[20] _Memorials of Holdenby_, by Miss Hartshorne, p. 16.
[21] _England as seen by Foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James I._, by W. B. Rye, p. 213.
[22] _Nichols' Progresses of King James I._, Vol. I., p. 174.
Some idea of what the rooms were like which surrounded a courtyard of the time may be gathered from the description of the suite allotted to the Earl of Lincoln when he went to Cassell, in 1596, on an embassage to the Landgrave of Hesse; and although they were in a German castle the description would apply almost equally well to those in a large English house. The rooms were five in number, and they occupied the end of a goodly quadrangle, like the Louvre at Paris, high and stately.[23] They consisted of two dining chambers, two drawing chambers, and between the two latter a bed chamber, so placed "for his more quiet and private being." His lordship's own dining chamber was panelled with wood and marble, "with crestings, indentments, and Italian pillar work;" there were escutcheons with the blazoned arms of the Landgrave's "friends and allies of the Protestant part," and on the four sides of the room next the ceiling were carved four stories of the Creation, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Judgment; the ceiling was wrought with knot-work. The next room, where the ambassador's gentlemen dined, was hung with tapestry. The next "was a fair drawing chamber, seated round about, and covered with scarlet; above the seats hung round with a rich small wrought tapestry of an ell broad, of emblem work, and verses written underneath; over this, upon a ledge of wainscot, were divers tables [pictures] of sundry devices, well painted, with their posies to garnish the chamber, and, among all, that was the best which had this motto: 'Major autem horum est caritas,' for it waxed cold. The roof was likewise flourished with painting and devices. These rooms had the through light of four fair windows." The bedroom was decorated with a painted tree that grew up at the door, the branches spreading all over the ceiling, full of fruit, and hanging down upon the walls, with other pictures to fill up empty places; the story taken out of Daniel. The last room of the suite was "a fair drawing chamber hung with arras, which parted his Honour's lodging from the other side of the house, that so he might not any way be disturbed." We get therefore in this set of rooms an example of the three principal modes of decorating the walls--by panelling, by hanging with tapestry or arras, and (more seldom) by painting. At Theobalds the hall was decorated with trees, and not only were they furnished with leaves and fruit, but, regardless of the niceties of natural history, with birds' nests too, and so lifelike was the effect that, according to the testimony of a German visitor in 1592,[24] when the steward opened the windows the birds flew in, perched upon the trees, and began to sing--perhaps to express their surprise at finding fruit and nests on the trees at the same time. This realistic treatment was, fortunately, not very common, and it is rather curious that so strong a man as Lord Burghley should have delighted in such embellishments, and others equally puerile in conception.