weste, Northe, or Southe,
Learne never to looke
A geven horsse in the mouthe."

"In friends ther ys flattery,
In men lyttell trust,
Thoughe fayre they proffer
They be offten unjuste."

There are many sets of verses for roundels extant in manuscript, and a
few have been printed; indeed, it appears likely that to the love for
this species of composition we owe Tusser's "Five Hundred Points of Good
Husbandry," and most of his other admonitory verses.

After the Reformation, coloured prints superseded the painted and
manuscript "poesies" of the nuns and monks, and the elder De Passe, and
other artists of the period of James I. and Charles I., produced a
variety of oval and circular engravings, which were pasted upon roundels
and varnished over. The subjects generally selected were those which
naturally arranged themselves into a set of twelve, as the months. By
the Puritans the beechen roundels thus decorated were regarded with
especial dislike, and they returned to the use of the unadorned trencher
and "godly platter." When the "Merry Monarch" was restored he brought
over with him from Holland plates and dishes manufactured at Delft, where
the porcelain known as Faenza, Faience, Majolica, and Fynlina ware, made
during the fifteenth century in the North of Italy, and upon the
embellishments of which, according to Lamartiniere, the pencils of
Raffaelle, Giulio Romano, and the Caracci, were employed, had been
successfully, although coarsely imitated. And it must be confessed that
many of the old Dutch plates, dishes, and bowls, upon the kitchen-shelves
of the Pryor's Bank, deserved to be admired for boldness of design,
effective combinations of col