DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND, 1488-1688 JOHN WARRAC1 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND PLATE 1 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND, 1488-1688 A SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF FURNITURE AND HOUSEHOLD USAGE (Rhind Lectures in Archaeology, 1919-20) BY JOHN WARRAGK WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS PREFACE FEW realise how modern are the con- ceptions of comfort and decency which inspire the furnishing and arrangements of our present-day homes, or how different were the conditions in which, only a few cen- turies ago, our forefathers spent their lives. Till the beginning of the seventeenth century chairs for ordinary household use were un- known. Hats were worn at meals. Washing formed no part of the morning toilet, even in Charles IPs time, and very few in any country in Europe washed their faces every day. The use of forks did not become general till the eighteenth century, and food was picked from the general dish and raised to the mouth with the ringers. The development of Domestic Life has not, I think, hitherto been studied as a continuous process, nor traced to its social and historical origins, though many of its details have been worked out and much knowledge of a frag- mentary kind has been accumulated. In trying to reconstruct the domestic life of Scotland at various epochs in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to trace the lines of development, I have had 2039745 vi DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND recourse to the comparison and analysis of many hundreds of early inventories which are to be found among the national documents preserved in the Register House, and the study of these records has resulted in much new and curious information as to the details of house- hold life in early times. I have also drawn freely on early Scottish literature, including biographies, journals and account books, for material likely to put my readers into more living touch with the men, women and children of the times with which I have dealt. While the book deals mainly with Scotland, there are many references to the social develop- ment of England, France and other countries in western Europe. For a general enquiry there is a certain advantage in the smaller and less crowded stage. To the non- Scottish reader I would address the invitation and guarantee given by a character in a witty French comedy : Mon camarade Aliens faire au jardin un tour de promenade ! Suivez-moi sans rien craindre ; il est dans mes principes De ne forcer personne & louer nos tulipes ! To express in detail all my obligations to those who have helped me would overweight my book. But I must acknowledge the kind- ness of Sir James Balfour Paul, C.V.O., in reading my proofs ; of Mr. F. C. Eeles in advising me as to the contents of the Oratory in the second Lecture ; of Prof. Hannay and Dr. Hay Fleming ; and of Dr. Thomas Ross, Dr. William Kelly, A.R.S.A., Aberdeen, and PREFACE vii Mr. James Beveridge, Linlithgow. My best thanks are also due to those who have allowed me to reproduce articles in their possession among my illustrations. 13 ROTHESAY TERRACE EDINBURGH CONTENTS LECTURE I IN FEUDAL DAYS : A MEDIAEVAL CASTLE THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY Poverty of the country Unsettled conditions Scarcity of native timber Foreign trade : ex- ports and imports Inferences as to social condi- tions in Scotland and in Flanders Value of knowledge of early social life in interpreting early literature The mediaeval castle and its furnishings An evening meal Washing the hands Early codes of manners and rules for behaviour Table arrangements The salt-fatt, dishes, spoons, and serviotts Arrangements and furnishing of the hall " Till necessitie and nocht til decore " The dais The hie burde Literary references The parelling The comptar or counter : origin and line of development The chalmer of des : its position and uses Bed- rooms Beds and canopies The futegang pages 1-31 x DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND LECTURE II THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH : A PRE-REFORMA- TION MANSE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The wealth of the Church as a factor in the Reforma- tion movement Relation of the movement to the Renaissance Humanism within the Church The Parson of Stobo ; his revenues, etc. The manse in Glasgow and its inmates A dis- appointed nephew The parson's bedchamber Rich hangings and furniture An unexpected apparition Coffers and chests and their contents Early regulations as to clerical costume The parson's costly apparel " The oratour within his hous " The altar and its furnishings Vest- ments Sacred and secular books The hall Carved furniture Cupboard of plate Signifi- cance of plate in mediaeval times The kitchen " Large tabling and belly cheer " Stores of pro- visions and fuel Riding kit and armour Sport and recreations Tame animals An early chim- ing clock The parson's death The people and the Church ..... pages 32-62 LECTURE III THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS ; A CLOTH MER- CHANT'S HOUSE ; AND SOME DECORATIVE ARTS THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY Continued The three estates Rising importance of the burgher class Dwelling-house of a sixteenth-century cloth merchant The hall Armour The bed- chamber Agricultural implements The booth " Ane hingand brod of oley cullouris " CONTENTS xi Early interest in painting in Scotland Pictures and painted cloths The burgesses as art patrons and introducers of foreign products and ideas The " keiking glass " The alarm clock Some items in the inventory of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount Wood-carving in Scotland Domestic panelling Linenfold and other pat- terns Carved wood from Montrose At Ethie Castle From Threave Castle Cardinal Beaton's panels at Balfour House Embroidery in early times Its development in the sixteenth century Queen Mary's embroideries " Story work " Various examples The Rehoboam set The Earl of Morton's set Probable date and origin pages 63-97 LECTURE IV THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM AND THE DEVELOP- MENT OF FAMILY LIFE JAMES VI, 1578-1625 New conceptions of domestic life Historical origins of the change Passing away of feudalism Ex- pansion of trade and increasing importance of the towns Enrichment of the nobles by partition of Church property An era of building Domes- tic character of the new architecture Feudal lords transformed into courtiers, with luxurious standards of living Changes in domestic arrange- ments The hall gives place to the dining-room The " Dravand Buird " Table manners at Court and in private life Table ware, etc. Display of plate Cupboards with " gries " The dresser Dessert and the banquet The parlour Stuffed chairs The taffel Books : the Family Bible Pictures Music Life of the leisured classes Men's employments and xii DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND recreations How a lady of fashion spent her day Dietetic dangers and some medical counsels Children's toys A boy's penknife Duncan's new doublet .... v pages 98-134 LECTURE V THE KING OR THE COVENANT CHARLES I, 1625-1649 The Covenanting Period Ascetic views of life A Covenanter's courtship, with an eighteenth-cen- tury contrast Conditions unfavourable to the development of furniture New Scottish indus- tries Furniture and fashions from London A Scottish nobleman's house " The laiche hall " The dining-room and silver plate The draw- ing-room New ideas in furniture and ornaments The lettermeitt house Bedrooms Develop- ment of beds in Scotland The knop sek The strek bed The letacamp bed Kaissit beds The box-bed or buistie The " laych-rynnand " or truckle bed The laird's mistake The four- poster Royal beds Devices on the Queen of Scots' bed Mourning beds and mourning cus- toms Queen Mary's bed-curtains from Loch Leven Heraldic decoration of beds Changing fashions in colours and colour names . . 135-172 LECTURE VI THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE RESTORATION 1649-1688 The restoration of the Monarchy Irreconcilable differences Organised and harmonious national life impossible Persecutions The Acts of Indul- gence Inducements to accept the established CONTENTS xiii regime History of the times reflected in furni- ture Severe and utilitarian character of Com- monwealth furniture Restoration chairs and day-beds Chairs as evidences of changes in the treatment of floors Easy chairs Extravagance of the Court Exotic materials Cabinets The chest of drawers Tea, coffee and cocoa Walnut tables The virginalls Barred grates Forks not yet in use Scottish diarists Social life of the time Billiards Horse racing The kirk stool Going to church Giving out the line The hour- glass Periwigs, powder and Sedan chairs, as preluding the eighteenth century Conclusion pages 173-206 INDEX . . . . . . . .207-213 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I. Bedroom of Mary Queen of Scots (temp. James VII). Holyrood Palace FRONTISPIECE FACING PAGE II. Oak Chair (fifteenth century). In Trinity Hall, Aberdeen . . . . .12 III. Tapestry Panel (fifteenth century) showing children's games. (Property of W. Burrell, Esq.) . . . . .14 IV. Carved Oak Panels from Montrose. (Pro- perty of P. W. Campbell, Esq., W.S.) . 78 V. Carved Oak Panels in Balfour House, Nos. i and 2 . . . . . . .80 VI. Carved Oak Panels in Balfour House, Nos. 3 and 4. (Property of Capt. C. B. Balfour, of Newton Don.) .... 82 VII. Needlework Panel by Mary Queen of Scots. Hardwick Hall. (Property of the Duke of Devonshire.) ..... 88 VIII. Needlework Panel (c. 1580) from Dalmahoy. (Property of the Earl of Morton.) . . 92 IX. " Ane Drawand Buird," or Extending Table. (Property of the Earl of Home.) . .108 X. Indented Aumrie, known as " Queen Anna's Press." (Property of Sir John Sterling Maxwell, Bart.) . . . . .120 XI. " Paire of Organis " (fifteenth century) from Triptych by Van der Goes at Holyrood Palace ...... 124 XII. Bed-Curtains from Loch Leven. (Property of Sir Charles Bruce, of Arnot.)_ . .170 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv XIII. Crown Chairs : (a) (Property of Sir John Stirling Maxwell, Bart.) (b) With Thistle decoration. Holyrood Palace . 178 XIV. Sleeping Chair. Holyrood Palace . . 182 XV. Cabinet (Charles II) at Lennoxlove. (Pro- perty of Major W. A. Baird.) . . 186 XVI. Virginals (Charles II). (Property of Miss Simpson, Edinburgh.) . . . .190 NOTE. The Illustrations from Holyrood are by permission of the King, to whom the copyright belongs. DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND 1488-1688 LECTURE I IN FEUDAL DAYS: A MEDIEVAL CASTLE THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY Poverty of the country Unsettled conditions Scarcity of native timber Foreign trade : exports and imports Inferences as to social conditions in Scotland and in Flan- ders Value of knowledge of early social life in interpreting early literature The mediaeval castle and its furnishings An evening meal Washing the hands Early codes of manners and rules for behaviour Table arrangements The salt-fatt, dishes, spoons, and serviotts Arrangements and furnishing of the hall " Till necessitie and nocht til decore " The dais The hie burde Literary references The parelling The comptar or counter : origin and line of development The chalmer of des : its position and uses Bedrooms Beds and canopies The futegang. IF, among the nations of Europe, Scotland has played but a humble part in the development of design in furniture, the facts of nature and of history at least supply a simple explanation. A high standard of domestic comfort is the outcome of a long experience of national prosperity, and the sure index of a well established social order. Now it is true that, in intellectual culture, Scotland had reached even in mediaeval times 2 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND a level which, considering her scattered popula- tion and her meagre opportunities, is remark- able. But if her reputation in letters was secure, so alas was her poverty proverbial. " What could have brought us hither ? " asked the French knights who, as Froissart tells us, had come over in 1385 to march against England ; " we have never known till now what was meant by poverty and hard living ! " It would be easy to collect similar testimonies from those who have left records of their journeyings in Scotland, but the task would be both dismal and unnecessary. Some of these writers speak of the Scots with kindliness, some with contempt ; but there is hardly one among them who has not recorded some im- pression of the poverty of the country. Some hundreds of years ago it was a current jibe in France that when the Devil led our Lord into a high mountain and showed him all the king- doms of the earth and the glory thereof, he thought it discreet to make one reservation. He " keipit his meikle thoomb on Scotland." But besides being a poor country, Scotland was also a singularly unsettled one. By a misfortune of geography it was her richest provinces that lay exposed to the devastating raids from the English border. History too brought her mischances. The long series of regencies during the minorities of the Jameses IN FEUDAL DAYS 8 gave rise to bitter jealousies and family feuds among the nobles ; and from the consequences of these factions and the social anarchy they brought in their train, not even the most peace- able country folk could count themselves secure. " Sum time," says Lyndsay of the Mount : Sum time the realme was reulit be Regentis, Sum time lufetenantis, ledaris of the law ; Than rang sa mony inobedientis That few or nane stude of ane other aw ; Oppression did sa lowd hys bugle blaw That nane durst ride bot into feir of weir ; Jok-upon-land that time did mis his meir." This is no fancy picture. Jok-upon-land, the decent peasant extorting a precarious living from an unkindly soil, was but too often a sufferer from the violence of the times. The records of actions for restoration of " spuilzie " not only tell us of such lawless deeds done by one noble to another, but they are full of petty and ruthless damage done to poor people who had little to lose. We read of attacks on richly furnished houses, and we have but to turn the page to find some poor Jok-upon-land com- plaining of " scaitht to his horse," another bent on recovering " auchteen pence takyn furth of hys purs," and a third claiming a still smaller sum for " hys wyfis hois and schone " ; while the august pages of the Ada Dominorum Concilii have embalmed for us the memory of " ane callit Cutsy," of whom only this has 4 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND come down to us, that in a bitter hour four hundred and thirty years ago, he, or possibly she, suffered the " wrangous, violent and maisterful spoliatioun of twa sarkis." To us these acts of oppression bring this compensation, that as the law required that the pursuer in an action for restitution should set forth under oath " the avail and quantitie of the gudis," we have a series of documents giving details and valuations of household gear in early times, of which we should otherwise have had but scanty record. Yet we cannot but realise as we read them, what tragedies of domestic life they describe, tragedies none the less moving that their scale is sometimes so pitifully small. They bring home to us that, for rich and poor alike, life was at the mercy of shocks and dislocations of every kind. Neither for life nor for property was there any security. And we must acknowledge that, in conditions so unsettled, it was hardly possible that there should be any equable and progressive develop- ment of the arts of peace. Even if conditions had, however, been other- wise more favourable, Scotland would still have been at a disadvantage in the matter of furniture owing to her comparative dearth of fine timber. Not that Scotland was the treeless waste that some would have us believe. There was a fair amount of oak in the neighbourhood of Inver- IN FEUDAL DAYS 5 ness, as we know from the early records of that town, while the forest of Badenoch produced quantities of fir trees. Artillery wheels for the raid of Norham were made in Melrose wood ; timber was got at the same time from Clydes- dale and the wood of Cockpen ; while James IV used to send messengers to the Forest of Tern- way, or Darnaway, in Morayshire, to " ger fell tymmir " there. We have particulars, too, of timber felled at Luss, and elsewhere in the neighbourhood of Loch Lomond, in connection with the King's barge, built at Dumbarton in 1494. Still, the visitor who had passed through England could not but be struck with the comparative scarcity of trees in Scotland ; and though Nicander Nucius, writing in 1545, states that the whole island abounds with marshes and well-timbered oak forests, it is questionable whether his journey actually ex- tended to Scotland. We know that, as a matter of fact, Scotland depended mainly on her im- ports of " eastland burdis " from the Baltic ; and it is safe to conclude that Scotland was poorly supplied with timber, though not to the extent suggested by Sir Anthony Weldon when he said that " had Christ been betrayed in this country, Judas had sooner found the grace of repentance than a tree to hang himself on." But any preliminary survey of the conditions affecting Scottish domestic life and its equip- ment would be incomplete and wholly mis- leading if it did not look beyond the boundaries of the country itself. Even in mediaeval times Scotland cannot be considered as existing " in vacuo," or as insulated from foreign contacts. We must have some idea of how social condi- tions in Scotland compared with those ruling elsewhere, and particularly in those countries with which she had intimate relations ; and we must know something of the channels through which the influences of countries with a more highly organised social and domestic life were conveyed to her. Even in England the standard of domestic comfort was, up to the end of the fifteenth century, much lower than in the prin- cipal countries on the continent of Europe. Indeed, even fifty years later, the Spaniards are said to have remarked, " These English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the King." In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, how- ever, there was a clear advance towards comfort and elegance in house equipment, and furniture of some artistic pretension began to be intro- duced. For guidance in such matters England naturally looked to France and Flanders, and there was, in fact, little important furniture in England which was not either of foreign origin or at least of foreign inspiration. It need hardly be said that Scotland, with her smaller IN FEUDAL DAYS 7 population, her poorer communities and her ruder material civilisation, was even more dependent on her contact with foreign coun- tries for an advancing standard of domestic comfort and artistic seemliness. Fortunately we have, in the Ledger of Andrew Halyburton, an authoritative document as to Scottish trade with the Netherlands in the closing years of the fifteenth century. Halyburton was an enter- prising Scottish commission merchant, estab- lished at Middelburg, and doing business also at Bruges, Antwerp and elsewhere ; and his clientele included many leading churchmen and laymen in Scotland, as well as many of the tradesmen who supplied goods to the Royal Household. An examination of his Ledger shows that the exports from Scotland consisted almost entirely of unmanufactured products ; a few bales of Scottish cloth seem to be the only exception. The bulk of the trade is in skins, wool and fish, and even these do not always arrive in creditable condition. It must be confessed that the exports give a disappointing picture of the productiveness and industry of the country, and we have to correct this im- pression by reminding ourselves that most of the necessaries and some of the luxuries for home consumption were produced by native industry. The imports from Flanders are much more 8 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND various and interesting, and they may be ex- amined in more detail because of the light they throw on the social life of the time. We are struck at once, for instance, with the large proportion of dress materials, velvets and damasks, silks and satins, as well as humbler stuffs such as " ryssillis cloth," buckram and fustian. At first sight this seems inconsistent with the idea of Scotland's poverty ; but we may recall Pedro de Ayala's contemporaneous statement that the people of Scotland spent all they had to keep up appearances, and were as well dressed as it was possible to be in such a country. It must be kept in mind too that a mediaeval conception of society regulated the laws of costume ; and the demand for costly materials is to some extent explained by the fact that they had a definite significance in announcing the rank and social importance of the wearer. Next to the trade in dress materials comes that in groceries, spices and wines, and the variety of these shows a rather more luxurious standard of living than we might have expected. There was, for instance, a demand for olives, as well as for figs, almonds, raisins and dates, and for spices and confections of many kinds ; while there are frequent puncheons of " claret Gas- chcro," " Mawvyssie " and other wines, includ- ing some from the Rhine. Next may be men- IN FEUDAL DAYS 9 tioned the trade in church and domestic fur- nishings, a trade which considerably increased in the following century, but was meanwhile of no great volume. To its details I must return later. Another interesting import consists of illuminated books, chiefly porteuses and brev- iaries, and there are occasional shipments of a ream or half ream of paper. It will be noticed that in all that has been enumerated there is little that is not destined for immediate use. If we look for materials for work to be done in Scotland, we find little beyond madder, for dyeing ; some iron, for smith-work ; gun- powder, carts and wheelbarrows for quarrying and building ; white and red lead and vermilion, and gold and silver foil, probably for decoration of churches and other buildings ; and sewing silks for embroidery. Now consider for a moment what is implied in the contrast between the exports from Scot- land and the imports from Flanders. Scotland, as we have seen, exported practically nothing but fish, wool and skins fish speared or netted in her lochs and rivers and estuaries ; wool sheared from the sheep on her hillsides and lowland pastures ; skins of animals shot or snared in her mountains or forests. Thus the whole outward foreign trade of Scotland was based, not on the organised industry of c n- munities of skilled craftsmen and workers, but 10 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND on the primeval callings of the fisherman, the shepherd and the huntsman ! In how different a social atmosphere such a country must have lived from that of one able to send out immense quantities of tapestries, carved furni- ture, vessels of silver and gold, and fruits, spices and wines, to every part of Europe. We must, of course, make a fair allowance for the fact that the Netherlands was a clearing-house for European and extra- European trade. It is something that Scotland was even importing such artistic and other luxuries as Flanders was able to supply ; and it is at least a tribute to Scottish enterprise that these imports were brought in Scottish vessels, commanded and manned by Scotsmen. But it can readily be seen that very little furniture, unless of a rough and merely serviceable kind, was likely to be made in Scotland, and that anything appealing to a more sophisticated taste would be intro- duced from countries having a more highly developed standard of design and workman- ship. This further lesson may be drawn from the facts we have been reviewing, that it would be misleading to transfer to Scotland any general picture of mediaeval life which we may have formed from accounts based on conditions elsewhere. Such accounts are usually drawn from the literature of countries with a wealthy and elaborate civilisation ; from IN FEUDAL DAYS 11 illuminated manuscripts, highly coloured fabliaux, and finely wrought interiors by primitif painters, and they are apt to con- vey an impression that is overcharged and, in its total effect, untrue, even of life in those favoured lands. It would be unreason- able to expect to find in Scotland a country so poor, so unsettled and so isolated any such development of the material setting of social life as existed in Italy, with her splendid artistic traditions ; in Flanders, with her world-wide commerce ; or in France, with her natural taste and the luxury of her brilliant court. Of Scottish Furniture of the fifteenth century little or nothing remains ; nor have we any contemporary illustration to turn to for informa- tion. But just because, in the absence of such material, the subject has been neglected, it is worth while to collect such knowledge as we can derive from literary and documentary sources and to form an idea of mediaeval practice in house-furnishing, and of the social usages on which it was founded. Early Scottish poetry is full of allusions to the arrangements of domestic life, and unless we have some acquaintance with these arrange- ments the allusions must remain obscure, instead of casting a homely light on the poet's thought. It is the more necessary because, while the mediaeval tradition persisted during 12 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND the changes of the sixteenth century, it dis- appeared altogether in the beginning of the seventeenth, and the very words used to describe once-familiar pieces of furniture and traditional domestic arrangements either ac- quired a new meaning or dropped completely out of the language. It was not till two hundred years later, during the Romantic Revival which originated, I suppose, with Hora.ce Walpole and which led up to Sir Walter Scott, that there was a movement to recover a knowledge of mediaeval customs and to exhume the lost vocabulary. As we shall see, the editors who at that time reprinted early Scottish poems were often puzzled by words and allusions which would have been intelligible had they known more of mediaeval life, and they were too apt to tamper light-heartedly with the text, so that they sometimes introduced astonishing anachronisms. Even the pronunciation of for- gotten words was a matter of mere guesswork, and the word " dais," which we pronounce to-day in two syllables, is an instance of such ignorance. In early times in this country it was a monosyllable, as it still is in France. Let us see, therefore, what was the actual fur- nishing of a Scottish Castle in the latter part of the fifteenth century. Arriving at one of these strongholds in the dusk of a winter afternoon, PLATE II jv.-.;^. OAK CHAIR (FIFTEENTH CENTURY) IN TRINITY MALI. ABERDEEN IN FEUDAL DAYS 13 we are led up the winding stone staircase by a retainer swinging a horn lantern. On the first floor is the great hall, an apartment some thirty feet long, or more, in which the evening meal is about to be served. On one side a great fire of turf and peat burns in the wide fireplace, where there is, of course, no barred grate, and casts a ruddy glow through the room. A lad stands holding a metal basin, and the guests wash in turn, water from a laver or ewer being poured over their hands by another servant. A long narrow table is set across one end of the room, and at this the principal persons, some six or eight in number, take their seats with their backs to the wall. This table is known as the " hie burde," and it stands on a dais some inches higher than the rest of the floor, being reserved for the use of the more important guests. On the wall behind them is a piece of tapestry, 1 or a simpler hanging of coloured worsted. The lord of the castle sits in a high- backed chair 2 in the middle, and if he observes great state, there may be a canopy suspended from the ceiling above his seat. On his right and left are the guests seated on benches pro- vided with loose cushions, and sometimes with "bancours" of tapestry or other woven material. The less important members of the household are seated at side tables, and they too have their 1 See Plate III. 2 See Plate II. 14 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND backs to the wall, so that the opposite side of each table is left free for service from the middle of the room. All those seated at the meal have their heads covered, the ladies, according to Scottish fashion, wearing kerchiefs draped from a high structure of real or false hair in the form of two horns a dress which the Spanish ambassador described as the hand- somest in the world. Only the servants are uncovered. The reason for wearing hats at meals seems to have been that it was considered a precaution against the contamination of the food by what a plain-spoken old writer calls " flyes and other fylthe." Our present stan- dards of cleanliness and decency were not reached in a day, and a frank account of some of the table manners of the fifteenth century would fill us with disgust. Even in France people had. to be warned that it was bad manners to spit or blow the nose at meals without turning aside the head ; that one must not struggle to catch fleas at table, nor seek to relieve the irritation of a then prevalent scalp- disease by scratching the head. The table is spread with fair Dornick cloth, a diapered linen first made at Tournai, the same town which the Dutch called Dornewyk. Lighted canals stand on the tables and there are others in tr. chandillars of brass which hang from the roof On the table itself the most PLATE til IN FEUDAL DAYS 15 notable object is the salt-fatt, or salt-cellar, often of elaborate design and considerable size. It had a quasi-ceremonial importance, and ser- vants were instructed that after the cloth was laid they must first see that the salt cellar was in place ; after that the knives, then the bread, and last of ail the food. The division of the table into " above and below the salt " is not a mediaeval one, for those who were socially in- ferior sat at separate tables. Pewter dishes were in fairly common use, but even in many impor- tant Scottish houses the old wooden trenchers were not yet displaced. If there were a shortage of plates, some of the retainers might have to use slices of bread to hold their food. The spoons were of pewter or occasionally of silver. Knives are seldom mentioned in early inven- tories, because it was customary to use the knives which men carried about with them for general use. Forks were unknown and food was carried to the mouth by the fingers. Polite- ness required that only three fingers, that is two fingers and the thumb, should be used in handling food ; and in drinking, the cup was to be lifted in the same way. This handling of food, and especially the fact that it was lifted from the general dish with the fingers, explains the necessity for the basins and lavers, some- times of silver, but usually of less costly metals, which were served for the use of the 16 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND guests. Towels were provided and each person had his table napkin. Their use is indicated in a line of Gavin Douglas's JEneid, where he speaks of " soft serviettis to make their handis clene " ; and how this was done may be in- ferred from Welldon's description of James VI, who, he tells us, " rubbed his fingers' ends slightly with the wet end of a napkin." Well- bred persons of the time were counselled to avoid gluttony, to eat without suffocating them- selves and not to stare rudely at others eating ; they were also to drink moderately, diluting their wine, and not to suck in their liquor " as if it were an egg ' meaning, I suppose, audibly and finally they must not, while drinking, let their eyes roll about to this side and