Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/103

 and Sentiments. 83 the projefting windows of the houfes {ad feneftrarum dependentia /oris laquearia). We trace in the illuminations of the earlier Norman period the cuftom of placing the principal apartment at an elevation from the ground. The fimple plan of the ftone-built houfe of the latter part of this century-j confifted of a fquare room on the ground floor, often vaulted, and of one room above it, which was the principal apartment, and the fleeping-room. This was approached by a ftaircafe, fometimes external and fometimes internal, and it had a fire-place {cheminee), though this was not always the cafe in the room below. The lower room was the hall, and the upper apartment was called a folar, or foller {folarium), a word which has been fuppofed to be derived from fol, the fun, which was more felt in this upper room than in the lower, inafmuch as it was better lighted — it was the funny room. Yet, even here, the windows were fmall, and without glafs. We learn from Joscelin de Brakelonde that, in the year 1182, Samfon, abbot of Bury, while lodging in a grange, or manor-houfe, belonging to his abbey, narrowly efcaped being burnt with the houfe, becaufe the only door of the upper ftory in which he was lodged happened to be locked, and the windows were too narrow to admit of his paffing through them. In the early Enghfli "Ancren Riewle," or rule of nuns, publiflied by the Camden Society, there are feveral allufions to the windows of the parlour, or private room, which fliow that they were not glazed, but ufually covered with a cloth, or blind, which allowed fufficient light to pafs, and that they had fliutters on hinges which clofed them entirely. In talking of the danger of indulging the eyes, the writer of this treatife (p. jo) fays, " My dear filters, love your windows" — they are called in the original text thurles, holes through the wall — " as little as you may, and let them be fmall, and the parlour's leafl: and narroweft ; let the cloth in them be twofould, black cloth, the crofs white within and without." The writer goes on to moralise on the white crofs upon a black ground. In another part of the book (p. 97), the author fuppofes that men may come and feek to converfe with the nuns through the window, and goes on to fay, " If any man become lb mad and unreafonable that he put forth his hand towards the window- cloth