Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/153

 and Sentiments. 1 3 3 relating to the royal manor at Kennington, "for clofing the windows better than ufual {et infeneftris melius folito claudendis).''* Thefe remarks on the general charafter of the houfe are, of courfe, intended to apply to the ordinary dwelling-houfe, and not to the more exteniive manlion — which already in the thirteenth century was made to furround, wholly or partly, an interior court — or to the caftle. Thefe more extenfive edifices confifted only of a greater accumulation of the rooms and details which were found in the fmaller houfe. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, no great change took place in the general charafteriftics of a private houfe. The hall was ftill the largeft and moft important room, and was now ufually raifed on an under vaulted room, which, to whatever ufe it may have been applied, was ufually called the cellar. Part of it appears to have been fometimes employed as the ftable. In the carpenter's houfe, in Chaucer's Milleres Tale, the hall, which is evidently the main part of the building, was open to the roof, with crofs beams, on which they hanged the troughs, and the ftable was attached to it, and intervened between the houfe and the garden. In the Cokes Tale of Gamelyn, the hall has its pofts, or columns, and there is attached to it a room called a /pence, which was more frequently called the buttery, in which vi6tuals of ditlerent kinds, and the wine and plate, were locked up, and the man who had the charge of it was called the fpencer or defpenccr, which it is hardly neceflary to fay was the origin of two common Englifh furnames. The gentleman's houfe, in Chaucer's Sompnoures Tale, was a " large halle," and is called a court, which had now become an ordinary term for a manor-houfe. Aftordy paas doun to the court he goth, Wher ai ther ivonyd a man of gret honour. — Chaucer's Cant. Tales, 1. 7,744. In the Nonne Preftes Tale, the poor widow's cottage alfo has its hall and lour, or chamber, although they were all footy, of courfe, from the fires, which had no chimney to carry off the fmoke. Fu! footy ivas h'lr hour, and eek h'lr halle. — lb. 1. 16,318. kyncr Alisaunder (Weber, i. 312), the windows are made "of riche glas." This
 * In the description of a splendid hall, in the Enolish metrical romance of