that. Looking round the hall, we see that the floor is covered with rushes or bent grass. A " lyar," or rug, is stretched in front of the fire, and on it are several cushions serving as footstools. At the opposite end of the hall from the dais is a rude gallery in which two or three pipers or fiddlers are exercising their art, and in the corner of the hall below them are some stands of armour with spears and staves, while a ;< blawin' horn " hangs on the wall. There is also on one side of the hall a kind of service table, not a board detachable from its supports, but a solid table, such as was called in England a " table dormant." On this any vessels of IN FEUDAL DAYS 17 silver or pewter that are not in use may be dis- played. The only other piece of furniture is a chest, in which napery is kept and which serves also as a seat. In the shadow of a deep window we may perhaps discover a spinning-wheel, and beside it, on a cushion on the stone seat, a " buke of storeis," its parchment leaves en- closed in boards clasped with silver. On the wall by the fire-place the light of the flickering candles finds answering points of reflection in the gilding of a polychrome figure in carved wood, representing some favourite saint, St. Ninian, perhaps, or St. Kentigern. Now the first thing that strikes us in this picture of the hall is how little furniture it contains. Tables and forms, with a chair for the master of the house, a side table and a chest, these are all that we find in a large room where all that is important in the social life of the house takes place. Why is the hall so scantily furnished ? We know that pieces of furniture of many types were in use " cop- amries," " covartur-amries," " meit-amries," " vessel-almeries," " wair-almries " and " wair- stalls," besides chests and coffers of various kinds. Yet these seldom appeared in the hall. Furniture in Scotland was made for conven- ience, not for display, to keep dishes and napery out of the way of dust and accidents, and it was accordingly made locally of fir or other cheap 18 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND wood, and consisted of plain, serviceable pieces with little or no pretension to artistic treatment. On the other hand, the foreign furniture which was being imported by Haly- burton and others had hardly begun to reach the private houses. The Church, by virtue of her wealth and her foreign connections, was still the pioneer in introducing the luxuries of civilisation, and it is to ecclesiastics that Haly- burton sends most of the tapestries and furni- ture that appear in his Ledger. It is early in the sixteenth century before we find much Flemish or French furniture in the houses of the laity. Yet we do find references, excep- tional rather than typical, to the " lang-sadyll " or settle, the " lettron " or reading desk, and to Flanderis kists and counters, pieces of furniture such as Halyburton was importing. Goods of foreign origin which were much more widely diffused were silver salt-fatts and other vessels, brazen chandillars and candle- sticks, feather-beds, pillows and cushions, and, of course, napery. One entry in Halyburton 's Ledger may be specially mentioned a refer- ence to an " oralag " sent by Bishop Elphinston for repair, and returned " mended, and the cais new." This shows that clocks , were already in use in Scotland for ecclesiastical and public buildings, if not yet for domestic purposes. IN FEUDAL DAYS 19 Let us examine in rather more detail some of the furnishings and arrangements of the hall. The dining tables were merely long boards, of oak or fir, supported by a pair of trestles which were generally of fir, and when not in use the board was laid against the wall and the trestles were cleared away. There was no feeling that the room looked " unfurnished " without its tables. In the Freiris of Berzvik we read how a " hostillar's " wife entertains a friar in her husband's absence. When the husband un- expectedly returns, she orders her maiden, according to Sibbald's version (1802), which professes to take no liberties with the text, to " clear the board." But if we turn to the Bannatyne MS., we find it is " Close yon board," a much more characteristic touch, implying that the table itself is to be dismounted and removed. Go, clois yon burd, and tak awa the chyre And lok up all into yone almery, Baith met and drink with wyne and aill put by. The reference to the single chair, which was the rightful seat of the master of the house, and to the use of the almery, are worth noting. We also read, earlier in the poem, that The burde scho cuverit with clath of costly greyne, Hir napry aboif wes woundir weill besene, and early inventories show that table covers were, like the cloth of a modern billiard table, 20 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND always green, a special cloth known as " Inglis green " being imported from England for the purpose. The principal table, or " hie burde," set on the dais and having behind it the tapestry or other wall-hanging, was, as I have said, reserved for persons of importance, and the dais thus gave a line of social distinction. The author of Schir Penny, satirising the deference paid to wealth, in the person of Sir Penny, says : " That Syre is set on heich deiss And servit with mony rich meiss At the hie burde." Some years ago a paper was read before a learned Society giving an account of an inter- esting sixteenth century inventory. The author, an experienced archaeologist, had little know- ledge of the social uses of the time, and the result was an extraordinary series of blunders. The first thing mentioned in the hall was " ane desbuyrd," meaning of course the table on the dais, and this was interpreted as "a dish- board, or perhaps a plate-rack." The author then pointed out the remarkable absence of chairs, mentioning that only one was specified, and that it stood in the hall, which, he said, " indicates a meagreness of plenishing not easily reconcilable even with the plain living of the times." The single chair, placed in the hall for the master's use, was the invariable IN FEUDAL DAYS 21 rule at the period of which he wrote, and chairs did not come into ordinary domestic use till the seventeenth century. The author of the paper also interpreted " treying copes " as trying cups, which he thought might mean measuring cups, whereas they are simply " tree-en " cups, or cups made of wood ; and a " wairstall," a kind of press, he converted into a night stool, a brilliant effort of fancy ! Most of these mistakes arise not merely from ignorance of the terminology of house furniture of the time, but from failing to realise the differ- ence between the domestic arrangements and social life of that age and those of our own day. Early furniture owes much of its interest to its reflecting customs with which we are no longer familiar, and it is meaningless unless we inter- pret it in terms of the social habits which produced it. In Henryson's poem, The Twa Mice, we read how the cat catches one of the mice, and how, in playing with her victim : Quhyll wad she let her ryn undeltthe strae the straw with which the floor was covered. The mouse manages to escape, and Sibbald's version (1802) tells us that she crept " between the dressour and the wall " and climbed "behind the panelling." Now the words " dressour " and " panelling " were not in use 22 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND in Scotland when the poem was written, and their introduction is but another instance of the propensity to substitute for unfamiliar ex- pressions others more easily understood and perhaps considered more picturesque. When we consult the early text we find that the mouse escapes, not between the dressour and the wall, but between " ane burde and the wall," and climbs, not behind the panelling, but behind " ane parelling," which was the usual name for the hanging on the wall behind the dais table. The burde, taken from its trestles, had no doubt been laid along the foot of the wall, and the mouse, getting behind it, crept beneath the parelling and worked her way into a position of safety. Accordingly she says, later in the poem : I thank yone courtyne and yone perpall wall For my defence now fra ane crewel beist, the perpall wall being the partition wall on which the courtyne or parelling hung. A very interesting and characteristic piece of furniture in the Scottish mediaeval hall was the Comptour, or Counter. Few houses in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were without one, yet to-day there are the most conflicting ideas as to what the counter really was, and what part it played in the domestic life of the time. It has been defined as a table, a cabinet, IN FEUDAL DAYS 23 'a desk and so on, while one reference in an old protocol book has been held to prove that it was a penannular, or C-shaped, sofa. Let us see what we can learn from documents of the time when the counter was in everyday use. But we must bear in mind that in any investiga- tion into early furniture and its nomenclature we are dealing with names which, though stereotyped themselves, are applied to furni- ture forms which are constantly being modified and transformed in the attempt to adapt them to the varying uses of a rapidly developing social system. Especially is this true of pieces of furniture whose use is not limited by having to meet some definite and permanent human need. Beds, dining-tables and chairs, for example, are controlled by a certain fixed basis of human requirement ; and, under all their superficial varieties of form, their essential shape and measurements must have a certain relation to the scale and movements of the human figure. But when furniture is not so closely bound by elementary needs, the form remains comparatively indeterminate, and may vary in any direction according to the wants of those for whom it is made. Thus a name may persist long after it has ceased to be a correct description of the thing. A Cupboard, for instance originally a table for displaying cups has so changed its use and form that it has 24 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND now nothing to do with cups, it is not a table, and it is used rather for concealment than dis- play, A Gardevyand, originally intended, as its name implies, for storing food, developed into a sort of portable strong box, so that we read of locks and " braycis " being added to the King's " cardiviance " in order to " twrss west " the gold and silver vessels of James IV " again Yule to Lythgow." In the same way we read of a " meit-almery for conserving napery " and a " capamre " (or cup-almrie) for holding clothes. Thus the name of a piece of furniture must not be taken as indicating any- thing more than its original use. The counter, compter-buird or compt burde, was originally a table whose top was used as a reckoning board, being marked out into spaces with distinguishing symbols. It was used for such purposes as adding up accounts, and for these calculations disc-shaped counters or jet- tons were employed. When not in use the jettons were kept in metal cylindrical cases, referred to in Halyburton's Ledger as " nests of countaris." A reference to the use of the compter burde for calculating occurs in Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland, where we are told, as one incident of an earthquake in 1597, that " a man in St. Johnston, laying compts with his compters, the compts lap off the buird ; the man's thighs trembled, and," adds the IN FEUDAL DAYS 25 faithful historian, " ane leg went up and the other doun." Counter boards were tables of convenient size and they were built on fixed legs, not simply laid on trestles. When we bear in mind that these tables, which were originally imported from Flanders, were the only tables known except the cumbrous long boards and trestles used for meals, we need not be surprised that they soon came into common use even among those who had little need for arithmetical calculation, but who appreciated the usefulness of a steady, moderate-sized table for many domestic purposes. Early inven- tories show that in a large number of houses there was no table but the counter ; sometimes " ane comptar with the furmes " is mentioned, clearly showing that it was used for the house- hold meals. Mediaeval illustration proves that the reckoning board was sometimes provided on the table-cloth, and this would enable the table itself to be without special marking and so to lose its arithmetical associations. There is documentary evidence that as the counter developed as a piece of furniture it was made with some enclosed accommodation below. Thus Sir David Lyndsay, of the Mount, left among his furnishings " ane lokit comptar burde," and we find in the second half of the sixteenth century an increasing number of references to the locks and keys of counters, 26 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND implying that they had closed receptacles. As time went on the enclosed accommodation seems to have extended downwards till it became the characteristic feature of the counter, and what had been the surface of the table now shrank in importance till it was merely the top of a small rectangular almerie. In the seventeenth cen- tury we read of " counter-almries " ; and in the list issued in 1612 of foreign goods subject to duty on import to Scotland, we find a fixed rate levied on " cabinettis or countaris." Thus the counter, which, under the name of " ane stop-compter," had been used for the display of stoups or vessels as early as 1489, had gone through a similar course of development to that of the cupboard in England. The counter, as an article of domestic furniture, seems to have gone out of use, or at least to have been super- seded by other forms of table and cupboard, about the middle of the seventeenth century. It was retained, however, among merchants and tradesmen as a useful piece of business furni- ture, and the shop and bank counters of our day are thus survivals or developments of a forgotten mediaeval form. In connection with the vessels which stood upon the counter when it was used as a side table, one interesting question arises. What is meant by the " compterfute weschel " which often appears in early lists of household goods ? IN FEUDAL DAYS 27 In an English inventory of 1487, quoted as an appendix to the Paston Letters, we read of " ij garnysshe " (i.e. two complete sets) " of pewter vessel counterfete " ; and, according to an inventory of 1598, transcribed in the Black Book of Toy mouth, there were " off counterfute plaittis in the galarie garderob of Balloch, iiij dosane." These are the only references I have found to counterfute dishes in the plural, and in these cases it is probable that a counterfeit metal is intended, though it is hard to say what is meant by pewter counterfeit. The diction- aries interpret " compterfute " in the sense of " imitation," an inferior metal meant to imitate one more valuable, and they give no alternative definition. As a matter of fact the base metal made to resemble gold was commonly called " alchemy." But the references in early Scottish inven- tories are nearly always to " ane compterfute vessel," or simply " ane comptarfut," in the singular, and when this is mentioned as one particular vessel among others whose character or use is stated, it is difficult to resist the con- clusion that the name was applied to a vessel serving a specific purpose or occupying a par- ticular place. This impression is confirmed when we find the counterfoot grouped with vessels which were certainly silver ; and any lingering uncertainty disappears when we read, 28 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND in a carefully detailed inventory of 1542, of a counterfoot expressly stated to be of silver, its weight being given and worked out at the value of silver per ounce. What a " comptarfut " was must remain a matter of conjecture till some literary reference is found which throws light on the problem. The word might con- ceivably be applied to a vessel cast in two halves ; or, as an alternative suggestion, it might be used of a vessel which stood at the foot of, or underneath, the counter perhaps on a tray contained between the stretchers near the ground, just as we see vessels displayed in this position in early illustrations of similar pieces of furniture in other countries, such as credences and dressers. Let us pass from the Hall to another room which is often mentioned in documents as to old Scottish houses, the " Chalmer of Des." The name has, like other mediaeval terms, dropped out of use ; I do not think it is men- tioned in McGibbon and Ross, and its meaning has puzzled antiquarians and lexicographers. Jamieson, discussing the corruption " chambra- deeze," properly dismisses the suggestion that it stood for " la chambre ou ils disent," and tells us that the word was still in use among old people in Fife for a parlour, and that the original form was " Chamber of Dais." Sir IN FEUDAL DAYS 29 Walter Scott said it was still common in his day in the South of Scotland, and was applied to the best sleeping room ; and he suggested that it was the room in which there was a bed with a dais, or canopy. But the term originated in castles where there were many beds with canopies, but only one Chamber of Dais ; and, moreover, in Scottish records the word dais is applied to the raised platform, and not, as in France, to the canopy, which is called the " cannabie " or " rufe," or sometimes, in con- nection with beds, the " sparwort." A study of early inventories leaves little doubt that the Chamber of Dais was the private apartment which so often communicated with the upper or dais end of the hall. It was the bedchamber of the master of the house, and it was also used, in accordance with mediaeval custom, as a retiring room for those who sat at the dais table. Those who sat there represented what is called " the quality," and the chamber was for their exclusive use. Its position and use are clearly shown by an extract from an old protocol book, which tells us that Peter Rankin, the heir of Shield, " entered the hall of Scheld and the chalmer of des within the hall " (meaning that to reach it he had to go through the hall). After describing the furniture which he found in the hall it goes on, " and in the chalmer of des he found twa fedder beddis with necessaries, and 80 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND a wooden press." It is evident that the Cham- ber of Dais was in effect the principal bedroom. I have spoken of the bareness of the hall in the matter of furniture, but the furnishing of the bedrooms was equally meagre, and this simply because of the primitive standard of comfort of the times. Even in an English house so richly furnished as Arundel Castle, the furnishing of the King's Chamber, so late as the year 1580, consisted only of a bed, a table and a chair, besides the tapestry hangings. We need not expect to find a more luxurious stan- dard in Scotland. In the well-equipped house of Lord Lindsay of Byres a house which had its own private chapel with suitable vestments and a gilded chalice the Chalmer of Des had no furniture but the bed and " an aid compter," on which stood a candle and two books. In nearly all the other bedrooms of the house there was nothing but the bed or beds, for it was common to put several beds in one room. Occa- sionally there is a chest to hold clothes, or a form or stool, but nothing else was considered neces- sary. The bed, however, was often fitted with a " futegang," corresponding to the French " marchepied " the long step or stool which we see in mediaeval illustrations placed along the side of the bed. The " futegang " was some- times " bandit," that is, hinged, so that the top could be opened and the inside used for IN FEUDAL DAYS 31 keeping clothes, and in this form it is sometimes called a " bimcar." We need not concern ourselves with kitchen furniture nor with the equipment of the brew- house and bakehouse which were found in every mediaeval mansion. If what has been said conveys the impression that life in a Scottish mediaeval castle must have been a stern and comfortless existence, remember that a hardy race is not reared in luxury. Cast your minds back to the Scotland of that day, set far from the centres of mediaeval culture, hard pressed to hold her own against her richer and more powerful neighbour ; a land of mountain and moor, shrouded with mist, drenched with rain, visited with short and fitful summers and long and bitter winters, and predestined to a history of jealous factions and relentless feuds ; and remember that in this land was reared a race hard-headed, resolute and tenacious, yet ever quick to shed its blood for a great cause, a dear name or a fine point of doctrine ; a race ready to go forth to other lands, however distant and however inhospitable, in quest of profit or adventure ; yet with hearts that kept turning always homeward with something of the passion which a man cherishes for the mother who has borne him in pain and nurtured him in poverty. LECTURE II THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH: A PRE- REFORMATION MANSE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The wealth of the Church as a factor in the Reformation movement Relation of the movement to the Renaissance Humanism within the Church The Parson of Stobo ; his revenues, etc. The manse in Glasgow and its inmates A disappointed nephew The parson's bedchamber Rich hangings and furniture An unexpected apparition Coffers and chests and their contents Early regulations as to clerical costume The parson's costly apparel " The oratour within his hous " The altar and its furnish- ings Vestments Sacred and secular books The hall Carved furniture Cupboard of plate Significance of plate in mediae val times The kitchen " Large tabling and belly cheer " Stores of provisions and fuel Riding kit and armour Sport and recreations Tame animals An early chiming clock The parson's death The people and the Church. WHATEVER line of interest may lead one to the study of Scotland in the sixteenth century, one can- not go far without becoming conscious of a deep and irresistible current surging through the national life of the time. Everywhere there is transition, progress, change. Whatever new facts research may reveal, in this department or in that, the interest of these as isolated facts soon gives place to a sense of their signifi- 32 THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 33 cance as reflecting the general movement of the age. So it is with the study of domestic furnishing. As we review the docu- mentary records of house plenishings in the sixteenth century we are brought face to face with two symptoms of the time too conspicuous to be passed by. The first of these is the wealth of the Church, a material prosperity strikingly disproportionate to the general economic con- dition of the country. The second is the appear- ance of the middle class, and its rapid advance in wealth and social importance. These two phenomena cannot strictly be separated, or treated as if they had no relation to each other. As a matter of fact the Church lost her economic leadership just because civilisation became gradually too complex for her control, and because the trades and crafts which had grown up under her patronage became so highly specialised as to call for skilled and trained men to conduct and manage them ; and with her economic leadership the Church lost, of course, a large part of her hold on the people. And, on the other hand, the revolt against the corrup- tions and exactions of the Church proved a powerful factor in educating the people, in developing their capacity for independent judg- ment, and in fitting them for the political influence which they were destined to exercise. Still, it will be convenient to treat these two 34 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND distinctive features of the life of the time separately, and in the present lecture we shall limit ourselves to the wealth of the Church as one of the elements which led up to the Refor- mation. With the ecclesiastical controversies of the time we need not concern ourselves. Even the historical results of the Reformation the abolition of the papal power in Scotland and the establishment of the reformed religion interest us here only in some of their conse- quences. But the Reformation movement has this signal importance for us, that it was the crisis in which the modern spirit sought for a decisive victory in its conflict with mediaeval- ism ; and that it provided Scotland with a sharp issue on which every man was able to take a side, and so helped to bring the country to a know- ledge of its own character and its own destiny. Let us beware, however, of thinking of the Reformation as a local movement, the product of merely local conditions. Both the decay within the Church, and the spirit of criticism and revolt without, were largely due to the breaking up of old standards of thought and of conduct, and to the emancipation from accus- tomed restraints, which followed, all over Europe, from the Renaissance. In every country, and in every department of life, sub- mission to authority gave place to the exercise of individual judgment. Long acknowledged THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 35 codes were challenged, and as their control weakened there was an inevitable tendency to revert to an undisciplined paganism. Within the borders of the Church itself these changes soon began to bear bitter fruit. In the intoxicating atmosphere of humanism spiritu- ality began to wither and to lose its vital and inspiring force. The beauty of holiness and the rapture of self-consecration were fading visions that seemed more and more spectral and delu- sive. The call of the old austere ideals of poverty and self-mortification now sounded faint and far away the dying echo of a crazy enthusiasm. While there were many in the Church who, like Bishop Elphinstone in Scot- land, upheld the highest traditions of their office, there were many more who preferred to work out their careers as ambitious nobles and scheming men of the world. In an age when every institution, however venerable, was sub- jected to searching criticism, it was inevitable that the revolt against a degenerate Church, whose sway had been absolute and was now felt oppressive, should everywhere be a character- istic consequence of the Renaissance. Else- where, however, that conflict might be sub- sidiary to other manifestations of the new spirit to a vigorous outburst of artistic or literary activity, or to an effort for constitutional liberty. In Scotland it was the problem on 36 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND which all the national energies were brought to a focus. There the ecclesiastical abuses were not less flagrant than elsewhere ; and there the opulence of the Church was thrown into sharp relief against the poverty of the people. Catholic writers, while admitting that there was much that was reprehensible in the lives of the clergy, maintain that the attack on the Church was largely inspired by the cupidity of the nobles, who had remained impoverished since the War of Independence ; and it cannot be disputed that there is much historical evi- dence of the existence of such sordid motives. But from this point of view, no less than from the opposite one, the wealth of the Church is admitted to be an element of crucial import- ance in accounting for the course of Scottish history in the sixteenth century. It is said that practically half the wealth of the country was in the hands of the Church. We have already seen how most of the rich furnishings and luxuries sent into Scotland by Andrew Halyburton were consigned to ecclesiastics. And Cardinal Beatoun, we are told, kept such a house " as was never holden in Scotland under a King." But general statements and exceptional instances do not give us a picture of the wealth of the Church as it struck the eye of contemporary observers. Little or nothing THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 37 has been written as to the actual conditions of the home life of the ordinary clergy. To fill this gap and to give you a glimpse of the interior of a Pre-Reformation manse and its furnishings, I propose to describe the home of a Scottish priest who drew his revenues from a thinly populated district in Tweedside and who was one of the Canons of Glasgow Cathedral. In February of the year 1542 there died, at his house in Glasgow, Maister Adam Colqu- houn, " persone of Stobo." The manse of Stobo stood at the head of the Drygate of Glasgow, and was one of the many houses in that quarter occupied by the Cathedral clergy. The Chapter of Glasgow consisted of thirty-two canonries or prebends, and of these the canonry of Stobo was not the least desirable. The benefice of Stobo brought in an income of two thousand merks a year, and that of Broughton, which went with it, another thousand merks, representing in all two thousand pounds of the money of the realm at that date. John Major, writing of Glasgow in Colquhoun's time, says, " the Church possesses prebends many and fat ; but in Scotland such revenues are enjoyed in absentia just as they would be inpresentia" a custom which he deplores. The cure of souls in Stobo was in the hands of a rural vicar, John Colquhoun, probably a relative of Maister Adam. It was expected of the prebendary, 38 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND however, that he should pay periodical visits in order to superintend his rural charge. During such absences he was represented in the Chapter by a Vicar of Stalls, to whom he had to make an annual payment of twelve merks a year, along with a cope and surplice. There was also an ordinance, dating from 1401, which " considering the great and detestable deficiency of the ornaments " from which the Cathedral had suffered in its divine services, levied a tax on the various prebendaries for copes, chasubles, dalmatics, tunics and other ornaments. For this purpose the Parson of Stobo had to contri- bute five pounds. These, however, with perhaps a small salary to his vicar, seem to have been the only charges against his income. As to Maister Adam Colquhoun himself, he was a younger son of Patrick Colquhoun of Glens, who owned property in the Stable Green at the western end of the Cathedral. A few scattered references to him in early records suggest that he may have been somewhat high- handed and given to contention. The Glasgow Diocesan Registers record a dispute between him, when as a younger man he was Rector of Biggar, and the neighbouring Rector of Skirling on a question of tithes ; and after he had been promoted to be Rector of Govan, a Glasgow canonry, he was charged with taking possession of part of the Rector of Renfrew's manse during THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 39 his absence. One other fact may be mentioned which has some interest. He inherited a house in Stable Green which he sold to Matthew Stewart, second Earl of Lennox, and it was in this house that Darnley, years afterwards, lay sick on the memorable occasion when Queen Mary visited him and " taried certen daies withe him " two or three weeks before his murder. The manse of Stobo, whose furnishings we are to describe, is said to have been a tall, tower- like house, very solidly built of stone. It was entered by a winding stone stair in an outside tower pierced by narrow slits which admitted but little light, and the doors of the apartments, as was usual at that time, opened direct from the stair, or from other rooms, there being no passages. There were spacious fireplaces with carved lintels in the hall and in the parson's own chamber, and near the fireplaces there were little aumries let into the walls. The interiors were gloomy and prison-like, for the light entered by small windows through walls which were three feet thick. At the back of the house, facing south, there were wooden gal- leries which pleasantly overlooked the garden and orchard running down to the burn, and enabled the occupants to take advantage of such sunlight and fresh air as the climate and season afforded. When his last " seiknes " was upon him, the household included, besides the dying man, his two natural sons, James and Adam, and their mother, Jane Boyd, who no doubt tended him in his hour of extremity. But there was also living a nephew, Peter Colquhoun, de- scribed as " a citinar of Glasgow," who, after his uncle's death, claimed to be the legal heir. This nephew charged the two natural sons and their mother, along with James Houston, sub- dean of Glasgow, and Master Archibald Crau- furd, parson of Eaglesham, whose manse was next door, with " wrangously intromitting " with the goods of the late Master Adam during his illness and after his death ; and moved the Lords of Council to cause the defenders to deliver up the " gudis of airschip or the avail thereof " as " now pertening to the said Peter be resoun of airschip throw deceis of his umquhile erne " or late uncle. What were the pleas advanced by the parties to this law- suit, we are not told. But if Peter was trusting to the sons of a celibate priest having no legal status he was leaning on a broken reed. For in the Register of the Privy Seal we find that on 5 February, 1529-30, James and Ade Colqu- houn, sons of Mr. Ade Colquhoun, Parson of Stobo, had been formally legitimated. The Lords of Council accordingly assoilzied the defendants, and the unfortunate Peter lost his THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 41 case. His claim, however, gives so full a descrip- tion of his uncle's possessions that we can form a tolerably clear picture of what must have been a remarkable house. Let us begin with the parson's own chamber. Here there was a bed of richly carved wood decorated with gold, in which Master Adam slept soft o' nights on a feather mattress con- taining 140 Ib. of down nearly double the quantity that is put into the best modern feather bed. His head, dressed with " nycht hair-gear " and covered with a " nycht courche," rested on luxurious down pillows " warit," or covered, with holland cloth. The sheets were of the same fine material, and for warmth in the raw Glasgow nights there were first a pair of " pladdis," and over these a pair of blankets of fine fustian. Draughts were kept off by a pair of damask curtains '" of divers hewis, fassit with silk and knoppit (or tasselled) with gold." By day a pair of head-sheets was laid across the pillows, a covering of rich velvet lined with fustian was stretched over the bed, while above this was spread a blue mantle. When morning came, and the priest, awaking in his carved and gilded bed, cast his eyes around him, he had reason to be satisfied with the beauty and luxury of his surroundings, all the more so when we remember how scantily the bedrooms of the time were usually furnished. 