Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/73

] armorial escutcheon above it; projections, recessses, tall chimneys, flanking buttresses, handsome oriel windows, and pointed gables, terminated by some animal belonging to the emblazonry of the family. They were commonly adorned with fanes, in the form of the military banner of the chief, duly emblazoned in proper colours. Within, the great hall, with its open groined roof, the kitchen, and the buttery, cut the principal figure. At the upper end of the hall was the dais or raised part, on which stood the table of the lord and his immediate family or particular guests; and below the great salt-cellar sat the remainder of the establishment. At the lower end was commonly a music gallery. The fire was still frequently in the centre of the hall, and a hole in the roof to permit the smoke to escape, as at Penshurst, where the front of the music gallery is true perpendicular. In other houses there were large open fireplaces, the mantlepieces of which were frequently richly carved with the armorial shields of the family.



The floors were still strewn with fresh rushes instead of a carpet, and the walls were hung with arras, which clothed them and at the same time kept out cold draughts. Plaster ceilings were yet unknown. The greater portion of these houses, however, was required for the sleeping apartments of the numerous retainers.

In the humbler halls, granges, and farmhouses, the same plan of building round a quadrangle was mostly adhered to, and a great number of such houses were of framed timber, with ornamental gables and porches, and displaying much carving. Great Chatfield manor-house in Wiltshire, Harlaxton in Licolnshire, Helmingham Hall, Norfolk, Moreton Hall in Cheshire, and probably some of the framed timber houses of Lancashire, as the Hall-in-the-Wood. Smithell's, Speke Hall, &c., in whole or in part, date from this period. Ockwells, in Berkshire, is another of the fine old timber houses of this period.

In the towns the houses were also chiefly of wood. The streets were extremely narrow, and the upper stories of the houses projected over the lower ones, so that you might almost shake hands out of the third or fourth story windows. This was the cause of such frequent fires as occurred in London. Many of the small houses in these narrow streets wero adorned with abundance of carving. The houses or inns of the great barons, prelates, and abbots were extensive, and surrounded inner courts. Here, during Parliament, and on other great occasions, the owners came with their vast retinues. We are told that the Duke of York lodged with 400 men in Baynard's Castle, in 1457. The Earl of Warwick had his house in Warwick Lane, still called after it, where he could lodge 800 men. At another house of his called the Herber, meaning an inn, the Earl of Salisbury, his father, lodged with 500 men. Still more extensive must have been the abodes of the Earls of Exeter and Northumberland, who occasionally brought retinues of from 800 to 1,500 men. The sites of these great houses are yet known, and bear the names of their ancient owners, but the buildings themselves have long vanished. The great houses of Scotland still kept up the show of feudal strength and capability of defence. The Peels, or Border towers, yet bear evidence of the necessity of stout fortification in those times. We may form some idea of the devastation made amongst private dwellings in the Wars of the Roses, from the statement of John Rous, the Warwick antiquary, who says that no fewer than sixty villages, some of them large and populous, with churches and manor-houses, had been destroyed within twelve miles of that city. From all that we can learn, the common people of this age were but indifferently lodged, and the mansions of the great were more stately than comfortable.



Though such extensive destruction of the statuary which adorned both the exterior and interior of our churches took place at the Reformation, sufficient yet remains to warrant us in the belief that the fifteenth surpassed every prior century in its sculpture. The very opposition which the Wycliffites had raised to the worship and even existence of images, seems to have stimulated