The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844. Various
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Hall was the dining-room of William Rufus, and might frequently perhaps not be too large for his company. It was reckoned a piece of magnificence in Thomas à Becket that he strewed the floor of his hall with clear hay or rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires who could not get seats might not spoil their fine clothes when they sat down on the floor to eat their dinner. The great Earl of Warwick is said to have entertained every day, at his different manors, thirty thousand people; and though the number may have been exaggerated, it must however have been very great to admit of such exaggeration. The personal expenses of the great proprietors having gradually increased with the extension of commerce and manufactures, it was impossible that the number of their retainers should not as gradually diminish. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau, for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but in the wantonness of plenty for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the play-things of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesmen in a city.
The planta-genista or broom having been ordinarily used for strewing floors, became an emblem of humility, and was borne as such by Fulke, Earl of Anjou, grandfather of Henry II., King of England, in his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The name of the royal house of Plantagenet is said to be derived from this circumstance.
Eleven continued to be the dining hour of the nobility, down to the middle of the seventeenth century, though it was still kept up to ten o’clock in the Universities, where the established system is not so easily altered as in private families. ••• The lord and his principal guests sate at the upper end of the first table, which was therefore called the lord’s board-end. The officers of his household and inferior guests at long tables below in the hall. In the middle of each table stood a great salt-cellar, and as particular care was taken to place the guests according to their rank, it became a mark of distinction whether a person sate above or below the salt. ••• Pewter plates in the reign of Henry VIII. were too costly to be used in common by the highest nobility. In Rymer’s Fœdera is a license granted in 1430 for a ship to carry certain commodities for the express use of the King of Scotland, among which are particularly mentioned a supply of pewter dishes and wooden trenchers. ‘Octo duodenis vasorum de pewter, mille et ducentis ciphis ligneis.’
The use of forks did not prevail in England till the reign of James I.
In the list of birds served up to table were many fowls which are now discarded as little better than rank carrion, such as cranes, lapwings, sea-gulls, bitterns, ruffs, kerlews, etc.
The use of coaches is said to have been first introduced into England by Fitz-Allan, earl of Arundel, A. D. 1580. Before that time ladies chiefly rode on horseback, either single on their palfreys, or double, behind some person on a pillion. In cases of sickness or bad weather, they had horse-litters and vehicles called chairs, or carrs, or charres. Glazed windows were introduced into England, A. D. 1180.
The ceilings of that part of Wresill Castle left standing by the Commonwealth’s soldiers still appear richly carved, and the sides of the rooms are ornamented with a great profusion of ancient sculpture finely executed in wood, exhibiting the ancient bearings, crests, badges and devices of the Percy family, in a great variety of forms, set off with all the advantages of painting, gilding and imagery. ••• Noblemen in Henry the Eighth’s time were obliged to carry all the beds, hangings and furniture with them when they removed. The usual manner of hanging the rooms in the old castles was only to cover the naked walls with tapestry or arras hung upon tenter hooks, from which they were easily taken down upon every removal. On such an occasion the number of carts employed in a considerable family must have formed a caravan nearly as large as those which traverse the deserts of the East. ••• At the time of the Northumberland House-hold book, glass, though it had perhaps been long applied to the decorating churches, was not very commonly used in dwelling-houses or castles.
Rooms provided with chimnies are noticed as a luxury by the author of Pierce Ploughman. ‘Now,’ says an author still more recent, ‘have we many chimnies, and yet our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs and poses, (colds in the head.) Then had we none but rere dosses, (plates of iron or a coating of brick to enable the wall to resist the flame,) and our heads did never ache. For as the smoke in those days was supposed to be a sufficient hardening for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keep the good man and his family from the quacke, (ague,) or pose, wherewith, as then, very few were oft acquainted.’
IDYLL
IN IMITATION OF THEOCRITUS, BY WILLIAM CHIDDON
Thou wanderer where the wild wood ceaseless breathes
The sweetly-murmuring strain, from falling rills
Or soft autumnal gales; O! seek thou there
Some fountain gurgling from the rifted rock,
Of pure translucent wave, whose margent green
Is loved by gentlest nymphs, and all the train
Of that chaste goddess of the silver bow;
For silent, shady groves, by purling springs,
Delight the train, and through the gliding hours
Their nimble feet in mazy trances wind;
And oft at eve, the wondering swain hath heard
The Arcadian pipe and breathing minstrelsy,
From joyous troops of those rude deities
Whose homes are on the steep and rocky mount,
Or by the silver wave in woody dell,
And know the shrine, with flowery myrtles veiled,
All lonely placed by that wild mountain stream,
That from the sacred hills, like Hippocrene,
With warbling numbers, softly glides along.
Kneel humbly there, and at the auspicious time,
Invoke the listening spirit to my aid,
That I may fly the nymph of shapely form,
Whose fragrant brow inwoven wreaths adorn,
Of blushing rose and ivy tendrils green.
Then swear for me to deck the favoring shrine
With flowrets, blooming from the lap of Spring,
And on the sculptured pile, with solemn vow,
The tender kid devote in sacrifice.
So may my heaving bosom rest serene,
Nor winged spells incite the soul again
To love the soft eyed maid Zenophyle.
THE LEGEND OF DON RODERICK
NUMBER TWO
The course of our legendary narration now returns to notice the fortunes of Count Julian, after his departure from Toledo, to resume his government on the coast of Barbary. He left the Countess Frandina at Algeziras, his paternal domain, for the province under his command was threatened with invasion. In fact, when he arrived at Ceuta he found his post in imminent danger from the all-conquering Moslems. The Arabs of the East, the followers of Mahomet, having subjugated several of the most potent oriental kingdoms, had established their seat of empire at Damascus, where, at this time, it was filled by Waled Almanzor, surnamed ‘the Sword of God.’ From thence the tide of Moslem conquest had rolled on to the shores of the Atlantic; so that all Almagreb, or Western Africa, had submitted to the standard of the prophet, with the exception of a portion of Tingitania, lying along the straits; being the province held by the Goths of Spain, and commanded by Count Julian. The Arab