42 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND Round the walls hung panels of arras work some perhaps of the charming " verdure " of mediaeval times, designed with foliage and flowers, and varied, as was customary, with little animals such as squirrels and monkeys, or rabbits disappearing into their burrows ; and others with " portraiture of huntsman, hawk and hound," or scenes from some scriptural story or secular romance. We read of there being twelve of these panels in the chamber, but probably some of these had been removed from the hall. Against this tapestried background of harmonious, low-toned colour low toned not from age but from the subdued illumination appeared a large brazen chandillar, hung from the ceiling, with its tall white candles. In front of the fireplace stood a " langsadill bed of carvit werk " an oak settle on which the priest may have sat musing by the fire the night before. In a corner of the room was a press, also of carved oak, with a curtain of damask hanging before it to protect the costly raiment that lay within. A carved chest stood at the foot of the bed. It was the practice to keep valuables in the bedroom, where the owner could keep Watch over them, and they were stored in chests and boxes of various kinds for convenience of removal in case of fire or other alarm. Master Adam Colquhoun, having a large quantity of valuables, required a good THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 43 many receptacles for their security. Besides the carved chest there was a " shrine," which was simply another form of chest, having none of the sacred associations we attach to the word ; a " balhuise," the Scottish form of the French " bahut" meaning a box, or possibly in those days a hutch ; a coffer, a " gardyviat " or strong box, and a " maill of ledder lokkit," or in other words a locked leather trunk. The " water-pot " is of silver. Standing per- haps on one of the larger chests, either by the bedside or under a window, there was a sponge, a rubber and a locked case of combs. The rubber was apparently a brush, as we read of hogs' bristles being used in the sixteenth century " for to make rubbers and brushes." These toilet accessories complete the furnishing of the bedroom, though we have still to examine the contents of the chests and of the clothes-press. But here the inventory supplies one of those delightful, because so unexpected, touches which suddenly give life to the pictures that come down to us of the long-forgotten past. Here, in his bed-chamber, it seems, the parson, with his taste for gay and bright-coloured things and for amusing companionship, keeps a parrot, which we may imagine perched on the back of the settle, cocking a speculative and judicious eye over the yawnings and stretchings of his newly awakened master. Even the clerk 44 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND who drafted the inventory seems to have felt the abruptness of this apparition on his blame- less page, and he discreetly and decorously softens it by introducing it as " a bird, viz. a parrok." Let us look now at some of the precious things contained in the coffers and chests. There is a " pair of beidis " that is, a set of beads, or a rosary " with v. gaudeis, ilk gaud contenand ane double portingale ducat," the whole being valued at sixty-three pounds. A cross of gold, weighing 4 oz., is valued at thirty- two pounds. These values are in Scots money, which at that time was worth about a fourth part of English money ; but if the cross was pure gold, as it no doubt was, it would represent a present-day value of sixteen guineas for the metal alone, apart from workmanship and other elements which might add to its value. There is also a precious relic, a tablet of gold hung with a small chain of 4 oz. in weight, with " ane pece of the haly croce intill it " ; and this is said to be worth " tua hun- dretht pund." Most costly of all is a chain of four hundred Crowns of the Sun, valued at five hundred pounds ; but this perhaps is to be regarded as merely a method of hoarding money. Among smaller objects of value are a signet of gold ; a gold ring with a fine " safer " (sapphire) stone, worth one hundred pounds ; THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 45 a double Portugal ducat, worth twelve pounds ; and a " woup " or circlet of gold serving as an armlet, of i Ib. weight, and representing a value of ninety-six pounds. In one of the boxes there is also carefully stowed away a " pair of punze- onis of claitht of gold, price x li." Scots poetry of the time is full of embittered allusions to the faults and vices of the clergy. In the Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis their rapacity and their oppression of the poor is mercilessly exposed. Another satirical poem, after dealing with their immorality, their osten- tatious luxury and their neglect of their charges, goes on to say So mony preistis cled up in secular weid With biasing breistis casting their claithis on breid, It is no need to tell of quhome I mein, So few to tell the dargey and the beid Within this land was nevir hard nor sene. the " dargey " being the " Dirige," the Office of the Dead, at matins. However regular the Parson of Stobo may have been at his clerical duties, it must be confessed that he did not deny himself the pleasure of flaunting in " secular weid," and displaying what may fairly be called a " biasing breist " to all whom he encountered in the streets of Glasgow. But before passing judgment on his costume it is fair to remember that there was in those days no recognised clerical dress by which the wearers could be distinguished at a glance from laymen. A thirteenth-century statute ordains that the clergy shall not wear " red or striped clothes, nor clothes conspicuous for too great shortness " a law which some have interpreted as being directed against the clerical use of tartan and the kilt ! Another statute, enacted only a few years after Colquhoun's death, forbade the use of " top-boots, double-breasted and oddly-cut coats, or coats of forbidden colours, as yellow, green and such kinds of parti-colour," and pre- scribed the wearing of cassocks for town use. From these and similar decrees we learn that while the Church enjoined a becoming gravity of costume on the clergy, both in regard to colour and material, there was, in fact, a con- stant tendency to disregard such counsels and to indulge personal vanity and caprice. The Parson of Stobo's ordinary costume seems to have consisted of a doublet of cram- mesy velvet lined with scarlet, with a waistcoat or wilecoat, also of scarlet, worn over a shirt of white holland cloth. His hose are of Paris black and they are bound with gartans of silk with gold tassels at the side. A silken belt, also with gold tassels, encircles his waist, while at his hip hangs a bag of crammesy velvet with massive gold mountings. Wearing a pair of velvet shoes he crosses to the carved press in the corner of his chamber and draws aside the THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 47 curtain, taking out a rich gown of damask lined with marten sable. This he throws round his shoulders and fastens in front with a button of wrought gold, matching a similar button on the breast of his doublet. To complete his toilet he puts on a " litel bonet of welvot sewit with gold," tucks a pair of cloth gloves " pirnit " or interwoven with gold into his belt ; and then, fastening on his " quhinger," which is ourgilt with gold, and slipping his silver toothpick into the bag at his waist, he is ready for the day's duties and adventures. What there is of ecclesiastical costume, or vestments, is kept not in the bedchamber but partly in some small room or press near the kitchen on the ground-floor ; so that in passing out to the Cathedral he could conveniently lay his hands upon whatever might be required. There was " ane round preistis bonet " the biretta which was prescribed as conforming with " the ancient custom of the clergy," and which they had to be enjoined to remove in church, " especially in time of divine service." Three surplaits, or surplices, are mentioned : one of crape, one of lawn and one of holland. Also a " hude of crammase satyn with welvot, drawin with ane string of gold, price xx li " ; an " almos," or almuce (L. almucia), valued at xl li. and another cape " firrit with spottit arming " (ermine) valued at x li. 48 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND It is difficult to arrive at a fair estimate of the costliness of the sumptuous apparel that has been described. No mere conversion of Scots money into sterling is of much use as a basis for a comparison with present-day expenditure, for the modern use of machinery in manufac- tures, and modern facilities of intercourse with foreign countries and many other causes, have accustomed us to a scale of relative values that is very unlike that of mediaeval times. We know from Halyburton's Ledger, for example, that velvet costs ten or twelve times as much as Arras tapestry of the quality usually imported into Scotland. It seems surprising, too, to us that a mantle or gown whose materials cost perhaps from sixty to a hundred pounds, should not have exceeded five shillings for the making. Such facts, while easily enough explained, illus- trate the difficulty of comparing mediaeval and modern expenditure. However, it is enough to note the Parson of Stobo's preference for velvet, the most costly of all the ordinary materials in use, and especially for crimson velvet, which was more expensive than other colours ; and how his gown is lined with marten sable, the most expensive of furs ; and how almost everything he wears is ornamented with gold, so that even the bag that hangs at his waist has " irnes," or mountings, that would melt down into thirty-three of our present-day THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 49 sovereigns. However picturesque, to our modern eyes, may be the splendidly arrayed figure of the Parson of Stobo, his costume shows little sympathy with the ideal of an ascetic frugality, nor can it be said to exemplify that sobriety of colour and material which was prescribed by the authority of the Church. Leaving the bedchamber we enter a small but extremely interesting room, described as " the oratour within his hous." Its principal feature is, of course, the altar, placed against the eastern wall and hung with a frontal of black velvet with fringes of gold. It has two coverings of fine holland cloth. On the top of the altar rests the " altar stane " or super- altar, the small consecrated slab which was laid on the middle of an altar not itself conse- crated. Persons of importance were sometimes granted the privilege of having one of these consecrated altar stones to carry with them while travelling, so that they could have a mass said by their chaplains even if there were no fixed consecrated altar of which use could be made. On the altar stood the sacred vessels " ane chalice and patene of silver ourgilt with gold," and, on a silver plate, two silver " crowat- tis," or cruets, containing respectively the wine and the water for the Eucharist. The plate served the purpose of catching any drip from the druets. The/re was also what was very 4 50 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND unusual except in richly furnished churches a silver spoon, used to measure out the small quantity of water mixed with the wine in pre- paring the chalice ; and employed also for removing flies or the like from the chalice. A silver sacring bell, which was rung at the conse- cration, also stood on the altar. And, finally, there was a cushion made of cloth of silver, on which was laid a " mess buke," or missal, of parchment, its pages penned by hand in black and red Gothic lettering and richly illuminated in colours and gold. At each end of the altar a rod projected from the wall and supported a damask curtain which hung close to, and in a plane parallel to, the end of the altar. In the oratory too were kept the vestments ; a chasuble which, like the altar frontal, was of black velvet ; a stole and a " fannale " (fannon) or maniple, both made of velvet, the maniple being worn on the priest's left wrist ; an " amyt," or amice, which was a linen hood lowered so as to encircle the neck ; and a belt, probably made to match the vestments and taking the place of the more usual girdle of white cord. The only piece of furniture in the oratory that remains to be mentioned was a carved desk or prie-dieu. On its top lay a large velvet cushion on which rested the priest's " orasoun THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 51 buke, coverit with grene velvet." This was no doubt an illuminated Book of Hours, containing the abridged choir services in honour of the Virgin, consisting of psalms, lessons from scrip- ture and anthems. The desk was probably made with a side opening to a sort of aumrie with a shelf. Here, in a double row, were arranged the parson's " librell bukis," as they are called to distinguish them from the purely devotional books which have already been mentioned. They are secular books designed to cultivate the mind, providing what we still call a " liberal education." Among these volumes are " tua cours of the law, with utheris doctouris thair-upone," and evidence still survives that the Parson of Stobo had taken advantage of his opportunities and was looked upon as a man well versed in the law. There are also works on " theologie'and vther science." In the prologue to Sir David Lindsay's contem- porary poem, The Tragedie of the Cardinal, he tells us how Not lang ago, eftir the hour of prime, Secreitlie sitting in my oratorie, I tuke ane buke till occupy the time, Quhair I fand monie tragedie and storie Quhilk Johne Boccas had put in memory, and we may infer that it was usual to keep books in the oratory and to make use of it as a quiet study for secular as well as religious reading. 52 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND Passing to the Hall, we find a dignified apart- ment whose walls are hung with some of the panels of tapestry that were mentioned as being found in the bed-chamber. The wide fire- place, under its carved stone lintel, is fitted with a " chimnay " or grate, of iron. The furnishing is in accordance with the usual mediaeval scheme, yet it illustrates too the advance towards a higher standard both of comfort and of conscious artistic interest. The meit-burde, with its trestles and forms, stands at one end of the room and is spread with the usual " coveringis and claithis thereof." Against the wall on one side stands a " cop burde of eistland burde carvit werk, quhair the silver weschel stude." The cupboard, as a piece of domestic furniture, was well known in England in the fourteenth century, but this is perhaps the first mention of its use in a private house in Scotland. It was fitted with shelves and arranged so that the contents were displayed when the doors were thrown open. In Scotland a counter or side table was all that was wanted in most private houses, as there was no profusion of silver vessels requiring special arrangements for their display. While the Parson of Stobo's silver was of such quantity and value as to call for a cupboard, it is interesting to find that his hall also contains a double counter of Flemish origin. It was no doubt used as a buffet or THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 53 service table, and this is confirmed by the fact that the luxurious owner had provided " ii coveringis, i to the counter i other to the burde of the hall, maid of cusching werk." These were no doubt of Flemish quilted work, and they are an unusual luxury, costing about four- teen pounds for the two. Of the pieces of furni- ture mentioned the counter was evidently the most important, as it is valued at twenty pounds, whereas the cupboard only reaches half that sum, and the hall table, along with its forms and trestles, is put at less than three pounds. The other furniture consisted of a " meit almery for conserving of napry, silit abone," or having a panelled top ; a settle, a chair and a " buffat stule," all described as of carved work. Up- holstered seats were of course as yet unknown, but the hall was provided with " i dosane of fyne grete cuschingis of Flanderis werk " for use on the settle and other seats, as well as for foot- stools. They were stuffed with feathers and were probably covered with verdure tapestry. But perhaps the most interesting feature of the furnishing of the hall is the silver plate which stood on the cupboard. Such a display was of course characteristic of mediaeval times, though it is rather exceptional in early Scottish records. There was little accumulated wealth in Scotland ; her exports did not pay for her 54 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND imports, and there was also a constant drain of money due to other causes. I dar weill say, within this fiftie yeir Rome has ressavit furth of this regioun For bullis and benefice quhilk they buy full deir Quhilk micht full weill have payit ane kingis ransoum. Preistis suld na moir our substance sa consoum Sending yeirly sa greit riches to Rome. Still, as Scotland gradually gained in wealth, and as more settled conditions gave the pos- sessors of valuables some guarantee of security, it became usual for the well-to-do in Scotland, as elsewhere, to " garnish their cupboards with plate " ; so that a Scottish poet, calling on his countrymen to celebrate the destruction of the Spanish Armada, said : Expose your gold and shyning silver bright On covered cop-buirdes set in opin sight ; Ouer-gilted coups, with carved covers clear, Fine precious stanes, quhair they may best appear ; Lavers in ranks, and silver baissings shine Saltfats outshorne, and glasses crystalline. In Master Adam Colquhoun's day such dis- plays were less common, and his cupboard must have been considered an imposing one. It consisted of about forty separate vessels and dishes, weighing in all something like 65 Ibs. troy weight of silver. There were five flagons of graduated sizes, the largest containing half a gallon ; three stoups, the largest containing a quart ; and four silver " pieces " with their THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 55 covers, the largest containing a pint. The most massive of these vessels weighed as much as 8 Ib. each. There was also a set of silver trenchers, a silver basin and laver, a silver cup and a goblet, each with its cover ; a silver maser and its cover both doubly overgilt ; a set of two dozen silver spoons, weighing 2 oz. each ; a silver salt-fatt with cover of silver doubly over- gilt ; a silver " gerdyn," here apparently mean- ing a retort-shaped bottle ; a chargeour, a plate and a " compterfute," all of silver, and two silver dishes, one described as a " braid " dish and the other as a " luggit " dish, meaning a dish with projecting handles at opposite sides. Besides all these there is a pair of silver chan- dillars and, last but not least interesting, " ane cais of carving knyfis, Flanderis making, doubli'e ourgilt." The set contains twelve small knives, three " mekle " knives and a fork. The use of such a set of table knives marks a considerable advance on the earlier practice, according to which each man used the knife he carried about with him. The mention of a fork has a special interest. Forks were not in general use in Eng- land before the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury, though they were sometimes used for fruit. Thus Piers Gaveston had three silver forks for eating pears, and an English will of 1463 be- queathes " my silver forke for grene gyngour." Though the fork in the manse of Stobo is cased 56 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND along with knives intended for meat, the fact that there is but one, along with what we know of mediaeval usage, suggests that it was not used for meat with the knives, but kept for fruit and sweetmeats. A cupboard so well garnished with silver plate is apt to suggest to us a rather purse-proud love of display. Yet this is hardly fair, as it leaves out of account the conditions and habits of the time. Wherever there was a surplus of income over necessary expenditure there was, in varying degree, according to the amount of that surplus and to the taste and temperament of the individual, a tendency to the accumula- tion of plate and other valuables. It must be remembered that banking did not as yet exist in Scotland ; though we find in Halyburton's Ledger that even in the fifteenth century sums were sent from Scotland to the great banking houses of Antwerp. We read too of consider- able sums being forwarded to Halyburton to trade with " for the behuf and profyt " of some of his correspondents in Scotland. But on the whole there was little opening for the invest- ment of accumulated savings. To lend money at interest was still apt to expose the lender to the odium associated with the practice of usury, as well as to legal penalties. The alternatives were thus to hoard money or to expend it in plate or rich furnishings which bore agreeable THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 57 and unmistakable witness to the prosperity of the owner. In Harrison's contemporary ac- count of Elizabethan England we are told that towards the end of a lease a successful farmer might have six or seven years' rent lying by him, " besides a fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard, with so much more in odd vessel going about the house, three or four feather beds, so many coverlids and carpets of tapestry, a silver salt, a bowl for wine, if not a whole nest, and a dozen of spoons to furnish up the suit." Such agricultural prosperity was an outcome of the expansion of English trade under Elizabeth, and so rapid had been the advance towards luxury that there were men then living who remembered when they had " laid on straw pallets or rough mats covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain, and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or a pillow." In Scotland there was no such sudden increase of prosperity. Wealth was in fewer hands, and chiefly, as we have seen, in the hands of the Church. Even among the nobles there was comparatively little silver to display, most of the vessels in domestic use being of pewter. The Kitchen need not detain us long. There are but two pieces of furniture, one a " weschell almerie," which was probably a plainly made kitchen dish-press, and the other a " dressing- 58 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND burd " in other words a table on which meat and other articles of food were dressed. No form or stool or other kind of seat is provided, nor is there any other concession to comfort. Everything gives way to the claims of cookery. There are cauldrons, kettles, " mekle " pots and " litel " pots, frying pans, goose pans, roasting irons, fish " skummers," " mekle speits " and " litel speits," stoups, pitchers and " piggis," be- sides the special paraphernalia of the bake-house and brew-house. A " capon-cave " shows that poultry were kept, and the supply of provisions is on a scale that suggests that the household was given to what a contemporary calls " large tabling and belly cheer." There are, for example, eight marts, or salted carcases, of beef ; a pipe of salmon, containing eight dozen ; a pipe of Loch Fyne herring ; an ark contain- ing forty bolls of meal ; six stone of butter, and a " kebboc " of cheese weighing 22 Ib. Such supplies must have relieved Master Adam of any acute anxiety as to his daily bread, particu- larly as beneficed clergymen were enjoined to fare frugally and temperately at table, and to avoid delicacy and superfluity in meat and drinks. His fuel was also secure, for there is a mow (or heap) of coals containing as much as eighty loads ; and his barn is well stored with wheat, oats, " beir," peas and hay. Even in the stable there is much that is THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 59 characteristic and suggestive. His riding saddle has a " curpale " or crupper of velvet ; and there is a green " horse-house," the trappings of cloth with which the horse was draped in mediaeval times. In the stable he keeps his riding kit, consisting of a damask riding gown lined with black, a velvet hood lined with damask, and a black cloak faced with velvet. Here too we find his armour, a habergeon of mail, a pair of brigandines for back and front, a " pesane " or gorget of mail, splints for legs and arms, gloves of plate and also of mail, helmets and other headgear, and a two-handed sword. The clergy, it may be mentioned, were forbidden to bear arms, yet a fight between two chaplains armed with " hyngers " is recorded in the Ripon Chapter Acts (Surtees Society) in the year 1503, and there are other evidences that the prohibition was not literally observed. There is also a single-handed sword of a more elegant and decorative character. It is doubly overgilt with gold, has a scabbard of velvet, " crampet," or provided with guards, of silver ; and it is slung from a belt of figured velvet. To carry on more peaceful occasions there is a " ganging staf of bressale, tippit with silver at baith ends and in the middis," bressale being brazil-wood, from which the country of Brazil derived its name. We find too that the Parson was a devotee of sport. He has a rather 60 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND dandified outfit for archery a hand-bow, arrow- bag and " caver " (quiver) with arrows, " ane bras of ovir bene tippit with silver," meaning, I sup- pose, an ivory arm-guard with silver mountings ; and a shooting glove " sewit with silk and knoppit with gold." Another form of sport seems to have interested him. Among the popular grievances referred to in the Generall Salyre is the prevalence of coursing, to the destruction of the crops : Sic coursing, evin and morn, Quhilk slay is the corn, and fruct that growis grene. and we find that the Parson of Stobo has a set of " rais cuppillis of silver " with silk collars " spenlit " (spindled ?) with silver, which were no doubt used in coursing for releasing the dogs. He has also a silken dog-leash and a dog- collar studded with silver. Along with his taste for sport goes a love of animals, and we find that, besides the parrot indoors, he keeps outside a tame hind and a crane. One other remarkable possession is to be found in the stable a " streking knok with bellis efferand thairto." Clocks were seldom found in Scotland at this period unless in churches and other public buildings. How Master Adam came to own a chiming clock is hard to say, and why it should be kept in the stable, unless the bells " efferand thairto " THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH 61 were too loud to be tolerated in the house, and had to be so far removed that distance might soften their stridency and render them tuneful and mellow enough to please the epicurean fancy of the fastidious priest. It is wellnigh four hundred years since, per- haps with these very bells sounding in his ears, Master Adam Colquhoun drew his last breath, and the stiffening body was left lying on the gilded bed, in the shadow of the damask curtains with their fringes of silk and tassels of gold. It is not for us to allot to him the fate either of Dives or of Lazarus. He probably left behind an amiable memory. His collection of " librell bukis " on the law, theology and " uther science " shows that he was not one of those whose ignorance and illiteracy disgraced the Church. If his relations with Jane Boyd cannot be justified, they were at any rate only too characteristic of the time ; he seems at least to have been constant to her, and if the laws of the Church had permitted, he would doubtless have been an exemplary husband. How far the manse of Stobo may be taken as representa- tive of the homes of the Pre-Reformation clergy is a question which we have not enough evidence to decide ; but it is at least remarkable that it presents us with a far more opulent and luxurious picture than any contemporary noble- man's house of which a record has been pre- 62 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND served. We are glad to remember those of the clergy whose devotion and spirituality survived the corrupting and disintegrating tendencies of the time, and were proof against the relaxed standards of the age. But the ostentatious wealth and worldliness of the clergy are so constant a theme, not only in the works of the satirists and in the pages of impartial history, but also, as evils to be combated, in the Statutes of the Church itself, that they must be accepted as outstanding features of contemporary life. Can we wonder, then, if the people, groaning under the exactions of the clergy and confronted with their material standards and their flagrant immoralities, and already, behind locked doors, reading in their own homely tongue the un- worldly teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, began to form opinions^of their own on the fit- ness of the Church as a vehicle and exponent of the teaching of Christ ? LECTURE III THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS ; A CLOTH MERCHANT'S HOUSE; AND SOME DECORATIVE ARTS THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY Continued The three estates Rising importance of the burgher class Dwelling-house of a sixteenth-century cloth mer- chant The hall Armour The bedchamber Agricul- tural implements The booth " Ane hingand brod of oley cullouris " Early interest in painting in Scotland Pictures and painted cloths The burgesses as art patrons and introducers of foreign products and ideas The " keiking glass " The alarm clock Some items in the inventory of Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount Wood-carving in Scotland Domestic panelling Linenfold and other pat- terns Carved wood from Montrose At Ethie Castle From Threave Castle Cardinal Beaton's panels at Balfour House Embroidery in early times Its development in the sixteenth century Queen Mary's embroideries " Story work " Various examples The Rehoboam set The Earl of Morton's set Probable date and origin. THE Scottis peple," says Bishop Les- lie, writing towards the end of the sixteenth century, " is diuidet in thrie ordouris ; ane, of thame quhais pietie and hett studdie of religione had addicted themselves planelie to serue the Kirke ; the secunde, of thame quhais nobilitie and hienes of blude hes placed (them) in the secunde degrie of the com- moune weil ; the thrid, of thame quhome the 63 64 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND tounes accnawleges among thame to be frank and frie." In the political development of the country each of these orders, or estates, exer- cised in turn a predominating influence. It was the nobility whom the earlier Jameses had to conciliate, and whose support had to be secured when a national policy was to be carried out. But so heavy were the losses sustained by the nobility at Flodden that from that time the balance of power passed into the hands of the Church. This position of influence the Church made use of to encourage James V in his adhesion to the French Alliance and the Catho- lic religion. As time went on, however, the popular revolt against the abuses and exactions of the Church was reinforced by a growing recognition of the fact that England, rather than France, was designed by nature to be Scotland's ally. The pressure of such great questions as these on the minds of the people, and the groping for practical methods of settling them, helped to train and educate them for the influ- ence and responsibilities to which they were destined in turn to succeed when the Reforma- tion deprived the Church of Rome of her temporal power in Scotland. It was in 1572 that Sir Henry Killigrew, the English Agent in Scotland, recorded his often-quoted observa- rion as to the nobles and burgesses " taking more on them," and from this time forward it THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 65 was with the " Estaite of the Commoune Peple " that the Scottish monarchs had to reckon. In the preceding lectures we have considered the homes of the first two of these three orders, examining the castle of a feudal lord in the fifteenth century, and the manse of a Pre- Reformation priest in the sixteenth. It is fitting that we should now turn to the homes of the burgesses, of whose rise to influence and of whose advance in domestic comfort the records of the time supply clear evidence. Let us glance, therefore, for a few moments at the domestic surroundings of Frances Spottiswood, a cloth merchant who died in Edinburgh about 1540. One incident of his career is recorded, and is worth mentioning because of the picture it calls up of a sight which often met the eyes of townsmen in those unsettled times. He is named in the Edinburgh Burgh Records as one of a small group of citizens who, in 1521, appeared before a notary and formally protested against the " takin doun of the ii heids of the chalmerlane and his brother of the tolbuth end," and refused to be responsible for the consequences of the removal of those ghastly trophies. The merchant's booth, where he plies his trade wearing a brown doublet with scarlet hose, and girt with a silken belt from which 5 66 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND hangs a purse with gold tassels, occupies the ground-floor of his house, and the entrance to the dwelling-house above is by an outside fore- stair. Ascending these steps we find ourself in the hall or principal room, where an arras " hingar " or hanging covers one wall, and the long table has a covering which is also of tapestry. The lower half of the two small windows is shuttered instead of glazed, and in the shutters oval holes are cut to allow the occu- pants to thrust their heads through and watch the street life below. The merchant's own chair stands at one end of the table, while there is a form for his wife and young son. At one side stands a double counter, and on this may be set out some of the larger tin dishes and, more prominently placed, a silver maser, a silver " piece " or cup, and a silver salt-cellar enriched with gold. These and a set of a dozen silver spoons testify to the burgess' prosperity. The smaller trenchers and other tin dishes are kept in a vessel-aumrie, where also are folded away the dornick tablecloth, napkins and towels. The furniture is not of a merely rough and utilitarian kind, for there is a carved oak meat-aumrie and an oak settle also richly carved. Here too is kept his " stand of harness " or suit of armour, with a jack and steel bonnet and a two-handed sword ; for a merchant or craftsman had to be a good man THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 67 at arms, and was required to be ready to take his part in defending the community from vio- lence. Belongings of a more personal kind are an ivory stamp or seal tipped with silver, a gold signet ring, an ivory rosary and a gold pendant in the form of a head of St. John. Adjoining the hall is the bedchamber, where there is a large stand bed fitted with curtains of, " say," a serge-like cloth sometimes containing a little silk, and a bedcover of arras ; while a " futegang " or step was arranged by the side of the bed. There is also a press containing two closed receptacles in which clothes can be laid, and, as further provision for clothes and bed- linen, a large " schryne " or box, and a travelling chest which may have accompanied the cloth- merchant on his visits to Flanders. A sponge and comb are mentioned, the sponge here meaning a brush, and a towel hung on a pin on the wall ; the only basin mentioned is " ane hali watter fat ' ' or holy water basin . Along with these there is a mirror perhaps the earliest mention of a mirror as a piece of bedroom furniture in Scottish records. A spinning- wheel and implements for wool carding tell us of the home employments of the merchant's wife, who seems to have been considerably younger than her husband, for after his death at a good old age she married again. Among other significant possessions of Spot- 68 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND tiswood were a horse with a plough, " ane par of harrowis," a cart and sledge and other agricultural implements. These remind us that the towns were still rural communities largely dependent on the cultivation of the " town acres " on their outskirts, and the cloth- merchant had no doubt an allotment of the common land on the usual nineteen years' lease. In the booth below there is a low curtain of arras used to partition off part of the room, a " burd till lay claith apone " and other suitable provision for his trade, including a ward- aumrie and several chests for storing goods. There are also three items of more artistic interest. The first of these is a painted and gilded image of Our Lady. The second is described as " Sanct James Staf with ane slap." A slap, or slop, ordinarily means a riddle or sieve, but seems here to be applied to the reticulated form of wallet associated with the staff which is the emblem of St. James the Greater. The patron saints of the various gilds varied in different towns, but St. James does not seem to have been associated with any of the Edinburgh trades, St. John the Baptist, whose head Spottiswood wore as a pendant, being the patron of the tailzeours. There was, however, an altar to St. James in St. Giles' Cathedral, and this was under the charge of the THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 69 Provost, Bailies and Council of Edinburgh, and the emblem may have been carried by Spottis- wood in the town processions. The third, and most interesting, item is " ane hingand brod of oley cullouris." This cannot have been a signboard, as though trade signs of various sorts were in use even in the fifteenth century, boards with signs painted on them were unknown till early in the seventeenth. " Brod " is the word regularly used for a pic- ture. We read, for instance, in the royal inven- tories, of the " brod of the pictour of the Quene Regent brocht out of France," and of " aucht paintit broddis, Doctouris of Almaine " (1561). The " brod of oley cullouris," then, seems to have been a picture, and it is interesting as a very early instance of the possession of an oil painting in a private house in Scotland. The portraits of James III, still in Holyrood, of James IV, attributed to Holbein, and even that of James V, in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, were all, of course, painted before this date ; and there are many early references to painting. On examination, however, these will be found to apply to something other than pictures in oil colour. Thus, in 1450, St. Salvador's College at St. Andrew's had a " new paynted clayth of Sant Lorans, abwn St. Michaellys alter," and many similar entries might be quoted. But these were painted hangings intended as sub- 70 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND stitutes for tapestry, and they were painted not in oils but with pigments soluble in water. Such hangings are referred to in Shakespeare's Henry IV, where he speaks of ' Slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth." Another set of early references, such as that to David Pratt, who painted the altar at Stirling in 1497, and another which speaks of " ane ymage of St. Katryn, new pantyt be the Prouest " in 1450, may also be set aside. It would be pleasant to conceive a Scottish Provost spending cloistral hours in executing a primitif portrait of St. Catherine, but it is likely that his actual work consisted in recoating with rather gaudy colours a carved figure of the saint. But Spottiswood's brod was a picture in the modern sense, and it is likely that he may have acquired it himself in Flanders, and may thus have been one of the earliest, if not actually the first, private patron of the art of painting in Scotland. The interest that the early merchants had in the fine arts may be traced in Wedderburn's Compt Buik, where we find him noting that " John Meill has promyttit a fyn gilt brod with a pictour, how sone he passes to France," and, on another occasion, that " Thomas Young is awin me 2 payntit brodis ouergilt at his hame-cuming from Flanders." The taste for pictorial art soon began to diffuse itself, and in 1585 a Dutch painter called THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 71 Adrian Vanyone was made a burgess of Edin- burgh " to be employed in his craft in the town and to instruct apprentices." Such a house as we have been examining is interesting because it affords a glimpse of the home life of the burgher class which was to produce such men as Robert Gourlay and George Heriot. It enables us to see why it was in the homes of the burgesses, rather than in the castles of the nobles, that the way was being prepared for the great changes in domestic life that were to be introduced in the reign of James VI. The burgess lived in a compara- tively small house with his own family, and only one or two servants or apprentices to complete the household. In these conditions the tran- sition towards the modern conception of a life of domestic privacy was easier and more natural than among the nobles, living with considerable retinues in their mediaeval castles, and maintaining a certain state which tended to perpetuate the feudal tradition. Spottiswood's house, consisting of only two or three rooms, is furnished with a sense of the artistic value of furniture in adding a beauty and dignity to home life ; and such a sense is not often found in the castles of the time. The silver spoons and vessels, the napery and toilet accessories, all point to a certain fastidiousness in the details of indoor life, and an exacting standard in 72 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND these matters was more easily acquired in the towns than in the country. The burgesses too were in closer touch with the refinements intro- duced by foreign trade, and had opportunities of picking up novelties and improvements in the equipment and arrangement of the house which were slower in reaching the nobles in their country homes ; while the freer intercourse of town life led to the circulation of new ideas and the rapid adoption of new fashions. Finally, the prosperous tradesman had this advantage over the nobles, that he had a com- mand of money which enabled him to indulge and cultivate his tastes and so, thanks to his foreign connections, to become a pioneer in introducing works of art and other products of countries whose civilisation was more advanced. The mirror already spoken of is probably an instance of the additions to domestic con- venience introduced by the burgesses. Mirrors are mentioned as having been bought for the King in 1503, but one of these was " bocht at the cremare," that is from a pedlar, and another picked up in Dumfries for eightpence, so that they appear to have been cheap trifles hawked about the country. They were prob- ably curious toys rather than satisfactory reflec- tors. It is not till 1578 that we find mirrors mentioned in the royal inventories, Queen Mary having " ane fair steill glas " and a small THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 73 faceted mirror described as " ane uther less, schawing monie faces in the visie." In the following century, when they came into more general use, they were known as " keiking glasses " a name which suggests that they were still only of small size and perhaps that their use was still rather furtive and occasional than established by custom. The old song says Sweet Sir, of your courtesie, "*. When ye come by the Bass then, For the love ye bear to me By me a keiking glass then ! The use of clocks in the house is also due to the middle-class townsmen, who were the first to feel the need of punctuality in keeping appointments and in regulating their business. Even the alarm clock existed in Scotland as early as 1564, when the good ship Neptune arrived at Burntisland, having on board, among other goods said to have been taken " in piracie," " ane litill knok with ane walknar (wakener) ouregilt." Other novelties which appeared about that time were introduced through the Court, whose relations with France kept it in touch with the latest developments there. Fans, for instance, were used by Queen Mary, and they are described as " culing fannis of litle wandis," while a forerunner of the modern parasol may perhaps be found in " ane litle cannabic of crammasie satyne of thrie quarter lang, furnisit with freinyes and fassis (fringes and tassels) made of gold and cram- masie silk ; monie litle paintit buttons ; all seruing to bear to mak schadow befoir the Queen." Other familiar articles that first came into use in the sixteenth century include shoe- horns, then called shoeing horns, which are mentioned in 1522 ; and glass vessels and cups, which, though still a rarity, are referred to in 1526. Among certain small gear in a great box belonging to a burgess of the " nobill burgh of Abirdene " we find " spectikyllis " named in 1546, but these were probably in use a hundred years earlier, as we know them to have been in England. An inventory of the possessions of Sir David Lyndsay, of the Mount, is preserved in the Register of Acts and Decreets, and it has some interesting features. Among his silver, for instance, we find " ane dusoun of silver spunis havand the armis of the said umquhile Schir David thairon," perhaps the earliest record of a private owner having his silver so marked. Heraldic zeal, however, need not surprise us in one who was Lyon King of Arms and author of the Register of Scottish Arms. Even more interesting is the fact that he left " ane byble in Inglis," for Lyndsay, though a reformer with a singularly unbridled tongue, died within the communion of the Church. Many English THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 75 versions of the Bible had been published before Lyndsay's death in 1555, but it was not till twenty-four years later that the first version printed in Scotland, by Bassendyne and Arbuth- nott, was issued. And though the Edinburgh Town Council decreed in the following year that all " substantious houshalderis " must have a Bible in their houses, it is not till early in the seventeenth century that we find them appearing as usual family possessions. That native wood-carvers were to be found in Scotland even before the close of the fifteenth century is shown by the accounts for the work done at Stirling Castle. Payments are entered as made " to Dauid, kervour, in erlis for the gallory quhilk he suld mak for x merkis " and " to the kervour that took in task the siling of the chapel." The fact that the panelling or " siling " was entrusted to a carver seems to show that it was definitely artistic work and not mere carpentry. But such work was confined for the most part to ecclesiastical interiors. The scarcity of oak, apart from other causes, made domestic panelling much less common than in England. " Syllit chalmers " were often rooms whose walls or roofs were merely faced with boarding. Even as late as 1622, when the standard of domestic decoration had advanced considerably, the Englishman, John Ray, wrote, 76 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND " In the most stately and fashionable houses, in great towns, instead of ceiling, they cover the chambers with firr boards, nailed on the roof within side." And, indeed, this squalid fashion may be seen to this day in some of our important Scottish Castles. In many a church, however, there was wood- carving of a more or less ambitious kind, which kept a certain technical standard before the eyes of the people. The screen and stalls of King's College, Aberdeen, and the stalls in Dunblane, to name two instances which have survived the iconoclasm of the Reformers, and the elaborate gallery in Pitsligo Parish Church, erected in 1634, show that both before and after the Refor- mation there was no difficulty in providing Scot- tish buildings with woodwork which was both capably designed and competently executed. The principal example of a Scottish domestic ceiling panelled in oak is the gallery at Crathes Castle. Of panelled walls there are naturally more frequent examples, but early specimens have often been mutilated as a result of their having been moved from one house to another, and ruthlessly cut to adapt them to their new situation. One fine piece of early panelling latterly formed the partition of a cowhouse ; and at Inverugie Castle a carved and gilded heraldic panel was found serving as part of a pig-trough ! THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 77 Panels decorated with the " linen-fold " and the " parchment " patterns, both late Gothic types of ornament, are not unusual in Scotland. We also find examples of a type of panel carved with a floral design, a good specimen of which is the set of panels from an old house in Montrose, and now the property of Mr. P. W. Campbell, W.S. (Plate IV). The panels are believed to be the remains of a set of twenty- two, and they are supposed to be part of the fittings of Abbot Panter's Hospital, which was built in Montrose in 1516. The designing of the various subjects is well done and shows a certain resource in adapting the plant forms to the spaces to be filled. Yet the work has a somewhat sturdy and heavy-handed quality which suggests that they are rather the work of some honest Scot, discovering and, on the whole, surmounting the difficulties of design, than of a foreign workman with all the experience of the Flemish gilds at his finger ends. As to the date, the carving might pass for fifteenth-century work, but the panels in which monks are satirically represented as foxes and swine probably point to a date nearer that of the Reformation. The mouldings, cut in the solid wood of the framework, and inter- secting so as to form mitres at the upper corners, but abutting on the rail at the bottom, support the later date, and suggest that the work may 78 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND not be earlier than the second quarter of the sixteenth century. Along with these panels there was found a door containing panels of similar design and workmanship, but separated by stiles orna- mented with niches and representations of traceried windows. The mouldings are treated in the same way as in the panelling, and it is evident that doors and panelling were originally in the same room. At Ethie Castle there is a cabinet associated with the name of Cardinal Beaton, who is said to have lived there after succeeding to the Abbacy of Arbroath ; the doors forming the front contain panels of very elaborate Gothic tracery. This is similar to the tracery found in French furniture of the end of the fifteenth century, though the horizontal openings in the upper panels of the right hand door are very unusual. Of a totally different type are some panels which belong to Mrs. Dunn, Castledouglas, whose father, the late Mr. Joseph Train, F.S.A. (Scot.), left a MS. note in which he says that these panels were part of a " massy oaken bed- stead well authenticated to have been the prin- cipal one of the Castle of Threave, and said to have been that of the Black Douglas himself. It is one of the old closet kind of bed." As the figures wear costume of the sixteenth century, I'LATE Si the association with the Black Douglas may be dismissed. Unfortunately the carved work has been made up into a piece of furniture which is altogether incongruous with the age to which the carving belongs. These figures, however, though of a rather rude type, are extremely spirited, and they show us performers on the bagpipes and the fiddle, as well as archers, dancers and other types of the time, all repre- sented with a certain alertness of observation and with considerable humour. The door from Amisfield Castle is said to be of the same type of work, but this cannot be verified till the National Museum of Antiquities has its exhibits restored to it. If true it seems to point to the existence of an untrained native artist in Dumfries and Galloway in the sixteenth century, whose work was highly unconventional and whose verve and animal spirits we can still appreciate. At Balfour House, in Fife, there is a set of panels 1 which is of greater artistic and historical interest than any of these. There are eight large panels, extending across the end of a large room, where they have been placed above the level of the doors. They are evidently of Flemish work- manship of the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, and they are excellent speci- mens of mediaeval woodcarving of a very rich and accomplished kind. The first panel, on 1 See Plates V and VI 80 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND the left, shows the Annunciation, the Virgin kneeling at a " lettron " (lutrin), overwhelmed by the angel's message ; the pot of lilies, the descending dove, and some Gothic scroll and canopy work complete the decoration of the panel. Next comes a panel whose subject is the " Jesse tree." Jesse is shown recumbent below, while from him springs the tree bearing his descendants and culminating in the Virgin and Child at the top. The third is a sacred heraldic panel, the shield being charged with the emblems of the Passion, while two angels act as supporters ; on the helm is the crown of thorns ; the scourge, the crowing cock and other emblems occur in the crest. After this we have a panel with the arms of Cardinal Beaton and a pastoral staff ; and below are the arms of the Cardinal's father, John Beaton, and his mother, Elizabeth Monipenny, of Kinkell, the whole surrounded with a beautiful design of pomegranates. The fifth panel is carved with the Scottish arms, beneath which a thistle is introduced between the supporters. The sixth and seventh have decorative designs of various plant forms, among which the rose and the thistle are employed ; while the eighth panel is ornamented with an arrangement of carved bosses with heraldic and other motives. The wood carving, as well as the designing, is of a high standard, such as was secured by j a 2 , THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 81 the strict control exercised by the Flemish gilds over the work turned out by their members. The work, has of course, been executed in accordance with specifications supplied by Beatoun, and the heraldic details and the Scottish emblems employed in the decoration give it a personal and national character. The use of the pastoral staff in the fourth panel shows that the panels were executed before 1537, when, as Bishop of Mirepoix, Beatoun became entitled to display the crozier instead of the humbler emblem. As Abbot of Arbroath he had the right to the pastoral staff from 1524, and it is probable that the work was commissioned by him shortly after his appointment. The tradition in the family was that the panels had been " in the form of a canopy," and that they had formed part of the Cardinal's stall at Rome, tkough it was evident to the later descendants that the connection with Rome could not be seriously maintained. There can be little doubt that they were part of the decoration of a series of stalls in Arbroath Abbey, and were originally surmounted in the usual way with overhanging canopies. The bosses on the eighth panel, which is not one of the original set, have probably been taken from the carved canopies which formerly topped the stalls. It is worth noting that there are seven of these bosses, corresponding to the number of 6 82 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND the other panels, and the larger size of the central boss may imply that the panel bearing the Scottish arms occupied the central position in the original arrangement. The present arrangement is that which was made about 1670, when the panels were removed from their canopied setting and disposed on the wall so that the more interesting panels are next the light. Even as we see them to-day they are a most interesting survival of the " excellent work " which beautified the sacred buildings of Scotland, and of which so little survived the latter half of the sixteenth century, when they " broke down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers." The art of ornamental needlework, or em- broidery, is of very early origin, and it was no doubt in use in Scotland, though in compara- tively rude forms, long before we have any record of it. By the fifteenth century it was a well-matured art, employed in decorating cos- tume, curtains and draperies of all sorts. An embroiderer, called a browdstar, brusoure or brodinster, was one of the regular servants of the royal retinue, 1 " and many noble families also had their own embroiderers. The royal browd- star's duties included keeping the chapel vest- ments in order, making good the wear and tear of the tapestry hangings, and doing such odd PLATE THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 83 jobs as " making a chamlot bag to the King," for which " Gely brousoure " was paid six shillings by the Lord High Treasurer in 1474. His services were valued at twenty pounds for three terms, and he was supplied besides with the necessary materials for his work. In the inventory made in 1488 of the effects of King James III, particulars are given of the drapery of a bed, consisting of covering, roof and pen- dicles, or curtains, all made of " variand purpur tartar, browdin with thrissillis and a unicorne " which by the way is perhaps the earliest refer- ence to the thistle as the Scottish national badge or emblem. Such work as this no doubt fell to the royal embroiderer, with occasional trained assistance for special work ; and the enrichment of such bed-hangings, cloths of estate, and the royal robes and chapel vestments must have called for a high standard of workmanship as well as for untiring industry. It was in ecclesiastical ornament, however, that needlework found its most elaborate de- velopment, and it was probably in it that ' ymagerie," or pictorial representation, was first employed. In 1450 the High Altar at St. Salvador's College, St. Andrews, had a " blew claith wellowis (velvet) browdyn with ymagis abuff the altar," and a similar cloth under the altar (a nether frontal), ' ;< brusyt with thre ymages of gold " ; while among other " clay- 84 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND this for the kyrk " there was " ane frontale of clayth of gold contenand the xii Appostilis." When, in the sixteenth century, it became usual to panel the principal rooms in important houses, and tapestry passed into temporary eclipse, the change soon led to a new develop- ment of the embroiderer's art. The occupants of such rooms, we may conjecture, began to find that, with all the practical advantages of panel- ling, rooms so treated were somewhat dull and cheerless to live in. Tapestrie chambers had not only been rich in colour, but they had appealed to the imagination of those who lived in them by the romantic suggestion of the stories that they pictured. All this was gone, and people looked back to the brightness and poetry of the fashion that had been displaced. No doubt when the Reformation led to the churches being despoiled of their richly em- broidered cloths and vestments, many of these found their way into private houses and were used to relieve the sombre austerity of panelled rooms. The same movement, however, had deprived the professional embroiderers of the principal outlet for their most important work. And it is hardly fanciful to suppose that these conditions explain the introduction of pictures stitched in coloured wools and silks, and repre- senting biblical and romantic stories, which came into fashion towards the end of the six- THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 85 teenth century. These pictures are generally small in scale, being often worked on horizontal lengths of canvas measuring about 22j inches in height. The length of the various pieces composing a set often varies considerably, and this suggests that they were hung in sequence, as a sort of running frieze, at a suitable level on the wall, and that the length of the separate pieces may have been determined by the width, of the wall-spaces they were intended to occupy. The work is done in petit point, consisting of small diagonal stitches corresponding to the mesh of the canvas on which they are sewn. In most cases there are about seventeen or eighteen stitches to the vertical linear inch, and rather fewer, say fourteen to seventeen, to the hori- zontal inch. An interesting fact has been noted by Mr. C. E. C. Tatersall, that where two members of the design are intended to be of the same size, they correspond in actual size rather than in the number of stitches ; from which it would seem that the design has been drawn on the canvas, not copied by a count from squared paper, as is done to-day. It was probably by women, who spent so much of their time indoors, that the want of such pictures was most felt, and much of the work itself was well fitted to appeal to the taste and domestic industry of women, even if they had not the trained capacity of the professional 86 