Most arts date back to ancient times; and the arts of woodcraft are no exceptions. Inlaying, veneering, and wood-carving reach back to the temple of Solomon; and the Egyptians also practised them. Ancient inlay, moreover, was not confined to woods--ivory, pearls, marbles, metals, precious stones all being requisitioned.
During the reigns of William and Mary, Anne, and George the First, events of great importance transpired. St. Paul's, that great monument to Wren and Renaissance architecture, was opened; the Marlborough wars were fought; the South Sea Bubble was blown and burst; Sir Christopher Wren and Grinling Gibbon completed their work; Marlborough House and Blenheim were built; Addison, Pope, and Daniel Defoe were at work; Gibraltar was taken; England and Scotland were united; the Bank of England was incorporated; and last, but not least, the National Debt started.
CHAPTER II: SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN AND GRINLING GIBBON
The temper of a nation is reflected in its architecture and, in a lesser degree, in its furniture. When we look at the furniture of the last of the Stuarts, Mary II. and her sister Anne, we see written all over it in large letters one great virtue--sobriety.
In the oak furniture of the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts (Elizabeth and James I.) we find the same sober note; but in the main it is more essentially English. In the Augustan era of Elizabeth we certainly see in the more pretentious examples of Court-cupboards and cabinets the influence of the Renaissance; but the furniture made by the people for the people is simply English in form and decoration.
During the troublous times of the two Charles and to the end of the revolution which placed William and Mary on the throne, the country was alternately in the throes of gaiety and Puritanism; and a dispassionate view leads one to suppose that "Merrie England" had the greater leaning towards merriment. The people of England knew well enough that sobriety was good for them, and Cromwell gave it in an unpalatable form. The remedy was less to the country's liking than the disease, and with the Restoration in 1660 the passions of the nation ran riot in the opposite extreme.
The final lesson came with the twenty-nine years of misrule under Charles II. and James II. Having drained the cup of degradation to the dregs, the country set about her real reformation by the aid of Dutch William, himself the grandson of a Stuart, and his cousin-consort Anne, the daughter of the self-deposed James.