Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/36

4 civil strife of the fifteenth century. As the fifteenth century advanced castle-building ceased. Towns were still walled, but private dwellings in England—for in Scotland and Ireland, as well as on the Borders, the need for defensive buildings was still apparent—gradually dispensed with the visible tokens of the age of insecurity. Battlements became an ornament rather than a protection. Moats were no longer dug, though here Wolsey kept up the fashion of the former age, and before the great gate of his house had a deep and wide ditch with a drawbridge of the ancient sort. The details of the houses followed the principle which had begun to rule their general appearance. Windows were made much larger all through the century, till with the sixteenth century we have the great windows which are so characteristic of the building of the Cardinal and the King. The great dining-hall declined, though in houses of much state it survived, as at Hampton Court, in much of its old splendour. The custom of the great men dining in common with their households was dying out, as More's "Utopia," in its plea for a common hall and common hospitality, so clearly shows. On the other hand, the comforts of the individual were far more carefully attended to. The first court of Wolsey's great building consists entirely of guest-chambers. The lavish decoration within attempted to counterbalance the economy of architectural detail without. Windows, in which the tracery no longer excites admiration by its beauty and grace, were filled with rich glass and overhung