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND embroiderers. Catherine de Medici in France, Queen Elizabeth in England and Queen Mary in Scotland were all accomplished workers at embroidery. Whether any one of them was capable of producing petit point panels of romantic figure-subjects with backgrounds rich with ornamental gardens, architecture and every kind of animal life, is questionable. Certainly from the point of view of design, these panels were beyond the capacity of even talented amateurs. But Catherine de Medici, who, as Brantome tells us, used to work at her silk embroidery after dinner, had her work designed, and probably supervised, by Frederic de Vin- ciolo, who is described as " dessinateur des plus renomme's pour broderie" As for Queen Mary, a letter (July, 1557) from Sir Nicholas Throk- morton to Queen Elizabeth, whose emissary he was, describes a visit to the Queen of Scots shortly after her imprisonment in Loch Leven, and mentions that she had applied for " an imbroderer to drawe furthe such works as she would be occupied about." Whether this request was granted does not seem to be re- corded. The request shows her dependence on a professional designer. We learn from a French source, however, that among the ser- vants who were taken from her by Sir Amyas Poulet in 1587 was " son brodeur, Charles Plouvart." And looking for confirmation of THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 87 this to the list preserved in the State Papers concerning Queen Mary (No. 378) of the ser- vants to whom passports were issued on their repatriation, we find the name of Charles " Plonart," probably a mistake for Plouart, the nature of whose service however is not there specified. So deeply has the popular imagination been impressed by the romantic story of Queen Mary spending the bitter hours of imprison- ment at her embroidery, that there is a tendency to attribute to her, or at least to associate with her, any piece of early embroidery that has come down through several generations of a Scottish family. One piece of work which has been exhibited more than once as belonging to, if not worked by her, is plainly of the time of Charles I ; and even much later pieces than this have been attributed to her. All such attributions should be suspected, and the in- trinsic and documentary evidence carefully examined. One specimen of her work whose authenticity can hardly be doubted is preserved at Hardwick Hall (Plate VII). The spaces formed by the interlacing design are filled with the Lily of France, the Thistle of Scotland and the Rose of England, while on the round panel in the centre the letters of the name Maria have been worked into a monogram and are surmounted with a 88 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND crown. While the design is a simple one and hardly beyond the power of an amateur designer, there are one or two features such as the little spiral which occurs between the reticulations which may point to a more experienced hand, possibly that of Plouvart. Another panel in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire which is attributed to Queen Mary bears in the centre a scutcheon with the arms of Lady Shrewsbury, the well-known Bess of Hardwick, in the custody of whose fourth husband Mary was placed. Round the scut- cheon, whose length seems to have been added to as if by an afterthought, there is a well-dis- tributed verdure pattern, the leaves and flowers being comfortably adapted to the broken out- line of the cartouche in which the scutcheon stands. From embroidered work of this kind it is a far cry to the petit point hangings in which all the significant episodes of some romantic story are set forth, the figures wearing con- temporary costume and decked with jewels and sumptuous patterned fabrics, and the whole drama set in a background in which every curiosity of nature and art is employed to enrich the effect of the whole. Such work must have taxed the skill of the most expert profes- sional embroiderers. Consider the difficulty, for instance, of interpreting with the needle an PLATE Vll THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 89 intricately brocaded silk or velvet draped in folds on a figure in action, where the pattern is constantly broken and distorted by the folds of the drapery, and the colours of the materials have to be perpetually modified to express the light and shade of the puckered fabric. Work so complicated must have demanded not only a highly cultivated sense of drawing, but also an undivided and concentrated attention in carry- ing out the design, which could hardly have been expected of Queen Mary, with so many sad and anxious thoughts to muse over as she plied her needle. Two petit point panels which were acquired by Sir Noel Paton at the Murthly Castle sale are now in the Royal Scottish Museum. They are said to represent (a) Solomon and the Queen of Sheba y and (b) Queen Elizabeth receiving an Embassy with a Proposal of Marriage from Philip II of Spain (1559) ; the two panels are of the same height, and though one is some eight inches longer than the other the composi- tion is so similar that they appear to be intended as a pair, in which case the subjects are rather oddly assorted, and the smaller panel perhaps represents some sixteenth-century historical subject. The panels mounted on a screen and repre- senting the Story of Rehoboam have been exhibited on several occasions since they came 90 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND into the possession of Mr. Scott MoncriefFs family. These hangings were very naturally identified with the set, illustrating the same un- usual subject, which appears in the inventory made in 1561 of effects belonging to Mary of Guise, and also in the list of goods handed over to James VI in 1578. Investigation, however, showed that a Rehoboam set was recorded in the earlier inventories of 1539 and 1542, and Mr. Scott Moncrieff at once recognised the probability that Mary of Guise's set was the same as that mentioned in the earlier documents, as existing at a date clearly too early for the costume in his own set. He also made a de- tailed inquiry into the costume in his set, and reached the conclusion that it was probably of a date later, though not much later, than 1561. There is another point. The Rehoboam hangings in the royal inventories are grouped with many others as " Tapestryis," a term properly applied to woven hangings ; and it appears very un- likely that, especially in the Scottish Court, whose vocabulary in such matters closely fol- lowed the French usage, small embroideries sewn with the needle would be so described. No doubt the word tapestry was used with a certain latitude, for we read of " ellevin tapes- trie of gilt ledder " ; but where woven tapestry was not intended, I think the distinction would be clearly expressed. That the tapestries in the THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 91 royal inventories were hangings of considerable size is further shown by the fact that many of them were eventually made down into bed- covers and bed-curtains, as appears in the list of beds handed over to James VI as " pertening to his hienes* derrest moder." But though it would have added a historical interest if these hangings could have been identified with the tapestries which belonged to Mary of Guise, still their beauty and interest are inherent and do not depend on documentary evidence. They are undoubtedly of the period of Queen Mary. They came into the present owner's family in 1692, having previously belonged to another Scottish family, so that their early association with Scotland is un- doubted, and is confirmed by the use of the thistle as a piece of decoration in the uppermost panel. The number of Scottish houses in the sixteenth century likely to have such finely wrought embroideries was limited, and when we reflect that the story of Rehoboam is one that deals with a royal house in its relations to changes in the national faith, it is by no means improbable that the hangings may have had some connection with Queen Mary, whom such questions of royal policy so closely affected. Another set of petit point hangings tradi- tionally attributed to Queen Mary is that be- longing to the Earl of Morton ; and its un- 92 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND interrupted ownership, from the sixteenth cen- tury to the present day, by Regent Morton and his descendants might well seem to support the tradition. But, in the first place, it is impossible that work of such rare beauty and such intricate richness could have been produced by Mary and her ladies, and above all at Loch Leven where there was no artist to execute the design. Mary was only eleven months in Loch Leven. By June, 1568, she had left Scotland. Though it is extremely difficult to deduce an exact time from costume, still the costumes in these hang- ings appear to be later, rather than earlier, than 1568 ; and if this is so they are hardly likely, supposing them to have been worked by Queen Mary, to have come to Scotland and into the hands of Regent Morton. (Plate VIII). But there is one line of investigation which might lead to interesting results. While most of the petit point hangings of the period have a strong resemblance to each other in their general character, one finds on comparison that the various examples differ from each other just as sharply as do, for instance, the drawings by different artists in Punch. After careful examination of a large number of such needle- work hangings I have found none comparable in draughtsmanship, in the expressive grace and romantic dignity of the figures, and in the resourceful inventiveness of the garden back- t'LATE I Iff THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 93 ground, with Lord Morton's set. So remark- able are these qualities that one asks who there was among contemporary artists who could have produced such work ? And one remem- bers the name of Nicholas Hilliard, goldsmith and portrait painter to Queen Elizabeth, of whom Donne wrote : A hand or eye By Hilliard drawn is worth a historye By a worse painter made. I do not know that there is any evidence that Hilliard designed for embroidery, but it is quite likely that the members of the Broderers' Company, incorporated by Queen Elizabeth in 1561, may have applied to the leading artists of the time to supply designs for the petit point panels that just then came into fashion. Hilliard has left a considerable number of miniatures, and there is a couple of drawings by him at the British Museum, one of which is the design for the Great Seal of Ireland ; but there is nothing in these to justify one in attributing the design of the Morton hangings to him. One of the best known of the miniatures is that representing George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, as Queen's Champion ; and in this the Champion's scut- cheon bears a device consisting of a globe, representing the earth, between a sun " in his splendour " that is surrounded with rays in the upper part of the field, and a moon and stars 94 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND in the lower part. This may be some flattering allusion to Elizabeth, and it is worth noting that the seated figure, which might well be a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, in the central panel of Lord Morton's hangings, wears shoulder pieces showing the device of a sun in his splendour. In connection with this figure and its garden surroundings we may recall Hilliard's descrip- tion of how, when he " first came in her Highnes presence to drawe," the Queen, in order to avoid all shadows on the face " chosse her place to sit in ... the open ally of a goodly garden, where no tree was neere, nor anye shadowe at all." If these hangings should represent a series of scenes in some masque written in honour of Elizabeth and perhaps acted at court, it might well have been depicted by Hilliard as painter to the Queen. There are passages in his Arte of Limning in which Hilliard makes it plain that designing of this kind was known to him, though he does not explicitly say that he practised it. He naturally, as a miniature painter, claims a higher place for that art " as a thing apart from all other painting or drawing, and tendeth not to comon mens vsse, either for furnishing of howsses or any patternes for tapistries " ; and elsewhere he speaks of portraiture as a thing " which indeed one should not atempt vntill he weare metly good in story work." It is a fair inference that THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 95 he had some experience in designing such story work as is exemplified in these hangings. Hilliard devoted much attention to the render- ing of jewellery, and in this respect and in all the opulent detail with which every inch of the hangings is covered, the design might very well be that of a goldsmith. But besides such general considerations there are historical facts which seem to support the hypothesis of his connection with this piece of needlework, or which at least make such a connection plausible. In the course of a search into the beginnings of industrial enterprise in Scotland I chanced on this curious and interesting fact, which seems to have escaped the notice of Hilliard's biographers. In the year 1580 a company of adventurers came to Scotland with the object of working gold mines in Crawfurd Muir, Lanarkshire, where alluvial gold had been found by earlier enthu- siasts. The head of this company was Nicholas Hilliard, who had with him Arnold Bronkhorst, a Flemish painter, as his assistant. It was to Regent Morton that application had to be made for a patent to work the mines, and it seems probable that the applicants would come bearing gifts for those whose favour had to be won. What more likely than that Hilliard should bring a set of these hangings, which were the latest fashion in the great English houses, and which were easily packed up and carried ? 96 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND Regent Morton refused to grant the conces- sion, although we are told that " the said Bronkhorst became a suitor at least for the space of four moneths and did not prevail unto this day." Hilliard had meanwhile returned to England having " lost all his chardges and never since got any recompence, to Mr. Hilliard's great hinderance, as he saith, who yet liveth, and confirmeth the same." So Steven Atkinson tells us in his Discoverie and Historie of the Gold Mynes in Scotland, published in 1619, the year of Hilliard's death. Bronkhorst, he says, " was forced to become one of his Majestie's sworne servants at Ordinary in Scotland, to draw all the small and great pictures for his Majesty " ; and an original precept at the Register House, signed by James VI, records payment to him for two portraits of the King and one of George Buchanan, with an additional one hundred marks " as an gratitude for his repairing to this countrey." This story of the gold-mining adventurers at least suggests, as an alternative to the Loch Leven origin of the hangings, which is improbable on account of dates, how this romantic piece of needlework may have come into the possession of the family of Lord Morton. Whether it was designed by Hilliard himself cannot meanwhile be proved. The evidence of the miniatures does not support the ascription, though it is THE RISE OF THE BURGHERS 97 difficult to argue from portrait miniatures, where the artist is closely tied to the realities of his sitters, to storied design, where he is free to indulge his personal conceptions of ideal beauty. One clue that might lead to an identification of the designer is the treatment of the hands, which is very distinctive. The fingers are shown as curved and separated, each with its own action, and the forefinger having more upward spring from the knuckle than the others. There is a set of three small panels at the Victoria and Albert Museum where there is a somewhat similar treatment of the hands, and some of the men's heads are not unlike those in Lord Morton's panels. But the museum set lacks the elegance of drawing and the expressive beauty of the figures in the set we have been examining. LECTURE IV THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMILY LIFE JAMES VI, 1578-1625 New conceptions of domestic life Historical origins of the change Passing away of feudalism Expansion of trade and increasing importance of the towns Enrichment of the nobles by partition of Church property An era of building Domestic character of the new architecture Feudal lords transformed into courtiers, with luxurious standards of living Changes in domestic arrangements The hall gives place to the dining-room The " Dravand Buird " Table manners at Court and in private life Table ware, etc. Display of plate Cupboards with " gries " The dresser Dessert and the banquet The parlour Stuffed chairs The taffel Books ; the Family Bible Pictures Music Life of the leisured classes Men's employments and recreations How a lady of fashion spent her day Dietetic dangers and some medical counsels Children's toys A boy's penknife Duncan's new doublet. AL through the sixteenth century, house furnishing in Scotland proceeded on the basis of a mediaeval conception of social life. As, with more settled conditions, the country advanced in prosperity, and as the middle classes gradually gained in influence and importance, the diffusion of wealth began to be reflected in the increase of luxury in the homes of gentle and simple. Carved and gilded wood, 98 THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 99 rich fabrics and jewellery and ornaments of every kind gave the interiors of many Scottish homes an interest which they had not had in ruder and less sophisticated days. Yet, if there was more conscious art, the furniture was of the same types and served the same social usages as in the fifteenth century. Such advance as there was amounted rather to a general enrichment of the details of domestic furnishing than to any radical change in its principles. But almost with the stroke of the new century there came a change. As we read the inventories of household plenishings of the closing years of the sixteenth century and the opening years of the seventeenth, we cannot but recognise that a great upheaval in the arrangements of household life was taking place and that innova- tions were being introduced that really implied a new conception of social order. In these inventories we constantly find new articles of furniture, meeting wants which were unknown to the previous generation. The interiors assume a more comfortable, and, to our modern eyes, a more familiar air than that of the some- what severe and ceremonial apartments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Feudalism has run its course, and we are watching the beginnings of the modern world with its distinc- tive conception of comfort and privacy in family life. 100 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND So sudden and so striking is the change that the least reflective must turn to history for an explanation ; and, indeed, it is easy to recognise some of the influences which combined to pre- cipitate a crisis which was already overdue. There was in the first place the modern spirit, born of the Renaissance a spirit which could not coexist with the feudalism of the Middle Ages, and which was bound to overturn, sooner or later, any system based on such a conception. The new independence of thought which char- acterised the time must in itself have led to a reconsideration of the social relations on which mediaeval household life depended. It was stimulated by the freer intellectual contact with the countries of Europe both through foreign travel and as a result of the interchange of printed literature. But apart from such general causes, the Reformation, which was the crisis through which Scotland chiefly felt and re- sponded to the Renaissance movement, had specific results which exercised a very marked and definite influence on social conditions in Scotland. The long drain of Scottish money towards Rome was now at an end, and the accumulation of capital in the country was at last possible. At the same moment traders all over the country were relieved from the com- petition of the Church, whose immense re- sources in wealth and organisation had enabled THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 101 her to overshadow the business enterprises of her humbler rivals. Trade and industry, thus relieved from the burdens that had so long over- weighted them, began to expand and find their natural development. Tradesmen and crafts- men who had hitherto found shelter under the wing of the Castle or of the Abbey, and had lived at the beck and call of their feudal superiors, migrated into the towns and carried on their work under the protection of the town gilds. Thus, while the Castles lost their im- portance, the towns were every day gaining in population and in activity. It only wanted the circulation of considerable sums of money to ensure that the advance in prosperity should be confirmed and developed ; and this too came about as an indirect consequence of the Reforma- tion. In 1587 an Act of Parliament was passed which, subject to provision for the clergy, transferred all ecclesiastical property to the King -the measure being justified by the allegation that the Crown had, before the Reformation, been driven to overtax the people in order to make good its own gifts to the Church. However this may be, it is estimated that from a third to a half of the total wealth of the country had passed into the possession of the Church. From the property which was now transferred to the Crown, James made lavish gifts to the nobles, many of whom, finding 102 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND themselves suddenly possessed of lands and a sufficient income, seized the opportunity of re- modelling their castles or of building new homes of a less antiquated character. As artillery, by this time, could make short work of the strongest masonry, there was no use in erecting strongly fortified keeps as in the days that were past. Nor was it any longer necessary to subordinate the actual plan and internal arrangements of the house to considerations of defence from attack, unless in remoter parts of the country where raids might still have to be provided against. Those who built new houses were therefore free for the first time to make comfort and privacy their primary consideration. Such mediaeval and military features as appear in the mansions built at that time are survivals of a tradition which, though no longer suited to the needs of the age, was familiar and not easily thrown aside. What is really new and typical in the architecture of the time is its strongly domestic character. Another effect of the erection of the lands of the ancient Church into temporal lordships is worth noting. James succeeded, by means of such gifts, in attaching the nobles to his Court and committing them to his policy. They thus insensibly passed from the position of more or less independent feudal lords to that of more or less subservient courtiers. This change THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 103 gives a transitional note to the social atmosphere of the time. Sir Walter Scott points out, in his introduction to the Fortunes of Nigel, that " in all the comedies of the age the principal char- acter for gaiety and wit is the young heir, who has totally altered the establishment of the father to whom he has succeeded. " The comedies to which he alludes those of Shad- well and others are such as give a picture of English life. But the change was sharper still in Scotland ; for in addition to the influences that operated in England there was the sudden introduction of new standards of life resulting from the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the contact it brought with a much wealthier civilisation. William Lithgow, writing in 1628, gives a rather highly coloured picture of the age : " All the gold of the kingdom is daily transported away with superfluous posting for court, whence they never return anything save spend-all, end-all ; then farewell fortune ! " And he talks of " our ignoble gallants, though nobly born, swallowing up the honour of their predecessors with posting foolery, boy-winding horns, gormandising gluttony, lust and vain apparel." On every side we have evidence of the social changes that followed from the Scottish King's accession to the English throne. The migration of all sorts of workers from the country to the 104 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND towns, which had been going steadily on for a long time past, brought embarrassments of a grave kind to the country nobles, accustomed as these had been to command the services of skilled country craftsmen by a local bartering of their produce. With an advancing standard of comfort in domestic life, and an increasing dependence on the towns to supply his wants, the country noble was faced with the difficulty of converting his produce into cash, and when he paid a visit to the town he was chagrined to find himself a person of much less influence and importance than the prosperous tradesman who had a ready command of money. His hungry retinue, which he felt necessary to support his dignity, was apt not only to add to his difficul- ties but also to expose him to ridicule. He re- turned to his castle wounded and embittered, too firmly rooted in the past to be capable of adapting himself to the social changes which everywhere confronted him. Very different from the position of such a penniless feudal lord was that of those courtiers who had been enriched by sharing in the division of monastic property. These brought back from Court all kinds of new and luxurious ideas, and the castles in which they had been born and bred were condemned as unsuitable to the kind of life to which they had now become accustomed. The mediaeval hall was out of date and must THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 105 needs be replaced by a family dining-room. Their nostrils having become too sensitive to tolerate the smell of cooking, the kitchen had to be banished to a remoter part of the house. Drawing-rooms, parlours and studies began to be introduced, and the privacy of the upper bedrooms was secured by providing separate access to each by turret stairs, instead of letting one room lead into another as in earlier times. Now that thick walls were no longer necessary, rooms were more brightly lighted and pleasanter to live in, and though the English development of great mullioned and transomed windows never took root in Scotland, the fashion of bow windows was sometimes adopted so as to com- mand a wider outlook from within. The interiors too were more elaborately decorated ; the walls were often treated with wooden panelling, and the ceilings enriched with elaborate plaster ornament or, as in the long gallery at Pinkie, painted with classical or other subjects. The changed conception of household life which is expressed in these architectural innova- tions is equally clearly reflected in the domestic arrangements and furnishing. In some houses the hall became the family dining-room, though the old trestle tables with their forms might be replaced by furniture of a newer type. In others the hall was abandoned as a " living 106 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND room " and the meals and the family life in general were transferred from it to the more secluded apartments beyond. Thus the hall, which had hitherto been the main arena of the social life of the house, gradually ceased to rank as a room at all, and degenerated into what it has become in our modern houses, a mere antechamber or entrance lobby in which stran- gers could be allowed to wait without interfering with the privacy of the family. This process of degeneration was further accelerated when the hall was transferred from the first to the ground floor, which had hitherto been given up to vaulted cellars. Sometimes the new dining- room was in practice very little different from the old hall ; the antiquated furniture was made use of, the board being placed along the wall, with a piece of tapestry, or a painted " brod," or picture, hung on the wall behind the master's seat, to represent the old parelling. But where a family was inclined, and had the means, to adopt the new fashions without the necessity of compromise, we may conceive them dining in a panelled room, well lighted and with a pleasant outlook ; the table would be placed not by the wall but in the middle of the room, and it would be no longer a long board on trestles, but a solid wainscot or walnut table built upon turned or carved " branders " or legs, and made with two or three leaves for THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 107 extension when necessary. This was what was called " ane drawand buird," 1 and though generally rectangular it was sometimes circular in form, for we find occasional references to " ane roundel burde with thrie leavis." Such a table is very significant of the new social customs which were everywhere asserting them- selves. Little general conversation can have been possible when those who dined together sat in a row on one side of a board which might be fifteen or twenty feet long. The new fashion allowed the guests to sit more or less in a circle round a roomier table whose length could be adjusted so as to be no greater than the number of guests required a much more sociable arrangement. Another change was equally significant. At mediaeval meals there had been only one chair, as we have seen, and this was the rightful seat of the master of the house a tradition which we still recognise when we hold a meeting under the guidance of someone who occupies " the Chair." Guests of distinction might be provided with stools but most of the company sat on forms. When James IV, for instance, met his affianced bride, Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, at Newbattle, a contemporary writer tells us " The tables were then drest and served. The Kynge satt in the Chayre and the Queue abouffe 1 See Plate IX. 108 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND hym on hys ryght haund. For because the Stole of the Quene was not for hyr ease, he gaffe hyr the sayde Chayre," and this is men- tioned, of course, as one of the graceful and exceptional courtesies which the King showed to the English Princess. But with the passing away of feudalism the chair lost its throne-like attributes, and from the beginning of the seven- teenth century we find chairs appearing in sets for family use, very often in sets of four. Thus an inventory of 1607 has " Foure chyres of walnut trie, price of the piece viij lib. Item, foure chyres of aik, price of ilk chyre iiij lib." And with these appear " aucht fyne buffeit stuillis, price of ilk stuill xl s." The use of forms for sitting on at meals was not, of course, at once abandoned when chairs had been intro- duced, for old habits are not so easily thrown off. But where a round table was used, forms were obviously impossible, and little by little the custom of using chairs round a table set in the middle of the room displaced the earlier usage. We have some interesting particulars of a banquet given by James VI to the Constable of Castile at Whitehall Palace in the year 1604. After grace had been said, the King and Queen washed their hands in the same basin,- while another basin served for the Prince and the chief guest. The King and Queen sat at the head of the table at some distance from each PLATE IX X ? M ? X * ^ THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 109 other, under the canopy of state, and on chairs of brocade with cushions. The Prince and the Constable sat on tabourets, or stools, also of brocade with cushions. At the side of the room stood a buffet laden with vessels of gold, and of agate and other precious stones. The banquet was accompanied with