Neckam mentions the roasting-spit, elsewhere called the roasting-iron; but I fail to detect skewers, though they can hardly have been wanting. Ladles for basting and stirring were familiar. As to the spit itself, it became a showy article of plate, when the fashion arose of serving up the meat upon it in the hall; and the tenure by which Finchingfield in Essex was held _in capite_ in the reign of Edward III.--that of turning the spit at the coronation--demonstrates that the instrument was of sufficient standing to be taken into service as a memorial formality.
The fifteenth century vocabulary notices the salt-cellar, the spoon, the trencher, and the table-cloth. The catalogue comprises _morsus, a bit_, which shows that _bit_ and _bite_ are synonymous, or rather, that the latter is the true word as still used in Scotland, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire, from the last of which the Pilgrims carried it across the Atlantic, where it is a current Americanism, not for one bite, but as many as you please, which is, in fact, the modern provincial interpretation of the phrase, but not the antique English one. The word _towel_ was indifferently applied, perhaps, for a cloth for use at the table or in the lavatory. Yet there was also the _manuturgium_, or hand-cloth, a speciality rendered imperative by the mediaeval fashion of eating.
In the inventory of the linen at Gilling, in Yorkshire, one of the seats of the Fairfax family, made in 1590, occur:--"Item, napkins vj. dozen. Item, new napkins vj. dozen." This entry may or may not warrant a conclusion that the family bought that quantity at a time--not a very excessive store, considering the untidy habits of eating and the difficulty of making new purchases at short notice.
Another mark of refinement is the resort to the _napron_, corruptly _apron_, to protect the dress during the performance of kitchen work. But the fifteenth century was evidently growing wealthier in its articles of use and luxury; the garden and the kitchen only kept pace with the bed-chamber and the dining-hall, the dairy and the laundry, the stable and the out-buildings. An extensive nomenclature was steadily growing up, and the Latin, old French, and Saxon terms were giving way on all sides to the English. It has been now for some time an allowed and understood thing that in these domestic backgrounds the growth of our country and the minuter traits of private life are to be studied with most clear and usurious profit.