Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/485

 and Sentiments. 465 hall. A few plain jugs, fuch as thofe reprelented in our cut No. 294, taken from a wooden fculptnre in the church of Kirby Thorpe, in Yorkfliire, with platters or trenchers in pewter or wood, formed the whole table fervice of the inferior claffes. It was the revolution in the middle of the feventeenth century which firll abolilhed this extravagant oftentation, and brought into falhion a plainer table and more fubllantial meats. A foreigner, who had been much in England in the latter part of the feventeenth century, and pub- lilTied his obfervations in French at the Hague in 1698, tells us that the Englifh of that period were great eaters of meat—" I have heard," fays he, " of many people in England who have never eaten bread, and ordinarily they eat very little ; they nibble fometimes a little bit, while they eat flelh by great mouth- fuls. Generally fpeaking, the tables are not ^°- 294- D'-'"ki"g ^#/^- ferved with delicacy in England. There are fonie great lords who hav'e French and Englifh cooks, and where you are ferved much in the French falhion ; but among perfons of the middle condition of which I am Ipeak- ing, they have ten or twelve forts of common meat, which infallibly come round again in their turns at ditferent times, and of two dilhes of which their dinner is compofed, as for inftance, a pudding, and a piece of roall beef. Sometimes they will have a piece boiled, and then it has always lain in fait fome days, and is flanked all round with Ave or lix mounds of cabbage, carrots, turnips, or fome other herbs or roots, feafoned with fait and pepper, with melted butter poured over them. At other times they will have a leg of mutton, roafted or boiled, and accompanied with the fame delicacies; poultry, fucking pigs, tripe, and beef tongues, rabbits, pigeons, all well foaked with butter, without bacon. Two of thefe dilhes, always ferved one after the other, make the ordinary dinner of a good gentle- man, or of a good burgher. When they have boiled meat, there is fometimes fomebody who takes a fancy to broth, hich conlills of the 3 o water