instrumental music. The guests had their heads covered, but when the King rose to drink to the health of the King and Queen of Spain, he uncovered his head. The banquet lasted for three hours, and then, the cloth having been removed, everyone rose up. The table, we are told, was placed upon the ground, which seems to mean that it was lifted down from the dais, " and their Majesties, standing upon it, proceeded to wash their hands, which is stated to be an ancient ceremony." Dancing followed. The candid chronicler relates that the morning after the banquet the Constable of Castile awoke with a slight attack of lumbago ! This of course was a ceremonial Court dinner given in England, and no doubt under the influence of English standards and traditions. Very considerable allowances would naturally have to be made if we were to attempt to deduce from it any general impression of the table manners of the time. Fynes Moryson, a graduate of Cambridge, who was in Scotland five years before James succeeded to the English 110 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND Crown, gives us the following picture of the conditions of domestic life of the time, though it must be remembered that his impressions are derived simply from the houses of such townsmen or countrymen as were willing to entertain him " upon acquaintance or en- treaty." " Touching their diet," he says, " they eate much red Colewort and Cabbage, but little fresh meate, using to salt their Mutton and Geese, which made me more wonder, that they use to eate Beef without salting. The Gentle- men reckon their revenewes, not by rents of monie, but by chauldrons of victuals, and keep many people in the Families, yet living most on Corne and Rootes, not spending any great quantity on flesh. Myself was at a Knight's House, who had many servants to attend him, that brought in his meate with their heads covered with blew caps, the Table being more than halfe furnished with great platters of porredge (or broth), each having a little piece of sodden meate : And when the Table was served, the servants did sit downe with us, but the upper messe in steede of porredge, had a Pullet with some prunes in the broth. And I observed no art of Cookery, or furniture of Household stuffe, but rather rude neglect of both, though myself and my companion, sent from the Governour of Barwicke about border- ing affairs, were entertained after their best THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 111 manner. The Scots living then in factions, used to keepe many followers, and so consumed their revenew of victuals, living in some want of money. They vulgarly ate harth Cakes of Gates, but in Cities have also wheaten bread, which for the most part was bought by Cour- tiers, Gentlemen, and the best sort of Citizens. . . . They drinke pure Wines not with sugar as the English, yet at feasts they put Comfits in the Wine after the French manner, but they had not our Vinteners fraud to mixe their Wines. The better sort of citizens brew ale, their usuall drinke, which will distemper a strangers bodie." Taylor, the water poet, who travelled in Scotland some twenty years later, and who, though he was practically dependent on charity for his entertainment, was received at many more important houses than his pre- decessor, naturally gives a more flattering account of his experiences : " In Scotland, beyond Edenborough, I have been at houses like castles for building : the master of the house his beaver being his blue bonnet, one that will weare no other shirts but of the flaxe that growes on his owne ground, and of his wives, daughters or servants spinning ; that hath his stockings, hose and jerkin of the wool of his owne sheepes backes ; that never (by his pride of apparell) caused mercer, draper, silke- man, embroyderer, or haberdasher to breake 112 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND and turn bankerupt ; and yet this plaine home- spunne fellow keepes and maintaines thirty, forty, fifty servants, or perhaps more, every day releeving three or four score poore peeple at his gate ; and besides all this can give noble enter- tainement for foure or five dayes together, to five or six Earles and Lordes, besides Knights, Gentlemen and their followers, if they be three or foure hundred men and horse of them ; where they shall not only feede but feast, and not feast but banket. . . . Many of these worthy housekeepers there are in Scotland, amongst some of whom I was entertained ; from whence I did treuly gather these aforesaid observa- tions." In Scottish houses the dishes used at table were almost invariably of pewter. Well equipped houses on a large scale had sometimes as many as forty dozen pewter plates of various sizes, while in a small tradesman's house it is usual to find three or four dozen plates, saucers and trenchers. Besides these dishes there would be stoups of various sizes, generally holding a quart, a pint, a chopin and a mutchkin respec- tively ; while drinking cups of " tree," often with bases or pedestals of pewter or silver, were not uncommon. One or two lavers were also part of the ordinary table outfit. Lavers are generally defined as basins used for washing, but this is quite a mistake. In old documents the THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 113 laver is nearly always coupled with a basin, and the laver was the jug or ewer from which water was poured over the hands into the basin. These lavers and basins were of silver or of pewter according to the means of the owner. Table glass was still something of a rarity though a new fashion was the use of what was called a wine-cellar, fitted with " the haill flaccatis, glass and furneissing thairof." In one house of the period there were three dozen " fyne lame (loam, or earthenware) potis for desertis," but the employment of china or earthenware for table dishes was not yet intro- duced. The salt-fatt was generally of silver, and it stood in the middle of the table, and the division of the table into " above " and " below the salt " dates from this period and not from mediaeval times, when the dais table was reserved for those of superior rank, and the others sat at side tables. The persistence of ancient customs is well illustrated by the following description of a dinner in a farmhouse towards the end of the eighteenth century, and it will be noticed how closely many of the details correspond with the procedure at meals in the time of James VI. " At noon," we are told, " the gudewife with her maidens proceeded in the centre of the well- swept earthen floor to erect the timber or iron trestles and thereon to extend the tafil or 8 114 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND dinner-boards. In the better-class farmhouses the upper part of the dinner boards was covered with a linen cloth. More frequently the upper part of the table, at which sat the farmer and family, was separated from the lower part by a chalk line. Occasionally the distinction was indicated by the position of the salt-dish ; those who sat above it were of the farmer's kin, those beneath it were his hirelings. When all were seated, they uncovered and bowed their heads for ' grace ' or blessing. . . . Grace said, all the males resumed their bonnets, which, summer and winter, they retained in eating. Before taking his seat the farmer washed his hands, but the hinds were expected to eat with- out attempting an ablution." No doubt in out- of-the-way parts of the country survivals of such table traditions might still be found. In the description that has been quoted of a Court banquet at Whitehall, the display of gold plate on a buffet was mentioned, and in private houses in Scotland the custom of laying out the " weschel " on a suitable piece of furniture was still kept up. For this purpose the compter, or table, had, as we have seen, been superseded by, or had developed into, the cupboard. Sometimes the top of the cupboard was fitted with several steps, or stages, the number of which, according to the French usage, was limited in proportion to a man's rank. Cup- THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 115 boards with three " gries " or stages, such as were inventoried at St. Andrew's Priory in 1565, must have allowed of a considerable display of plate. In France the presence of these " de- gres " seems to have distinguished the " dres- soir " from the simpler credence, and the dressoir was thus a more elaborate and pre- tentious piece of furniture, suited to the houses of wealthy noblemen. In Scotland the dresser certainly existed as early as 1502, for an English writer describing the arrangements at Holy- rood says, " There was also in the sam Chammer ... a ryche Dressor, after the Guyse of the Countre." But whatever may have been done at Court, the dresser was certainly not in com- mon use under that name in private houses, and except for " ane dressour for setting of stoupis " which is mentioned as in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle in 1 566, the word is compara- tively unknown until the reign of James VI, when it occurs in many inventories ; the dressers of this period were frequently " in- dented," i.e. inlaid, or otherwise ornamented, so that they were evidently important pieces of furniture, and not of the rude type which we now associate with the kitchen and the farm- house. The display of silver vessels on the dresser had hardly the same significance that it had in mediaeval times, for it was no longer a criterion of a man's wealth. Money was more 116 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND plentiful than it had been, but on the other hand there were many more openings for its employment, so that there was neither the same practical necessity nor the same inducement to convert accumulated wealth into silver plate- Still the houses of the period had very com- monly some ten or twenty handsome silver vessels, often gilded and engraved, including one or two masers, several salt-fatts, with cups, goblets, a number of " pieces " or bowls, a trencher, a laver and basin, and one or two dozen spoons. I have mentioned a house which had " fyne lame potis for desertis " and the same house had, as early as 1594, " lyttil new plaitis for desert." In England the word " dessert " does not seem to have come into use till the middle of the following century, and Scotland acquired it from France direct. In its origin the word refers to the practice of removing the cloth at the end of a meal, when the table was " dis- served " or cleared, and the fruits and sweets which followed were partaken of in a separate room. Like many another obsolete custom this usage is preserved in our present day speech ; for when we distinguish between two sizes of spoons by calling one a " table spoon " and the other a " dessert spoon " we imply that the dessert was not taken at the table where the meal was served. Sometimes the dessert was THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 117 called " the banquet," a name applied to any light refreshment served between regular meals. When James VI visited New College, St. Andrews, and heard a disputation between the " Bischope " and Andrew Melville, we read that " the King, in his mother toung, maid sum distingoes, and discoursit a whyll thairon," and thereafter passed to the College Hall, where there had been prepared " a banquet of wat and dry confectiones, with all sortes of wyne, wharat his Majestic camped verie merrilie a guid whyll." You may still see the word banquet used in this sense in the newspaper reports of some municipal or other social gathering in Scotland, at which the guests are entertained to " a banquet of cake and wine." The changes characteristic of the period were not, of course, confined to the dining-room, and indeed the parlours or withdrawing rooms that were coming into use, and which displaced the chamber of dais or principal bedroom to which a few favoured guests had formerly retired after meals, were in themselves very significant of the new ideas of domestic life. In such rooms the family could enjoy itself in peace, either with or without the company of chosen guests, and unembarrassed by the presence of all sorts of dependents and retainers. The introduction of chairs for family use allowed of more variety and informality of grouping for conversation or 118 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND like purposes than had been possible when forms, settles and chests had been the only seats. It also led to development in the chairs themselves. There are frequent references about the middle of the sixteenth century to the covering of chairs with velvet, satin, and other materials particularly in connection with the royal household. Such covering was how- ever merely for purposes of decoration, and comfort was provided in those days by the use of separate cushions. But in James VFs time we have, among other novelties, the introduc- tion of upholstered chairs chairs so stuffed or padded as not to require the additional use of cushions. The earliest examples seem naturally to have been imported from abroad. In 1612 we read of " ane mekill Frenche bakit and buffit chyre," and a few years later of " twa grit bakit Inglis chyres, bust and steikit in the sait with ane cover of ledder thairin and coverit lykwise with ledder on the bak and stampit." Thus perhaps began the distinction between what we may call the dining-room and the drawing-room types of chair the former de- signed for use at meals only, the latter adapted to less stereotyped attitudes and uses and affording comfort in hours of social relaxation. Another piece of furniture that seems to have come rather suddenly into favour at this time was the Taffel. The Dutch or German origin THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 119 of the word is obvious, and the word was prob- ably picked up and imported as a direct result of trading with these countries. It does not seem to have been generally adopted in England, and its occasional use there seems to be due to the influence of Scottish usages at court. The TafTel, or Taiffel, was, as its name implies, a table, but an examination of early references shows that it was its small size, or its lightness, that distinguished it from other tables. In valuations of furniture its value is always com- paratively low ; sometimes we read of " buird claithis for the hallbuird, and ane littil ane for ane taiffelbuird" George Tait, a burgess of Edinburgh, had among his furniture (1622) "ane chyre with ane bak for ane taffle " ; that is, a chair convertible into a small table by bringing forward on its swivels the table-top which formed the back of the chair. From a number of such allusions we may infer that the taffel was in effect what is called an occasional table, such as could be used for chess or cards, and could be easily lifted from one part of the room to another. The use of such light tables, with the adoption of chairs instead of forms, indicates the increased mobility and variety of the new domestic life. Games could be played by the fireside on a winter evening ; at other times the table might be taken to the window so that ladies might occupy themselves with needlework and conversation at the same time and watch what- ever there might be to interest them in the world without. Houses were now often built on sites chosen for their pleasant outlook ; more and more attention was being paid to gardens. Since the days when James IV had had the walls of Stirling and Holyrood plastered to suit the ideas of comfort of his English Queen, the plastering of the rooms in private houses had become usual, and the interiors were no longer so cold and draughty as they must have been when tapestry flapped upon stone walls ; and it was pleasant to sit in comfort within, enjoying a freedom and seclusion which had been unattainable in the mediaeval hall with its dais and all the formality and the scheme of social precedence that the dais implied. In such rooms large cabinets or aumries 1 from Holland now began to appear, and they were valued not merely for the useful accommoda- tion they supplied, but also as pieces of furni- ture which gave the rooms a certain beauty and dignity. Carpets and rugs were beginning to displace the use of bent grass to cover the floors, though at first they were used rather as table- covers. " Steikit green mats " are fairly often met with, and James Melvill, who died in 1613, had one of these, besides " Scots nedle-worke carpetts " in his hall and chamber. Books were beginning to play an important part in house- 1 See Plate X. PLATE X INDENTED AUMRIE, KNOWN AS "QUEEN ANNA'S PRESS" Property of Sir John Sterling Maxwell, Bart. THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 121 hold life, and one significant feature in the in- ventories of the time is the appearance of the family Bible. The printing of Bassendyne's Bible had been completed by Arbuthnott in 1579, and a year later the Town Council of Edinburgh had ordered " all nychtbouris of this burgh, substantious house halderis, to haif ane bybill in thair houssis under the paynes contenit in the actes of Parliament maid thairanent." Accordingly it is common to find houses provided with " ane grit houss Bibill," sometimes accompanied by " ane little bybill." One Edinburgh citizen left among his possessions " ane grit bibill of Lumbard volum of the best sort and fynnest print, ouergilt, pryce thairof xl lib. Item ane uther bibill of Arbuthnots print, pryce thairof x lib. Item mair ane psalme buik, pryce x s." Secular works included classical authors, books of chronicles, as well as of law, arith- metic, philosophy and other departments of learning. Patrick Quhytlaw of New Grange, dying in 1607, left " twa gret kistis full of buikis of theologie, of the laws, physick, and utheris, to the number of v c. buikis " a very considerable library for the time. David Wedderburn, the Dundee merchant, had a considerable collection, from which he used to lend freely to his friends and customers. To a neighbouring laird's son he lends " Metamor- 122 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND phosis Ovidii in Laten with the pictouris, bund in ane swynis skin of werry braw binding . . . for the space of ane moneth." His Blundevill Drackis Voyages was in great request, and another volume described as " my buik of walking sprittis " seems to have attracted curious enquirers. The taste for voyages and " Buikis of the Sie " was characteristic of the time, for the advances in astronomy and navigation which followed from the Renaissance, and from such events as Columbus' discovery of the " new fund Yle," as a contemporary Scottish poet calls America, had led to a romantic interest in geographical knowledge. For the same reason it is not unusual to find a " Mappamounde," or map of the world, used as a piece of decoration in the rooms of the period. In the " Chalmer of the Foir Werk " at Cauldar there was one of these described as " ane brodit cart contenynge all cuntras," and such maps, whether printed or worked with the needle, were sometimes even hung in the place of honour " abune the burde." Paintings cannot be said to have come into general vogue in Scottish houses, but here and there enthusiasts were buying pictures abroad and helping to spread the taste for pictorial art in Scotland. One of these pioneers was Wedder- burn of Dundee, already mentioned, who used to arrange with friends going abroad to bring THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 123 him back pictures from France or Flanders. John Barclay of Edinburgh, left " thrie paintit brodis with stories," and a year or two later one Erasmus Durie left as many as " seavin pic- touris." The time was drawing near when the taste for pictures was to be much more widely diffused, and when George Jamesone was to set a high standard for Scottish portrait painters. The sister art of music had also its devotees in Scotland. Even by the beginning of the sixteenth century we have records of the use of the harp, the fiddle, the lute, the organis, 1 the monocord, the taubron, the clarescha, the drone and the schalmis an instrument of the clarinet type. Some verses written on the arrival of Anne of Denmark, nearly a century later, speak also of the regals, hautboy, virginals, gitterns, trumpets, timbrels, seistar sumphion, pipe and clarion. No doubt the pre- Reformation Church had done a good deal in spreading a taste for music and in providing a class of trained musicians. Writing of his student days in St. Andrews, which ended in 1574, James Melvill says, " I lerned my musicke of ane Alexander Smithe, servant to the Primarius of our Collage, wha had been treaned upe amangis the mounkis in the Abbay. I lerned of him the gam (gamut or scale), pleane-song and mony of the treables of the Psalmes. ... I lovit singing and playing on instrumentis passing weill and 1 See Plate XI. 124 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND wad gladlie spend tyme whar the exerceise thairof was within the Collage ; for twa or thrie of our condisciples played fellon weil on the virginals, and an uther on the lute and githorn. Our Regent also had the pinalds in his chalmer, and lernit something, and I eftir him." It is hard to say what the " pinalds " were, unless the word is a form of " spinet." In Italy the spinet dates from 1503, but the name " virgin- alls " was used in England for all such key- board instruments for long after this, and the earliest reference to a spinet quoted in the New English Dictionary is from Pepys' Diary in 1664. Melville's reference goes back to a date ninety years earlier than this, though it was not written till about 1600. Still, it is difficult to see what distinction was intended between " virginalls " and " spinet." John Florio, in his New Worlde of Wordes gives a " paire of virginalles " as equivalent to the Italian " spinetta." Another instrument of the same kind was the clavichord, whose tone, how- ever, was produced by a tangent instead of by the plucking of a quill. These keyboard instru- ments are seldom found in the inventories of Scottish houses of this period, yet we know that there was a good deal of domestic music. In Glasgow, for instance, before the Union of the Crowns, there was a musical coterie, for a con- temporary diarist tells us of "a gentillman's 'PLATE XI I'AIRE OF ORCAMS ' (FIFTEENTH CENTURY) FROM TKII'TVCH BY VAN DER GOES AT HOI.VROOD 1'AI.ACE CufYright of His Majesty the Kin? THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 125 house in the town wha enterteined maist expert singars and playars, and brought upe all his berns thairin." And no doubt there were similar groups of musical people elsewhere, and especially perhaps in the cathedral towns, where the musical tradition still lingered. Returning from this musical digression to the furnishing of the sitting-rooms of the period, we may note that clocks were not yet in common use, and the hour-glass still stood on many a chimneypiece. There too might sometimes be found " ane boyst of tubacco," for, in spite of King James's pre- judices, the practice of smoking was steadily gaining ground ; and the tinder match-box no doubt lay conveniently to hand. In the window there might be a wire cage containing a laverock, and among the odds and ends that lay about the room were such things as inkhorns and penners, a board and men for chess and back- gammon, and materials for ladies' work. In the bedrooms we should find brushes and combs, sponges and shoe-horns, while warming- pans were in use for warming the beds. How did life pass in these days ? The gentle- men of leisure had such sports as golf, catchpole, archery, hawking and coursing to amuse them, and golf balls, as well as many other requisites used in games of the period, were imported from Flanders. The following contemporary 126 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND advice given to " Gentillmen " gives an idea of their preoccupations and responsibilities : First, in the mornyng, get vp with gud intent ; To do your God seruice be ye diligent ; To go to preiching ye do your bissy ceure, Syne to your sport ye pass with avanteur ; . . . Exclude surfatt and spend with discretioun, And luve your servand of gud condition ; Lak not your kin, suppois thair wit be rude, But help your freind in to his quarrell guid. . . . His wife is to be " cherreissit weill," and, subject to her satisfactory behaviour, loved as his own life. A sharp distinction is called for in the treatment of sons and of daughters : Teiche weill your sons, and gif him your counsale ; Bot hald your dochter ay in stret bensale (control). Finally, the gentleman is to " pay the seruand his fie for his labour," and to " mak an leill man his executeur," to keep patience under trials till God send remeid, and to make " Schir Ewstace," the uncomplaining huntsman saint, his pattern and example. As to the life of women, when a lady of fashion awoke in the morning she found her fire already burning brightly, and as soon as she was ready to rise her maidens brought her her slippers and her wyliecoat, comfortably warmed for her use. Placing a velvet stool for her near the fire, two of the maidens combed her hair while she held her steel glass in her hand and THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 127 superintended their labours. When she was fully dressed she drank a cup of Malvoisie, sweetened with sugar, and then passed out into the garden for a breath of fresh air, and ordered her page to prepare her " disjune," or dejeuner, consisting perhaps of a freshly roasted pair of plovers, a partridge and a quail, with a cup of sack. The next duty is to order the day's dinner ; and this done she goes to inspect her maidservants at their work, some of them employed in making quoifs, ruffs and other fine linen for her own use ; and of all such work she is a severe and exacting critic, scolding the maidens unmercifully if their work falls short of her standard. Pleasantly fatigued with her exertions, she withdraws to her chamber, for it is now past noon, and refreshes herself with whatever meat she has ordered and drinks a cup or two of Muscadel, finishing off the repast with some raisins or capers. The afternoon has now to be passed till supper-time, and she may either sit in the garden, or, if the day is cold, fall asleep over a book at the fire. Supper is the meal of the day, and as the meal proceeds musicians enter and stimulate digestion by playing on the organs, the lute and viol and shalm and timbrel. Then comes an evening stroll in the garden, after which her ladyship retires to her chamber and sits gossiping so long with her maidens that a final light collation is 128 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND required, with a draught of Rhenish wine, to fortify her for the hours of sleep. Sometimes, of course, she leaves her house and garden and visits the tailor or the jeweller. Dressed in a rich and splendid robe, with double garnishings of gold, and her hair surmounted with crape, she is decked by her maidens with a velvet hat and her hood of state, and a mask is added to shield her complexion. A great gold chain is hung round her neck, with a necklace and half-chains of Paris work of exceptional fineness ; and her shoes are of velvet, over silk stockings. At the tailor's she discusses the last new " guise " or fashion whether her new gown is to be made full, with many plaits and folds, or whether it is to fit more closely to the figure ; and there is the question of colour and materials, and she spends delightful hours com- paring and examining plain and figured velvets, silks, satins, damask and grograin. There is plenty of room for fancy and fine taste ; for effects are got by cutting out a cloth over a material of different colour, and success in this pasmenting, or applique work, calls for both natural instinct and artistic imagination ; and as Madam handles the rich stuffs, savouring the texture between her heavily jewelled fingers, and from time to time drawing back the gold bracelets which keep slipping over her wrists, her brain is ever at work conceiving combina- THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 129 tions of colour and material, rejecting effects unsuitable to her own style and figure, and arriving at ideas which the tailor will have to express in beautiful and becoming costume. Such a picture as I have given of the life of the idle rich at the close of the sixteenth century a picture which is borrowed in every detail from contemporary notes must seem one of gross self-indulgence. The eating and drinking appears indecent to those who have tightened their belts under the chastening compulsion of the Food Controller. And, indeed, contemporary writers tell us that in those days surfeit killed more than sword and knife, and the medical counsels of the time were largely directed against the perils of over-eating. Sometimes these counsels merely give blunt expression to familiar, if inglorious, experience : Quha wald tak rest upoun the nicht, The supper sowld be schort and licht ; The stommok hes ane full grit pane Quhen at the supper mekle is tane. Drinks that have gone flat are to be avoided, as also are mixed meats. The various ways of cooking meat are discussed ; :< bulyeit " or boiled meat, we are told, " fosteris weill " ; " rostit " meat is said to dry the blood ; of salt meat there is never a good word to say ; it is 9 130 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND pronounced " warst of ony fude," and we are warned that it dois grit oppressioun To feble stomokis that nan nocht refrane ; For thingis contrair to thyne complexioun Off gredy throttis the stomokis has grit pane. Much of the advice is sound. One is not to eat till the previous meal has been " weill degest " ; that nourishes best which savours best ; " cleir air and walking makis gud deges- tioun," and we are to beware of excess and of " nodding heidis and of candill licht," or, in other words, late hours. Other counsels are more arbitrary. We are to comb our hair in the morning, but " at evin I the forbid," no reason being given. Sleeping at noon is forbidden, for of that " cumis grit sweirnes " or disinclina- tion for work ; and we are not at any time to sleep on our back, which will hasten us to a sudden death. To " couer weill thy heid " is advised for health of body ; and to protect us from " mistis blak, and air of pestilence " we are to have a fire in the morning and a covered bed, meaning, perhaps, a closely curtained bed, at eve. On the whole the advice given is founded on a sense of the importance of self- control and moderation : Quhair thyn awin gouernance may hald thyn hele (health). Preiss neuir with medicinaris for to dele. THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 131 As to children's life in those early days, they were never at a loss for toys, for the best were those they devised for their own use. In mediaeval illustrations we see children sailing little boats, running with paper windmills at the end of a stick, and amusing themselves in all kinds of simple ways. In James VFs time the development of a more intimate family life brought with it a new attention by grown-up people to the natural tastes of the young, and parents had new opportunities of knowing their children and taking pleasure in their company. Among the imports of the time we find chil- dren's dolls, under the name of :< babeis," besides rattles and whistles, by which the over- flowing energy of youth could be agreeably expressed in ear-splitting noise. If history is sometimes dull, surely it is because we hear so little of children in it, and the toys and lesson books and baby coats and shoes of a bygone age have a magical gift in humanising history and putting us in kindlier touch with the past. How vividly we feel the reality of Queen Mary's time when we read of a little boy who, as he sat by the sea by Montrose links, had two reasons for being specially happy. One was that his penknife had just been polished and sharpened by a cutler who