Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/492

 472 Hijiory of DofiieJUc Manners in the change from tables of this kind appears to have been to fix the treftles to the board, thus making it a permanent table. The whole was ftrengthened by a bar running from treftle to treflle, and ornamental wood-work was afterwards fubftituted in place of the treftles. A rather good example of a table of this defcription is given in the cut on the preceding page (No. 295), taken from that well-known publication, the " Stultifera Navis" of Sebaftian Brandt. This, however, was a clumfy conftru6tion, and it foon gave way to the table with legs, the latter being ufually turned on the lathe, and fometimes richly carved. This carving went out of ufe in the unoftentatious days of the Commonwealth and the Prote6torate, to make way for plain table legs, and it never quite recovered its place. We have feen already that in the latter part of the previous century, in the chairs and ftools, the joinery work of Flanders was taking the place 296. Htnry VlII.-s Chair of the older rude and clumly feats. This tafte ftill prevailed in the earlier half of the fixteenth century, and a large proportion of the furniture ufed in this country, as well as of the earthenware and other houfehold