Or, again, to take another contemporary authority (Hall, _Society in the Elizabethan Age_):—
“The furniture of an Elizabethan House is illustrated by an inventory of the Household ‘stuffe, goodes and cattelles’ belonging to Sir Henry Parker knight (1557–60). This inventory shows two chairs only for the whole house; eight stools and forms; two square framed tables; one joined table to say mass on; a pair of ‘playing tables’; twelve bedsteads; tapestry and hangings; featherbeds; blankets; bolsters; testors; curtains; counterpoints (counterpanes); seven cupboards; three carpets; andirons, fire shovels, tongs; thirteen candlesticks; certain cushions of tapestry, velvet, white satin and ‘Brydges’ satin; three great chests; utensils for the kitchen; the Brewhouse and the Bargehouse. The Hall was hung round with tapestry; its permanent furniture consisted of two square tables and one great chair of black velvet in which the Justice of the Peace heard cases. When the tables were spread for dinner or supper, forms were brought in. The ‘Great Chamber,’ formerly called the Lady’s Bower, contained the forms used at meals in the Hall, one stool of black velvet for my Lady; and nothing else! In the bedrooms there were the beds and their blankets and nothing else; not a chair or a table; nothing but the bed—what does one want in a bedroom but the bed to sleep upon? For decorations one room had over the chimney a ‘steyned cloth with Marie and Gabriell.’ Another had curtains of sarcenet; another, of red and green say; another, ‘old tapestrye worke of imagery.’ In one chamber we find a bason and ewer of pewter—was this the only means of washing in the whole house? In the buttery were a dozen of fine trenchers ‘cased’; six glasses; six plates for fruits; a ‘garnish’ of pewter vessels; two pewter plates for tarts. Nothing is said of knives—did each person still carry his own? Even then there must have been carving knives. Forks were not as yet in common use, and nothing is said about spoons.”
The inventory of a farmer’s goods about the same time, given in the same work, shows among the household gear, two pewter dishes, three pewter platters, two saucers, four trencher platters, six trencher dishes, two brass kettles, two candlesticks and a chafing dish, eight bowls of wood, twelve trenchers, and twelve trencher spoons; but still nothing about knives. Nor in any of the numerous inventories and accounts given in this book is any mention made of knives. We see, however, in the tables laid upon trestles, the single chair, the forms and stools, the fine tapestry of the Hall, the carpets of the Great Chamber, the testers and the curtains of the bed which stands alone in the bedroom, a compound of state and simplicity; of meanness and richness. Furniture in the modern sense had not yet appeared in the house.