had new come to the town ; and the other was that he had that morning bought a " pennie-worthe of aples." What could be 132 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND more thrilling than to cut thin shavings from an apple with the newly sharpened knife ? As he was putting one of these shavings in his mouth, some sound attracted his attention and he began to " lope upe upon a little sandie bray " ; and, the loose sand slipping beneath his feet, he fell, and the knife, just missing his stomach, pierced his left knee to the bone ; " wherby," says this son of the Reformation, who had shortly before injured a schoolfellow " in the schin of the lag " with the same knife, " wherby the aequitie of God's judgment and my conscience struck me sa, that I was the mair war of knyffes all my dayes ! " Letters written in the early years of the seven- teenth century throw occasional flashes of light on the relations between parents and children, and as we read we realise that, if there was more ceremony between the young and their elders than is the fashion of our day, there were the same natural affections, and also the same recur- ring problems as those which mark family life in our own time. Children, it appears, had even then an exasperating habit of outgrowing their clothes. And though the mothers often took an indulgent view of this symptom of healthy growth and would not have been unwilling to see their darlings in new and becoming apparel, the fathers were of sterner stuff, refused to admit that their children were going about like THE DECAY OF FEUDALISM 133 frights, thought that the old clothes might very well do for a bit yet, and, in fact, used every art to evade an uncongenial subject. We can sympathise with the Laird of Glenfalloch who, being off on his travels with his lady in 1619, and having left his two sons at Haddington in charge of a tutor, received a letter in which flattering reports on the boys' educational progress were ingeniously combined with the most unsparing condemnation of their ward- robe. " Send alsmekle cloth as will be ane gown to Jhone, and his aid gown wald serue for ane gown to Duncane. Jhone will be ane schollar, God willing, if he be nocht interrupted. Duncane begins weill, God saiff him. Assure the lady your wiffe that I sail haiff ane special cair under God of her sonnes that ar heir, and requeist her nocht to think long eftir thame. The dowblet ye caust mak to Duncane is now up at the slot of his breist. Ye wald say that he wearis his belt as men sayis Mr. George Buchanan did weare his, the dowblet is growen so schort." After some reflections on ecclesi- astical affairs the tutor concludes his letter, " God His mercy be with you, and restis your awin, efter the aid maner, Mr. William Bowie." And then, knowing his laird, and foreseeing that his remarks on church politics and his pious aspirations may be made use of to banish the memory of more 134 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND pressing and practical questions, he returns to the charge in one peremptory post- script " Duncane mon haiff an vther dow- blett." LECTURE V THE KING OR THE COVENANT CHARLES I, 1625-1649 The Covenanting Period Ascetic views of life A Covenanter's courtship, with an eighteenth-century con- trast Conditions unfavourable to the development of furniture New Scottish industries Furniture and fashions from London A Scottish nobleman's house " The laiche hall " The dining-room and silver plate The drawing-room New ideas in furniture and ornaments The lettermeitt house Bedrooms Development of beds in Scotland The knop sek The strek bed The leta- camp bed Kaissit beds The box-ped or buistie The " laych-rynnand " or truckle bed The laird's mistake The four-poster Royal beds Devices on the Queen of Scots' bed Mourning beds and mourning customs Queen Mary's bed-curtains from Loch Leven Heraldic decoration of beds Changing fashions in colours and colour names. OUR survey of the development of domestic life in Scotland now brings us to the Covenanting period, when the ecclesiastical differences which had manifested themselves under James VI became more acute, and the national preference for a Presbyterian system of church government brought the people into direct conflict with the throne and began to loosen their tenacious loyalty to the House of Stuart. By his marriage with the Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, Charles I 135 136 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND forfeited the confidence of Presbyterian Scot- land and exposed himself to much jealous and suspicious misunderstanding of his conduct and motives. It was his misfortune that his high conception of his duties and prerogatives as King was not tempered by something of the watchful caution of his father, and something of his father's instinct for studying men and waiting for the opportune moment. Thus the Act of Revocation involving most of the property of the pre-Reformation Church, which had been distributed by James. VI among the nobles drove the nobility to the Presbyterian side, undoing at a blow what it had cost James much labour and ingenuity to accomplish. The imposition of Laud's Service Book by authority of King Charles immediately called forth the National league and Covenant, a protest which was enthusiastically signed. A year later Sir Edward Verney, writing home from the English army encamped near Berwick, said, " Wee find all the meaner sort of men nppon the Scotch Border well inclyned to the King . . . but the Gentlemen are all Covenanters." As soon, however, as the pacification of Berwick had reinstated Presbyterianism, the Scottish clergy made the signature of the National Covenant compulsory, thus arrogat- ing to themselves the right to dictate the national religion the very right which they THE KING OR THE COVENANT 137 had denied to the King. It was not long before the nobles began to realise how little their alliance with the Presbyterian ministers was based on any real harmony of view or con- geniality of feeling. It was against all their traditions to submit to the domination of men whose origin and upbringing inclined them to look with disfavour on habits, recreations and indeed the whole scale of social amenity to which the upper classes had always been accustomed ; and it galled them to be dictated to by ministers on whom they looked down as social inferiors. The result was a revulsion against the system set up by the Covenant and an inevitable reaction of Royalist sympathies, and the country was split into two camps a division which really arose not from mere class feeling, but from the opposition of two irrecon- cilable views of life. For the student of the domestic arts the evidences of this divergence of view are too plain to be passed by. Much as Scotland owes to the Covenanters, for their contribution to Scottish mind and character can hardly be overestimated, the religion which animated them was of a singu- larly austere and forbidding type. Scores of contemporary diaries have familiarised us with its solitary and introspective character. It was the fashion of the time to keep a minute record of the individual's religious experiences, in 138 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND which were detailed the clouds of doubt and distrust, the entanglements of temptation and spiritual " discurradgement," the covenants made, broken and renewed, the darknesses and self-abhorrences, and the occasional clearnesses, often resulting from the sudden recollection of some appropriate scriptural text from which the struggling soul " gott some sweete and comfortabl disco verie " of grace ; and then the frequent reaction, when " Satan began to whisper in my minde, oh I fear this will be lyke the morning cloud and the earlie dew, that soon passeth away." Even a schoolboy, having been " intised " into playing games upon the " saboth day," writes, " I fell into such dread - full terrors that was insupportabl, aprehending it could not consist with the justice of God but that the earth should open and swallow me up to hell qwick." It was an unhappy consequence of the current interpretation of the doctrine of salvation by faith and not by works, that atten- tion was focussed on states or " frames " of mind, as if these were in themselves more important than the faithful performance of the allotted task. To men of this mould every natural impulse was apt to appear as a snare of the devil, and every event of life as merely a phase of the conflict with Apollyon. Even love-making was no idyllic interlude. Mr. John Livingstone in THE KING OR THE COVENANT 139 his Memoirs tells us how a marriage was " pro- pounded " to him by a third party with the daughter of an Edinburgh merchant. Pro- pounded ! The very word might dissipate the rosiest of dreams ! "I had seen her before several times," he says, " and had heard the testimony of many of her gracious disposition, yet I was for nine months seeking, as I could, direction from God about that business ; during which time I did not offer to speak to her, who, I believe, had not heard anything of the matter, only for want of clearness in my mind, although I was twice or thrice in the house, and saw her frequently at communions and public meetings ; and it is like I might have been longer in such darkness except the Lord had presented me an occasion of our con- ferring together ; for in November, 1634, when I was going to the Friday meeting at Ancrum, I met with her and some others going thither, and propounded to them by the way to confer upon a text whereupon I was to preach the day after at Ancrum ; wherein I found her conference so judicious and spiritual that I took that for some answer to my prayer to have my mind cleared, and blamed myself that I had not before taken occasion to confer with her. Four or five weeks later I propounded the matter to her and desired her to think upon it, and after a week or two I went to her mother's house, and being 140 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND alone with her, desiring her answer, I went to prayer, and urged her to pray, which at last she did ; and in that time I got abundance of clear- ness that it was the Lord's mind that I should marry her, and then propounded the matter more fully to her mother. And although I was fully cleared, I may truly say it was above a month before I got marriage affection to her, although she was for personal endowment beyond many of her equals ; and I got it not till I had obtained it by prayer. But thereafter I had a great difficulty to moderate it." This is one way of love. Let us not judge too harshly the pious procrastinations of our Covenanting Romeo. The course of true love never did run smooth. And the story of Mr. Livingstone's courtship, with its reluctant ad- vances, its palsied intermissions, and its trium- phant and indeed somewhat unbridled close, serves to remind us once more that " stony limits cannot hold love out." Keeping before our eyes the romantic picture of the two on their evening walk to Ancrum, and overhearing in fancy their Doric accents raised in exegetic heat over the disembowelment of some knotty text culled, it may be, from the book of Habakkuk let us be content to murmur with the poet : How silver sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest music to attendant ears ! THE KING OR THE COVENANT 141 And now, by way of emphasising Mr Livingstone's psychology by contrast, and because it is well to study the spirit of one century in its development or reaction in the next, let us compare his narrative with an eighteenth-century letter from a lady whose affections have been touched. " Mr. Shapely," she writes, " is the prettiest gentleman about town. He is very tall, but not too tall neither. He dances like an angel. His mouth is made, I do not know how, but it is the prettiest that I ever saw in my life. He is always laughing, for he has an infinite deal of wit. If you did but see how he rolls his stockings ! He has a thousand pretty fancies, and I am sure, if you saw him, you would like him. He is a very good scholar, and can talk Latin as fast as English. I wish you could but see him dance ! Now you must understand poor Mr. Shapely has no estate ; but how can he help that, you know ? And yet my friends are so unreasonable as to be always teasing me about him because he has no estate. ... I forgot to tell you that he has black eyes, and looks upon me now and then as if he had tears in them. And yet my friends are so unreasonable, that they would have me be uncivil to him ! I have a good por- tion which they cannot hinder me of ... but everyone here is Mr. Shapely's enemy. I desire therefore you will give me your advice, for 142 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND I know you are a wise man ; and if you advise me well, I am resolved to follow it. I heartily wish you could see him dance, and am, Sir, Your most humble servant, B. D." This is another way of love. You will admit that in these two instances the mating instinct operates somewhat diversely, so that one could hardly have suspected that the seventeenth- century minister and the eighteenth-century belle were passing through the same crisis of the affections. Each, perhaps, might with advan- tage have learned something of the other. Had the young lady propounded to Mr. Shapely to confer upon a portion of scripture, with a view to ascertaining whether his conference was judicious and spiritual, she might have dis- covered that that was not the kind of portion that most appealed to him. And had Mr. John Livingstone, without the long months of painful propoundings, admitted into his lugu- brious bosom so much natural marriage affec- tion for the lady as to write, " Her mouth is made, I do not know how, but it is the prettiest that I ever saw in my life," I do not think that either God or man would have laid it too heavily to his charge. But I quote Mr. Livingstone's romance, and contrast it with the engaging foolishness of the later specimen, because it exemplifies an attitude of mind that was common in Scotland and else- THE KING OR THE COVENANT 143 where in the seventeenth century. Mr. Living- stone represents a generation to whom anything beyond an elementary standard of domestic comfort was luxury and self-indulgence, and any regard for beauty and ornament was a concession to the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Where such views are held we need not look for any development of the artistic aspect of household life. Like the pilgrims in Bunyan's allegory, the Covenanters " set very light by all the wares of the merchandisers ; they cared not so much as to look upon them ; and if any called upon them to buy, they would put their ringers in their ears and cry, ' Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity.' ' The Puritan spirit, however, was not the only cause which operated against any general diffusion of luxury in domestic furnishing. In 1628 Scotland was bankrupt. The nobles, thanks to the Act of Revocation, had their own troubles. Among the merchants and tradesmen there were many whose enterprise and industry had amassed considerable fortunes, but Charles' repeated attempts at legislation against usury made it difficult for such men to invest their means profitably, and thus deprived Scottish trade of the capital necessary to its expansion. Yet progress was by no means arrested. As family life developed, new wants began to dis- cover themselves ; and this and the introduction 144 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND of new materials and industries brought about changes which, though small in themselves, had a gradual and cumulative effect in enriching the setting of domestic life. About 1620, for instance, English tanners were brought into Scotland to instruct the native tanners in " the true and perfect form of tanning." Leather, accordingly, in spite of the imposition of a special tax, came into in- creased use for all sorts of domestic purposes. The inventory of an Edinburgh wright burgess, who died a few years later, includes a consider- able stock of leather backs for chairs, and of red skins destined no doubt for the same purpose. At Rusco Tower Lady Lochinvar had " six gilt ledder cuscheounes " ; and leather was also used for the cases in which knives and spoons, brushes and combs, and many other household goods were enclosed. Another industry which took root in Scotland at the same time was glass making. A small glass works was set going by Sir George Hay in the village of Wemyss, and after some ups and downs the venture proved successful. A Commission appointed by the Privy Council examined the glass and reported that it was fully as good as Danskine glass, though its thick- ness and toughness still left something to be desired . A conditional protection against foreign competition was accordingly granted, and to THE KING OR THE COVENANT 145 prevent the native manufacturer from taking unfair advantage of his monopoly a maximum price for " braid glas," meaning sheet glass, was fixed at twelve pounds the cradle. Glass had of course been in use in Scotland long before this. St. Margaret's Chapel, in Edinburgh Castle, had glass windows in 1336 ; and, among secular buildings, the palaces of Lin- lithgow and Falkland had their windows glazed in the year 1505. By the time with which we are now dealing every small town had its " glasenwricht " or glazier. As to glass vessels James IV had a cupboard of these in 1503, and as we have seen, foreign-made bottles and drinking-glasses had come into fashion in James VFs time. But it is only after the setting up of the glass works at Wemyss that we find table glass in common use in ordinary houses, different shapes being made for wine, beer and other beverages. Foreign glass of course also remained in use, and Lord Melville had a cupboard of Venice glass valued at five hundred pounds. Along with glass we may note the gradual introduction of earthenware dishes, though whether these were of native manufacture is not clear. In most houses tin or pewter dishes continued to be used, while here and there the earlier " tree "or wooden dishes were still employed. Earthenware dishes had been im- IO 146 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND ported from Holland by Halyburton in the fifteenth century, but it is not till Charles Fs reign that we find frequent reference to their domestic use. Though subject to breakage they had the advantage of being cheaper and more easily kept clean than pewter, and as they are sometimes described as painted their colour decoration may have been an additional attrac- tion. Earthenware was also used for less utilitarian purposes. The tradition which furnishes the cottage chimney-piece with highly glazed and boldly coloured dogs or human figures is an ancient one. In 1562 there was among the effects of Queen Mary " ane figure of ane doig " made in white earthenware, and such figures are often found in Charles Fs time. It is startling at first sight to read that Mr. John Bonyman, dying in 1631, left among other things " thrie lame babies and three lame doges," but the notion that his house offered hospitality to cripples of all descriptions may be dismissed. These " babies " were merely small figures which, like the dogs, were made of " lame," that is loam or earthenware. Another influence which must be taken into account as contributing to progress in house furnishing was the increasing familiarity with English standards of comfort and elegance. It had become customary for the well-to-do to THE KING OR THE COVENANT 147 send to London for their furniture. Thus on his daughter's engagement to Lord Cardross, Sir Thomas Hope, the Lord Advocate, who was an open supporter of the Covenant, made a " nott of some furnischings to be coft in London and sent home." He estimated the cost at two hundred pounds sterling, and added, " With Godis grace I sal sie the samyn thank- fullie payit." The so-called furnishings in- cluded some " abillzeamentis " for the bride, for fashions in dress were also set in London. Many a gentlewoman in Scotland, profoundly distrusting local standards of fashion, must have had recourse to agonised appeals such as that addressed by one of their English provin- cial sisters to a friend in London " I pray send me word if wee bottone petticotes and wastcotes wheare they most be Botend." That we may have an idea of the actual arrangements and furnishing of the time, let us examine some of the principal rooms of the house of a Scottish nobleman who died in 1643. The house may be taken as fairly typical of its class, and it is interesting because it illustrates the transition from the lingering mediaeval tradition to a still immature appreciation of the possibilities of family, as contrasted with feudal, life. Of the kitchen we need only remark that it is on the ground floor, that it is well supplied with 148 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND brazen pots and pans and cooking utensils of all kinds, and that there are many dozen of tin plates, all of which are engraved with the family arms. No seats of any kind are provided for the servants' use. We may also pass by the " Gentlemen's chalmer," only remarking, as to the significance of the name, that as one writer puts it " our nobility must needs have their menials gentle- manised," and that the room was occupied by menservants, some of whom slept in beds and others on shake-downs on the floor. The application of the word " gentleman " to men- servants is not an exclusively Scottish use ; but the English traveller, Christopher Lowther, was struck in 1629 by the fact that Scottish gentlefolk called their men and maids Misters and Mistresses. Probably the Scottish tendency to greater formality in forms of address is one of the traces of early association with France. The special interest of the house begins with the " Laiche Hall." In the mediaeval house, as we have seen, the hall was the principal apart- ment, and it was always on the first floor. But now that the family had withdrawn from the hall to the private Dining-room and Drawing- room, the hall lost its importance and was relegated by the architects of the time to the ground floor, which was associated by tradition with the cellars and vaults, while the first floor THE KING OR THE COVENANT 149 was reserved for the more modern sitting- rooms used by the family. The Laiche Hall, thus banished, still bears some resemblance to the feudal hall of earlier days. Its walls are covered with hangings, it is furnished with an extending table surrounded by chairs in place of the older-fashioned board and forms, and there is a large fireplace in which a hospitable fire might still blaze. But the hangings are worth comparatively little, the fine arras being reserved for the rooms upstairs ; the chairs are only five in number, showing how little company the old hall sees in its declining days ; and the fireplace is unfurnished save for a pair of tongs. In a word, the hall has outlived its purpose and is already half-way towards the cheerless no man's land that it has become in the modern house. Above the hall is the modern room which has supplanted it the " Dyneing Room." Here are displayed seven pieces of arras hangings, clothing the walls with rich colour. Instead of the mediaeval board there are five Spanish tables, besides three others kept in reserve in another part of the house. These were probably of uniform size so that any number required might be set in contact to form one continuous table, either straight or with rectangular extensions. In the room itself there are seats for as many as twenty-two 150 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND guests, and this number could of course be supplemented if necessary. All of these seats were covered with " carpet," a thick woollen material . Ten of them , having backs , were used for the more important guests, while the re- mainder were stools or tabourets. The win- dows had striped hangings ; there was a long Persian carpet valued at five hundred merks, and three short carpets which may have been used as table-covers. At the fireside, which was furnished with shovel and tongs, stood two vessels for holding coal. These were made of tin and were valued at one hundred merks. f It will be noticed that neither in the hall nor in the dining-room is there a cupboard or dresser, nor any form of buffet or serving- table. Yet in the pantry we shall find that the silver for the table is what might be looked for in a house of this character. There are two silver basins and ewers, each set weighing 12 Ib. and one of the sets being gilt ; two great gilt and chiselled silver cups with covers ; tankards and tumblers of silver; a great silver salt-fatt; two large silver candlesticks, two dozen silver spoons, and twelve silver dessert dishes. There is no mention of forks except that there is a case containing eleven knives followed by an entry of " ane fork." The fact that the fork was a single one shows that it was used only for serving fruit or some such special purpose. The tumblers mentioned in this list were tumblers in the literal and original sense of the word, for having no flat base they would not stand upright on the table, but had to be emptied and turned upside down. They are spoken of by Samuel Pepys some twenty years later, and his reference to them is the earliest known to the New English Dictionary. After the dining-room, and probably com- municating with it, comes the drawing-room, one of the earliest instances in Scotland of a room called by that name. We are so familiar with the social uses of the drawing-room in our own day that we can hardly realise the vagueness with which people in the first half of the seven- teenth century were feeling for a type of room which should answer the scarcely defined wants of their social life. There was no prece- dent, no tradition to give them a lead. The room was one to withdraw to after supper, and in it the dessert was no doubt eaten ; but what were the occupations or amusements with a view to which the room was to be furnished ? In the mediaeval hall there had been musicians and sometimes visits from jugglers and other wandering performers. These, however, be- longed to an age that was past, and the family, thrown on its own resources, had to devise its own methods of passing the time. In many households this would present no difficulty, but 152 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND there are also people who have little initiative in such matters and who find themselves at a loss unless they are entertained by others. The house under our notice shows little evidence of any organised family life. The drawing-room was a room with a fireplace and two turrets. In each of these turrets, or " studies," as they are called, there was a carpet stool ; in the drawing-room itself there were only a set of eight chairs with padded backs, covered with blue and red satin damask, and a reposing chair *' conforme," or en suite. There is no table of any kind, though sometimes, perhaps, some of the Spanish tables in the dining-room may be brought in ; no cabinets or aumries ; no musical instruments nor signs of chess, back- gammon or cards ; no curtains, blinds nor carpet ; still less are there books, or pictures, or bowls for flowers, or a clock. Besides the handsome set of chairs and couch there is nothing of any kind whatever save a shovel and tongs by the fireside, and one other article so strangely out of keeping with modern ideas of a drawing-room that it must not be ignored a chamber pot. From the absence of comfortable furnishings we see that while the drawing-room had been adopted as a new and fashionable addition to the family apartments, many a Scottish family had some difficulty in adapting its habits to the THE KING OR THE COVENANT 153 use of such a room. In the house we are examining " My Lordis bed chamber " was supplied with a " wrytting standard," and he no doubt preferred to write his letters there. And it is probable that the comparative novelty of private bedrooms each with its separate en- trance, instead of opening off one another through which other persons did not keep coming and going on their way to their own rooms, tempted inmates of the house to neglect the new public rooms and the social life that ought to have united the family there. Of course ideas of furnishing and standards of comfort varied very widely even in houses of the same class. Lord Stormonth, for instance, who died in 1636, had in his house many of the things we have missed in the cheerless and scantily furnished drawing-room that has been described. Not only had he portraits on the walls, but he cultivated music, for there was a pair of organs ; and we find also needlework chairs and embroideries, and chess and back- gammon boards. In which room these were kept, however, we are not told, so we can draw no inference as to the development of a particu- lar type of room corresponding to the modern drawing-room. But however the contents of Scottish houses were distributed over the various rooms and early inventories seldom give this information 154 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND there was a distinct advance in the richness and variety of furnishing and ornaments. In addition to the Turkey and Persian carpets that have already been mentioned we learn that China carpets were also known ; and as showing the wide geographical range from which the wants of Scottish homes were sup- plied, one house in Aberdeen had Dutch table- cloths, Venice sponges, Indian saucers, Musco- vite goblets and Turkish turbans ! This may be an exceptional instance, due perhaps to some member of the household having followed the sea ; but foreign ornaments and curiosities were by no means uncommon, one favourite orna- ment being what were called " Indana noot- scheillis " in other words, coco-nuts, set on a silver stem and lined, or at least lipped, with silver. Among the changes which followed from the abandonment of the hall and the separation of the life of the family from that of the servants, was the introduction of the domestic handbell, which now became necessary to summon the servants when they were wanted. It was not till the opening years of the eighteenth century that it was superseded by the bell hung in the kitchen and rung by wires from the various rooms. Another sign of the times was the introduction of the basin-stand. It was at first used only in the hall or dining-room, in THE KING OR THE COVENANT 155 whichever a particular family might dine, and it went by the name of the " knaiff " or knave. A young lad had hitherto held the basin in which the principal persons washed their hands before a meal, but the new tendencies led to his place being taken by a wooden " standard " or stand, which was accordingly called after him on the same principle as that on which we call a revolving table with two or three stages a " dumb waiter," or on which a fireside candlestick is called a " carle " or a " peerman " in various parts of Scotland. These alterations in the domestic arrangements also gave rise to a new apartment in the architecture of the time, known as the " lettermeitt house." It was in effect a mess-room for men-at-arms or an upper ser- vants' hall, and it derived its name from the fact that the joints at the family meals were re- moved when done with and served at the later- meat house. Inventories show that the linen for the lettermeitt house was intermediate in quality between the linen used by the family and that thought good enough for the kitchen. The bedrooms of the time showed a consider- able advance on the days when there was often little furniture beyond the bed or beds, a chest, and sometimes a table and form or stool ; yet they lacked many things which we now count elementary necessities. The swinging toilet mirror not yet having been introduced, the 156 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND dressing-table as we know it did not exist, though in France a draped table with brushes