Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/277

 and Se?:timeJifs. 257 fubje6l of confiderable pride, no doubt from the circumftance of the bed- room being a place for receiving vifitors. There were fometimes two or more beds in the fame room, and vifitors llept in the fame chamber with the hofl: and hoftefs. Beds were alfo made for the occafion, without bedfteads, fometimes in the hall, at others in the chamber befide the ordinary bed, or in fome other room. The plots of many mediaeval ftories turn on thefe circumftances. People therefore kept extra materials for miaking the beds. In the " Roman du Meunier d'Arleux," when a maiden comes as an unexpected vifitor, a place is chofen for her by the fide of the fire, and a foft bed is laid down, with very expenfive flieets, and a coverlet " warm and furred " — Kieiite m'jle, Vinchex nrJt ciner, Et CG-vertoir chaut et forre. One cuftom continued to prevail during the whole of this period, — that of fleeping in bed entirely naked. So many allufions to this practice occur in the old writers, that it is hardly necelfary to fay more than ftate the fad. Not unfrequently this cuftom is ftill more ftrongly exprefled by flating that people went to bed as naked as they were born j as in fome moral lines in the " Reliquiae Antiquae" (ii. 15), againft the pride of the ladies, who are told that, however gay may be their clothing during the day, they will lie in bed at night as naked as they were born. It is true that in fome inftances in the illuminations perfons are feen in bed with fome kind of clothing on, but this was certainly an exception to the rule, and there is generally fome particular reafon for it. Thus, in the " Roman de la Violette" (p. 31), the lady Oriant excites the furprife of her duena by going to bed in a chcmife, and is obliged to explain her reafon for fo fingular a pra6tice, namely, her defire to conceal a mark on her body. Our cut No. 182, taken from the romance of the St. Graal, in the Britiili Mufeum (MS. Addit. No. 10,292, fol. 21, v°), reprcfents a king and queen in bed, both naked. The crowns on their heads are a mere con- ventional method of ftating their rank : kings and queens were not in the habit of lleeping in bed with their crowns on their heads. In the next cut (No. 183), taken from a manufcript of the romance of the L L " Quatre