Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/446

 426 Hijiory of Domejlic Manners time." "No," replies the damoifelle, "we mull fpend our evening in dancing, and cannot do as you, who go to bed at the fame time as your hens." It has been ftated already that, even in the higheft ranks of fociety, the ladies were ufually employed at home on ufeful, and often on profit- able work. This work embraced the various procelfes in the manufa6hire of linen and cloth, as well as the making it up into articles of drefs, and embroidery, netting, and other fimilar occupations. The fpinning-wheel was a necelfary implement in every houfehold, from the palace to the cottage. In 1437, John Notyngham, a rich grocer of Bury St. Edmunds, bequeathed to one of his legatees, "j fpynnyng whel et j par carpfarum," meaning probably "a pair of cards," an implement which is flated in the "Promptorium Parvulorum" to be efpecially a "wommanys inftrument." A few years previoufly, in 1418, Agnes Stubbard, a refident in the fame town, bequeathed to two of her maids, each, one pair of wool-combs, one " kembyng-ftok" (a combing-ftock, or machine for holding the wool to be combed), one wheel, and one pair of cards 3 and to another woman a pair of wool-combs, a wheel, and a pair of cards. John Baret, of Bury, in 1463, evidently a rich man with a very large houfe and houfehold, fpeaks in his will of a part of the houfe, or probably a room, which was diftinguilhed as the "fpinning houfe." Our cut No. 265, from an illuminated Bible of the fifteenth century in the Imperial Library at Paris (No. 6829), reprefents a woman of apparently an ordinary clafs of fociety at work with her dlllatf under her arm. The next cut (No. 266) is taken from a fine illuminated manu- fcript of the well-known French "Boccace des Nobles Femmes," and illuflirates the ftory of " Cyrille," the wife of king Tarquin. We have here a queen and her maidens employed in the fame kind of domeftic labours. The lady on the left is occupied with her combs, or cards, and her combing-flock 3 the other fits at her diftaft^, alfo fupported by a fl;ock, infl;ead No. 265. Lady at her Dijiaff.