and shaving materials is shown in one of Abraham Bosse's engravings, and a framed mirror was often, no doubt, propped up on a table by the window. More often they were hung upon the wall, or only a hand-glass was used. Such as they were these mirrors no doubt served the same purpose that ours do to- day to gratify a woman's longing to see that everything is right, and relieve a man's anxiety to see that nothing is wrong. Nothing like the modern commodious wardrobe was to be found, and the clothes were still kept in a chest, in the lower part of which, however, were now some- times fitted a couple of " shuttles " or drawers. Neither is there any washstand, and, indeed, if it was usual to wash in the bedroom at all, which it probably was not, a basin and ewer must have been brought for the purpose by a servant. Baths are never mentioned, and when these were taken it was in a large tub or " baith-fatt," with which, in mediaeval days, a canopy had been used to ensure a measure of privacy. Public baths, which played so important a part in foreign town life in the fifteenth century, and which, it must be added, generally acquired so doubtful a reputation, do not seem to have existed in Scotland till early in the second half of the seventeenth century, when there were THE KING OR THE COVENANT 157 " bath stoves " or " sweiting balnes " in Edin- burgh. But, to tell the plain truth, neither in Scotland nor elsewhere had habits of personal cleanliness yet come into fashion. It is probably true that, as M. Henri Havard suggests in his book, L'art et le Confort, the origin of the fashion which led ladies in the eighteenth century to receive visitors while they performed their toilette, was an ostentatious pride in the display of standards of cleanliness which were a re- action against the slovenly neglect that had hitherto prevailed. Washing, so far from being a habit, was only occasional, though, as we have seen, the hands were superficially cleansed at meals. A French writer on manners proposed what was no doubt considered a high standard when he urged his readers to take the trouble to wash their hands every day, and their faces " nearly as often " ! He added that the head too should sometimes be washed. This was in Charles Fs time, when men as well as women wore long hair, and the counsel was all the more necessary, if also all the more troublesome to carry out. It was, in fact, the increasing desire for cleanliness that eventually led to the adop- tion of the periwig. Another advance in manners was the use of the handkerchief, which however was still by no means general. Handkerchiefs had been known 158 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND in the sixteenth century, but Erasmus enum- erates various primitive and unseemly expe- dients practised by his contemporaries in attending to what we may delicately call nasal hygiene, all of which were evidently more usual than the use of the handkerchief. Another writer some years later, giving rules for elegant deportment in society, says that if in blowing your nose you use a handkerchief " you will earn great praise " ! One of Abraham Bosse's engravings shows a seventeenth-century interior in which a lady uses a handkerchief, and in doing so she turns her head away from the company a rule of politeness dating from the days when handkerchiefs were not in use. The bedrooms , however , were pleasant enough rooms. In ordinary houses the walls were painted or whitewashed, the mean if convenient practice of using wall-papers not having been introduced till after 1800, when " China papers " began to come into fashion. In more elegantly furnished houses there would be hangings of camlet or of arras, while occasionally, as in Lady Melville's bedchamber at Monymaill, the walls were hung with stamped and gilded leather. The furniture generally consisted of a chair and stools covered with stuff to match the bed-curtains, and a table covered with the same material. The whole suite thus made up was considered as going with, and forming THE KING OR THE COVENANT 159 part of the equipment of, the bed. Beyond the chest and mirror already mentioned and some- times a shelved aumrie or press, there was little else but the candlesticks. The principal piece of furniture was of course the bed itself, and it may be worth while to cast back and review the development of beds, and especially of some of the varieties that were characteristic of Scotland. George Buchanan, writing of the hardy habits of the Highlanders, says, " In their houses also they lie upon the ground, strewing fern or heath upon the floor with the roots downward, and the leaves turned up." And he adds that they had the greatest contempt for pillows and blankets. In early times it was very much in this fashion that the retainers in Scottish castles passed the night in the hall, making themselves as comfortable as they could on straw or heather, or, as civilisation advanced, on sacks or rude mattresses rilled with flock, and known as " knop seks." Before the end of the fifteenth century stand beds, which were beds raised from the floor on " stoups " or legs, were used by all the more important persons in the household. There were various forms of stand beds. The " strek " bed seems to have been one in which the mattress was laid on stretched supports instead of on boards. The " letacamp " or camp bed (lit de camp), some- 160 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND times amusingly perverted into " litigant," was originally a folding bed suitable for carrying on a journey, and we read in the Lord High Treasurer's Accounts for 1489 of " tursing (i.e. packing and transporting) the kingis letacamp bed to Dunbertane." Such beds were often fitted with a portable canopy, so that the traveller, even if the bed had to be set up for the night in squalid surroundings, might have his own seemly hangings round him. When a nobleman with his family and retinue went from one of his country seats to another, all the necessary furniture, including tapestries, beds, and sometimes even the windows and doors, was carried with them. When the Percy family in England travelled there was an order that one bed must serve for every two priests or gentle- men, and one for every three children. In Scottish houses the stand beds had a covering of serge, kersey or arras, and they were fitted with blankets and sheets as well as bolsters and pillows with the necessary " codware " or pillow covers. The use of a " rufe," or canopy, with curtains was very common, but it was suspended from the ceiling and did not form part of the bed. The four-poster, in which the canopy is supported on the posts, first appears in the list of beds belonging to James V in 1539. This is the most important type, and we shall return to it after describing some other varieties. THE KING OR THE COVENANT 161 The introduction of " kaissit " beds, in which wooden boarding or panelling took the place of hanging drapery, is only a phase of the move- ment which brought panelled walls into fashion instead of tapestry. Among the " insicht geir " in Dumbarton Castle in 1580 was a " stand bed of eastland timmer with ruf and pannell of the same," the pannel, or pane, being the vertical part rising from behind the pillow to the back of the canopy. But thirty years earlier Laurence Murray, of Tullibardine, had left among his effects " twa clois beddis." These were the characteristic box beds, known also as " buis- ties " or " boushties," still to be found in many a cottage. Their use was noted by Fynes Moryson, the English traveller, who, being in Scotland " upon occasion of businesse " in 1598, thus described them : " Their bedsteads were then like Cubbards in the wall, with doors to be opened and shut at pleasure so as we climbed up to our beds. They use but one sheete, open at the sides and top, but close at the feete, and so doubled." The enclosing of the bed with wooden doors or sliding panels was the outcome of the contemporary desire for " close " rooms. Tapestried chambers were too often draughty and uncomfortable and our forefathers' ambition was to have their rooms air-tight so as to exclude draughts. The dis- comforts of closeness, in the modern sense of ii 162 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND exhausted and vitiated air, had still to be dis- covered, and the early box beds, which excluded light and air, were no doubt considered in their day the last word in luxury. Early in the seven- teenth century Gordon, of Abergeldie, had " ane clos kaissit bed, lokkit and bandit " in which we may assume that he slept secure not only from the intrusions of man, but also from the insidious encroachments of ventilation. Such beds were often provided with a bed-staff, which Johnson's Dictionary erroneously defines as " a pin to keep the clothes from slipping." In Satan's Invisible World Discovered there is a tale of a ghostly visitant in which this incident is related : " The night after, it (the apparition) came panting like a dog out of breath ; upon which one took up a bed-staff to knock, which was caught out of her hand and thrown away." This is the only literary reference to the use of the bed-staff which I know. No doubt the bed- staff was so used to knock with when there were no bells to call attendants, but its characteristic use was in arranging the bedclothes on a bed which was only accessible from one side spreading them smooth and tucking them in on the further side. For this purpose it is still in use in Fife and elsewhere. Probably the " bureau " bed, used in the eighteenth century, was a descendant of the box bed. It was made to fold back during the THE KING OR THE COVENANT 163 day on a hinge near the floor into a niche in the wall. The white- washed wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnished clock that click'd behind the door ; The chest, contrived a double debt to pay, A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day. So Goldsmith describes it, and in many houses designed by the brothers Adam it was used to economise space in the servants' quarters. One other form of bed worth mentioning is the truckle bed. Truckle beds were employed at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1459, but they seem only to have come into use in Scotland in the sixteenth century. A personal servant was thus enabled to sleep in his master's room on a bed which by day was run under the standing bed on which his master slept. In 1566 the " Wyide Chalmer," of Calder House, had " ane turnit bed with ane draw bed under of plane tre," while in another room there was what is described as " ane laych rynnand (low running) bed " another name for the same thing. It was this arrangement, whereby the master slept on a higher level than his servant, which misled the Scottish Laird who, arriving at an English inn with his servant, was given a room with a four-poster. ;< Such furniture being new to the Highlanders " I quote from an old chapbook " they mistook the four-posted pavillion for 164 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND the two beds, and the Laird mounted the tester while the man occupied the comfortable lodging below. Finding himself wretchedly cold in the night, the Laird called to Donald to know how he was accommodated. ' Ne'er sae weel a' my life,' quothe the ghilly. ' Ha, man,' exclaimed the Laird, ' if it wasna for the honour of the thing I could find it in my heart to come doun.' ' Such pretentious furniture was not to be found in Scottish inns, where the accommodation was of the most primitive kind, and there was, as a Scottish traveller remarked on returning north of the Tweed, " a sensible decay of service by that a man has in England." But it must be borne in mind that the upper classes in Scotland did not make use of the inns, being usually able to count on the hospitality of persons of their own rank. The inns, therefore, laying them- selves out for a lower class of visitor, did not make a favourable impression on travellers in Scotland. One complains that " the bottom of my bed was loose boards, one laid over another, and a thin bed upon it " ; while another speaks of " mean beds where we might have rested had the mice not randezvoused over our faces." In private houses, however, the four-poster soon established itself, and the royal inventories show us that such beds were richly decorated and must have given an imposing air to the rooms in which they were placed. One of those THE KING OR THE COVENANT 165 belonging to James V was hung with purple velvet with fringes and tassels of silver ; others were draped in crimson or equally rich colours, while it was not unusual to employ " variant," or shot silk, whose play of colour must have produced effects of great splendour. Various kinds of decoration were made use of in orna- menting the royal beds. Some were " pas- mentit," that is, enriched by the application of gold and silver lace, while needlework and embroidery were also employed. Thus another of James V's beds had a " rufe with ane heid and overfrontale of cramosy velvott, with the storie of the life of man upoune the samune, comparit to a hart, all in raisit wark in gold, silver and silk." In Queen Mary's time the royal beds were even more elaborate, and in their decora- tion embroidery and needlework were carried to a high pitch. One comparatively plain bed among them is of some historical interest. It is described as " of violett broun veluot, pasmentit with a pasment made of gold and silver, fur- nished with ruif, headpiece and pandis," and it had curtains of violet damask. It was in this bed, given by the Queen to Darnley in August, 1566, that Darnley was asleep in his lodging in the Kirk o' Field when the explosion took place which caused his death. So much violence and tragedy is covered by the terse note in the in- ventory " the said bed was tint in the Kingis 166 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND ludgeing." Even what are inventoried as " plane beddis not enrichit with onything " were some- times rather gay for modern standards of taste. One, for example, was " of veluot, reid yallow and blew " with " thrie curtenis of dames (damask) of the same cullouris unfreinyett " (unfringed) as though the shy god of sleep were to be caught lurking in the rainbow ! Among the State Papers relating to Queen Mary is one (No. 408) dated October, 1587, giving a list of " Devices on the Queen of Scots Bed." About fifty of these allegorical devices are described. In the description of them there are several references to colour. It is possible, of course, that the devices may have been carved on the wood of the bed, and then heightened with colour and gilded. But it is much more probable, and quite in accordance with the usage of the time, that the so-called bed is really a bed- cover, probably the same as that referred to in the inventory of articles left in possession of " Andrew Melvin, gent " (State Papers, No. 292), and there described as " Furniture for a bed, wroughte with needle woorke of silke, silver and gold, with divers devices and armes, not throughlie finished." Many of the devices and mottoes are philosophical reflections on the fateful circumstances of Mary's life. One represents " A Lioness and her little cub near to her " with the motto, " Unum quidem, sed THE KING OR THE COVENANT 167 leonem." Another shows " A dove in a cage, and an eagle above ready to devour her when she shall come forth," with the motto in Italian, " I am in evil plight, but I fear worse." A third consists of " Two crowns on earth and one in heaven, composed of stars with flames of fire issuing from them," and the motto, " Manet ultima coelo." One characteristic custom of the time was the use of mourning beds draped in black. The statement is constantly repeated that mourning was unknown in Scotland till the death of Queen Magdalen in 1537, the authority of George Buchanan having been accepted without ques- tion. So far as it applies to public mourning the statement may be correct. An order sub- scribed by the King was inserted in the books of the Edinburgh Town Council in July, 1537 (the date of the Queen's death), which, without ex- press reference to that event, says, " The lords understandis that the Kingis grace and all the lieges of his realm hes instantly ado with blak veluott, satyne, dammes and all sorts of blak clayth ..." and goes on to forbid raising the price. But private mourning was worn long before this. It is mentioned in Dunbar's poem of the " Wedow," which was in print by 1508. This lady describes how she goes to the kirk " cled in cairweeds," talks of her " dule habits," and tells us that her " clokkis thai are cairful 168 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND (sorrowful) in colour of sable," and such allu- sions entitle us to assume that mourning was by that time a well-established custom. The bed which appears among the possessions of James V in 1542, and which was hung in black !< dalmes " (damask), was probably so draped in sorrow for the death of his French bride. At any rate, it was not unusual, as the sixteenth century went on, for well-to-do families to have a special bed for use in times of mourning, or at least a complete set of black hangings. The same practice ruled in England. In the Verney Memoirs (Vol. I, p. 293) Sir Ralph Verney writes to a relative who has announced the death of her husband, and suggests lending her " the great black bed and hangings from Claydon " as the only consolation he can offer ; and it seems to have been customary to send this bed round to any branch of the family which had to go into mourning. In Queen Mary's inven- tories we find three such beds, two of velvet and one of damask, entirely in black, with black silk fringes. In 1594 the Laird of Caddalis had two of these funereal beds, draped in black velvet with black taffeta curtains ; and when we examine the wearing apparel in his house we find fresh evidence of a period of mourning. There are black velvet " cornettis," which are the well-known head-dresses shaped like two horns, worn by women ; three " blak mwchis THE KING OR THE COVENANT 169 of talphetie " ; and, most unmistakable of all, " ane braid craip for the duill." As time went on our forefathers gloried in multiplying and extending the visible signs of grief. On the death of the Earl of Haddington, in 1643, his chamber was " hung with mourneing " ; and five years later there were not only a " black cloath " bed, with tester, valance and curtains, and chair and stool covers to correspond ,. but also black baize hangings for the rooms, black covers for the forms and other seats, and black horse-cloths and liveries. Nothing was left un- done to emphasise the most dismal aspects of death and to aggravate the depressing circum- stances of the bereaved. It is even said that the mistress of Brunston had a particular alley in her garden which she set aside for walking in during mourning. The furnishing of a four-poster in Queen Mary's time consisted of (i) the covering, or bed-cover ; (2) the headpiece or pane, rising from the head of the bed ; (3) the roof or canopy ; (4) three pands, forming the valance or frieze-like hanging at the top of the curtains ; (5) the curtains ; (6) the stoup-covers, the material fitted round the bedposts, usually wound spirally ; and (7) the underpands or " subbasmont," hanging from the bed to the floor. The top of the bed was often decorated with " standardts of fedderis " at the four 170 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND corners, while in 1634 a citizen of Aberdeen had his bed similarly surmounted with no fewer than six tin crowns ! As to curtains, there is a set at present on view at the Royal Scottish Museum, on loan from Sir Charles Bruce, of Arnot, which are believed to have been hung on Queen Mary's bed during her imprisonment at Lochleven. 1 They are certainly of that date and they have many points of interest. They are of crimson cloth divided by broad bands of applique velvet embroidered in gold and colours. The curtains are four in number, besides the valances. When they came to the Museum they were measured, and it was found that while the height was approximately uniform about 6 ft. the width of the separate pieces was remarkably different, one being 44 in. wide, one 58 in., one 79 in., and the last as much as 99 in. Curtains are of course meant to hang with a certain amount of fullness, so they need not be expected to correspond precisely to the measurements of the bed. The proper arrange- ment seems to be this : the 58 in. one is the head-piece ; the shortest of all, that measuring 44 in., hangs next to the head on the side on which the bed was entered ; the 79 in. one hangs along the whole of the opposite side of the bed ; and the 99 in. one extends from that side along the foot of the bed and up the other side till it meets the short one, the meeting-place 1 See Plate XII. PLATE XI T BED-CURTAINS FROM LOCH LEVEN Property of Sir Charles Rruceof Arnot THE KING OR THE COVENANT 171 occurring just where it would be most con- venient that there should be an opening for entering and leaving the bed. When the cur- tains at the Museum were arranged in this way it was found that the edges of the curtains at this opening were worn perhaps by Queen Mary's own hand as she drew them back to face each new morning of her capitivity. The cur- tains show a characteristic feature of the beds of the time, the strings and " knoppis " for tying the curtains from inside before going to sleep. Heraldic ornament was often applied to beds, either in the form of wood-carving, or executed in needlework on the valance, head or coverlet. But its appearance in private houses is rare before the seventeenth century. David Wedder- burn, the Dundee merchant, speaks, in 1622, of " ane lite camp bed with my father and motheris airmes thairon." Sir Colin Campbell, the eighth Laird of Glenurquhy, who had a taste for magnificence in furnishing, had one silk bed with red hangings, " ane pand with rid velvett brouderit with blew silk, with the Laird of Glenurquhy and his Ladie their names and airmes thairon." And other beds, one of blue, one " incarnatt," and one of shot green and yellow, similarly bore the arms of the laird and his lady. The taste of the time seems to have favoured such bright colours as these, and an 172 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND inventory of 1622 permits us a chaste glimpse of Mr. Adam Primrose, a native of Culross, retiring to his slumbers under the glowing shade of " orang growgrane courtenis." But, whether as a result of Puritan influence or no, these cheerful hues soon began to lose favour, and such romantic colour-names as crammasie and color-de-roy passed out of fashion. In their place we have a number of unpleasant names like " hair-cullour " and " flesche collor," and depressing ones like " sadd cullor " and " lead colour " ; while there are also names, more attractive in themselves, which none the less stand for dull and neutral shades of various kinds, such as " gridaline " (gris de //), a pinkish grey ; " gingalyne," ginger coloured ; and the pretty name " philiamort " (feuille mort) or dead leaf colour. Such colours taken as representa- tive of the time convey an impression of an age which has lost much of the gaiety and romance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yet on similar evidence what judgment would the archaeologists of the future pass on our own time, for if we may trust the advertisements in to-day's papers the palette of the twentieth cen- tury would appear to be laid in with such mysterious shades as " nigger, putty, jade, bottle, tango and saxe " ? LECTURE VI THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE RESTORATION 1649-1688 The restoration of the Monarchy Irreconcilable differ- ences Organised and harmonious national life impossible Persecutions The Acts of Indulgence Inducements to accept the established regime History of the times re- flected in furniture Severe and utilitarian character of Commonwealth furniture Restoration chairs and day- beds Chairs as evidences of changes in the treatment of floors Easy chairs Extravagance of the Court Exotic materials Cabinets The chest of drawers Tea, coffee and cocoa Walnut tables The virginalls Barred grates Forks not yet in use Scottish diarists Social life of the time Billiards Horse racing The kirk stool Going to church Giving out the line The hour-glass Periwigs, powder and Sedan chairs, as preluding the eighteenth- century Conclusion . THE tragic course of Scottish history under the later Stuart kings resulted from the irreconcilable antagonism of two ideas, each entertained as a principle abso- lute and admitting of no compromise. On the one side, the people, with every fibre hardened in its long struggle for religious liberty, held un- flinchingly to the divine right of conscience. On the other, the Royalists asserted no less peremptorily the divine right of Kings. The people's claim meant in practice the divine 173 174 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND authority of the Presbyterian form of religion. And as the King, in his capacity as Heaven's vice-regent, claimed the right to impose what- ever form of religion commended itself to him, and as that form was not Presbyterianism, there was no possibility of a compromise such as might have led to a peaceful and harmoniously organised national life. For eleven years under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Scotland had experienced, for the first time in her history, the domination of a foreign government whose rule was orderly and not unjust, but which was yet in many respects uncongenial. And when, in 1660, Charles II was restored to the throne, there were many whose experience of the form of government set up by the Covenant led them to accept with relief the return of the monarchy, and who looked hopefully forward to happier times under the ancient line of Scottish kings. But it soon appeared that the old antagon- ism was to find no pacific solution, and that the policy of the King and his advisers aimed at nothing less than the total extirpation of the Covenant, a policy which would have been im- practicable had not the nobility turned Royalist and had not the Covenanters themselves been divided by internal differences. The Recissory Act cancelled everything in the way of legisla- tion that the Covenant had accomplished, and Presbyterian ministers had to forfeit their COMMONWEALTH & RESTORATION 175 charges unless they brought themselves to apply for collation by a bishop. There followed the long story of persecution which has been de- scribed as " the most pitiful, the most revolting, and at the same time the sublimest and most impressive page in the national history." When we read the narrative of the torturings and the violent deaths of those who remained faithful to the Covenant and who refused to accept episcopacy and thus acknowledge Charles as the head of the Church, and when we contrast their sufferings with the untroubled existence that was open to them as an alternative, we cannot wonder if the majority were ready to compromise and purchase peace and immunity on easy terms, nor if many of the Presbyterian ministers took advantage of the Acts of Indul- gence to regain possession of their charges. While the dragoons were scouring the moors and hillsides for the followers of Cargill, Cameron and Renwick, and the heather was stained with the blood of the martyrs, many an amiable country gentleman was peacefully attending to the management of his estates, and had most of his time free for the comparatively arduous pursuit of his pleasures. One would never suspect, from reading the Account Books of Sir John Foulis, of Ravelston, that he lived through a time whose tragedies have stamped themselves so deeply on Scottish memory. The 176 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND same skies, the same alternations of rain and sunshine, saw the Covenanters exiled from human society, upheld through danger and privation by dark sayings of the Hebrew poets, and stung by their sufferings to an exaltation that was either prophecy or frenzy ; and Foulis, in the friendliest good humour, making himself popular at horse races and penny weddings, dispensing drink-money to the mid- wife, and tossing a hansell with a kind word to " ye muckman that dights ye close." Such antitheses could of course be drawn in our own or any age. Yet the contrasted pictures of the Covenanter and of the cheerful laird may serve to remind us of the alternatives that a man had to face when he resolved to stand by the Covenant, and of the inducement to swallow his qualms and choose the side of comfort and safety. In the furnishing of the times it is possible to trace some reflexion of the events, the changes of national feeling, and the social contrasts, of which I have reminded you. Looking back to the previous reign we note that Charles I had been himself something of a collector and a patron of the arts, and his influence and ex- ample had had their effect in diffusing among the upper classes an interest in the furnishing of their homes. But with his death and the estab- lishment of the Commonwealth there was a COMMONWEALTH & RESTORATION 177 marked reaction, under Puritan influence, against ostentation and display, and a general reversion towards simplicity and even austerity in the whole setting of domestic life. The eleven years of the Commonwealth were too short a period to bring about any far-reaching change in the development of furniture, yet all the characteristic pieces of furniture which we associate with Cromwell's time are distinguished by their simple design, aiming at usefulness rather than comfort or ornament. Many of them were of earlier origin, types selected owing to their being naturally suited to the ascetic views of life and of human requirements which guided the Puritan's choice. Thus what is known as the Cromwell chair, a simple rect- angular chair with a horizontal panel for the shoulders to rest on, and with the seat and panel covered with stretched leather nailed to the frame, was really a development of the " far- thingale chair," the earliest armless form of chair, which was introduced in James VI's reign to meet the necessity of ladies who found that the enormous whalebone farthingales, or crinolines, then worn, were a source of em- barrassment when they were given an arm-chair to sit on. In Cromwell's day the extremely narrow seat of the farthingale chair had been extended to a more comfortable size, and the legs and stretchers were often turned in a 12 178 DOMESTIC LIFE IN SCOTLAND " knob " pattern, though the straight leg was still perhaps more usual. On such chairs it was hardly possible to sit otherwise than bolt up- right, so that there was little temptation to idle lounging. In the same way the gate-legged tables and writing bureaux of the period are furniture of a plain and homely type, such as men who aimed at sitting lightly to the world and its vanities might use without danger of having the eye seduced or the heart entangled. After eleven years' experience of Puritan seventy and repression, it was inevitable that there should be a revolt against a system that made little allowance for the natural instinct for beauty and innocent enjoyment. In Scot- land especially, where the national struggle had never been directed against monarchical govern- ment, but merely against interference with religious liberty, the restoration of the Stuarts was hailed by most as a return of the good old times. Something of these feelings is crystal- lised in a very familiar type of contemporary furniture. What is often called a " Queen Mary chair," probably because of its associa- tion with Holyrood and also, perhaps, because the crown which is its characteristic decoration somewhat resembles the initial " M," is typical of the Restoration period. 1 The crown is no merely conventional piece of decoration, but expressly commemorates the return of the 1 See Plate XI 1 1. ri.ATK XI 1 1 CkOWN CHAIRS (