Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/379

 a?id Sentiments. o rg CHAPTER XVn. SLOW PROGRESS OF SOCIETY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. ENLARGE- MENT OF THE HOUSES. THE HALL AND ITS FURNITURE. ARRANGE- MENT OF THE TABLE FOR MEALS. ABSENCE OF CLEANLINESS. MANNERS AT TABLE. THE PARLOUR. THE progrefs of fociety in the two countries which were moll clofely aUied in this refpe6t, England and France, was ilow during the fifteenth century. Both countries were engaged either in mutual hof- tihty or in deiblating civil wars, which fo utterly checked all fpirit of improvement, that the afped of fociety differed little between the begin- ning and the end of the century in anything but drefs. At the clofe of the fourteenth century, the middle claffes in England had made great advance in wealth and in independence, and the wars of the rofes, which were fo deftruftive to the nobility, as well as the tendency of the crown to let the gentry up as a balance to the power of the feudal barons, helped to make that advance more certain and rapid. This increafe of wealth appears in the multiplication of furniture and of other houfehold implements, efpecially thofe of a more valuable defcription. We are furprifed, in running our eye through the wills and inventories during this period, at the quantity of plate which was ufually poffeffed by country gentlemen and refpedable burghers. There was alio a great increafe both in the number and magnitude of the houfes which intervened between the callle and the cottage. Inftead of having one or two bed- rooms, and turning people into the hall to lleep at night, we now find whole fuits of chambers ; while, where before, the family lived chiefly in the hall, privacy was fought by the addition of parlours, of which there were often more than one in an ordinary fized houfe. I'he hall was in fii6l already beginning to diminifli in importance in comparifon with the rell of