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Table of Contents

JAMES I. (1603-25)

1606 Second colonisation of Virginia begun; Raleigh's first colony in Virginia was founded in 1585.

1611 The colonisation of Ulster begun.

Publication of the Authorised version of the Bible.

1620 The sailing of the Mayflower and the foundation of New England by the Puritans.

CHARLES I. (1625-49)

1630 John Winthrop and a number of Puritans settle in Massachusetts.

1633 Reclamation of forest lands.

1634 Wentworth introduces flax cultivation into Ireland.

1635 Taxes for Ship Money levied on inland counties.

1637 John Hampden, a country gentleman, refuses to pay Ship Money.

CIVIL WAR (1642-49)

1642 Battle of Edgehill. Formation of Eastern Association. Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, and Hertford unite for purpose of defence against the Royalists.

1643 Battles of Reading, Grantham, Stratton, Chalgrove Field, Adwalton Moor (near Bradford), Lansdown, Roundway Down, Bristol, Gloucester, Newbury, Winceby, Hull.

1644 Battles of Nantwich, Copredy Bridge, Marston Moor, Tippermuir, Lostwithiel, Newbury.

1645 Battles of Inverlochy, Naseby, Langport, Kilsyth, Bristol, Philiphaugh, Rowton Heath.

1648 Battles of Maidstone, Pembroke, Preston, Colchester.

THE COMMONWEALTH (1642-58)

1649 Battle of Rathmines. Storming of Drogheda and Wexford by Cromwell.

1650 Montrose defeated at Corbiesdale and executed. Battle of Dunbar.

1651 Battle of Worcester.

1652 War with Holland.

1656 War with Spain.

1657 Destruction of Spanish fleet by Blake.

1658 Battle of the Dunes. Victory of English and French fleet over Spain.

INTERREGNUM (1658-60)

1659 Rising in Cheshire for Charles.

CHARLES II. (1660-85)

1672 The stop of the Exchequer. Charles refuses to repay the principal of the sums he had borrowed and reduces interest from 12 per cent. to 6 per cent. This resulted in great distress, felt in various parts of the country.

JAMES II. (1685-88)

1685 Insurrection of Argyll in Scotland.

Monmouth rising in West of England.

Revocation of Edict of Nantes. The expulsion of a large

number of French Protestant artisans. Settlement of skilled silk-weavers and others in England.

WILLIAM III. AND MARY (1689-94)

WILLIAM III. (1689-1702)

1689 Siege of Londonderry.

1690 Battle of the Boyne. William defeats James, who flees to France.

1691 Capitulation of Limerick; 10,000 Irish soldiers and officers joined the service of the French King.

1692 Battle of La Hogue, French fleet destroyed.

CHAPTER II

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY STYLES

Typical Jacobean furniture—Solidity of English joiners' work—Oak general in its use—The oak forests of England—Sturdy independence of country furniture—Chests of drawers—The slow assimilation of foreign styles—The changing habits of the people.

To the lover of old oak, varied in character and essentially English in its practical realisation of the exact needs of its users, the seventeenth century provides an exceptionally fine field. The chairs, the tables, the dower-chests and the four-post bedsteads of the farmhouse were sturdy reflections of sumptuous furniture made for the nobility and gentry in Jacobean and Elizabethan times. The designs may have been suggested by finer and early models, but the balance, the sense of proportion, and the carving, were the result of the village carpenter's own individual ideas as to the requirements of the furniture for use in the farmhouse. Obviously strength and stability were important factors, and ornament, as such, took a subsidiary place in his scheme. But, although coarse and possessing a leaning towards the unwieldy, and often massive without the accompanying grandeur of the highly-trained craftsman's work, there is a breadth of treatment in such pieces which is at once recognisable. They were made for use and no little thought was bestowed on their lines, and, rightly appreciated, they possess a considerable beauty. There is nothing finicking about this seventeenth-century farmhouse furniture. There is no meaningless ornament. Produced in conditions suitable for quiet and restrained craftsmanship, contemplative cabinet-makers began to evolve styles that are far removed from the average design of furniture made to-day under more pretentious surroundings.

The gate table, with its long history and its amplification of structure and ornament, to which a separate chapter is devoted (Chapter III), is a case in point. It was extensively used in inns and in farmhouses and found itself in set definite types spread over a wide area from one end of the country to the other. Its practicability caught the taste of lovers of utility. Its added gracefulness of form, in combination with its adaptability to modern needs, has recaptured the fancy of housewives to-day. It is the happy survival of a beautiful and useful piece of ingenious cabinet-work.

To-day one finds unexpectedly a London fashion lingering in the provinces years afterwards. A stray air from a light opera or some catch-phrase of town slang is gaily bandied about as current coin in bucolic jest long after its circulation in the metropolis has ceased. The fashions in provincial furniture moved as slowly. Half a century after certain styles were the vogue they crept imperceptibly into country use. In speech and song the transplantation is more rapid, but in craftsmanship, the studied work of men's hands, the use of novelty is against the grain of the conservative mind of the country cabinet-maker. Therefore throughout the entire field of this minor furniture it must be borne in mind that it is quite usual to find examples of one century reflecting the glories of the period long since gone.

Solidity of English Joiners' Work.—The love of old country furniture of the seventeenth century is hardly an acquired taste. Old oak is at once a jarring note in a Sheraton drawing-room with delicate colour scheme of dainty wallpaper and satin coverings. But as a general rule, when it is first seen in its proper environment, in an old-world farmhouse with panelled walls, and mullioned windows, set squarely on an oak floor and beneath blackened oak beams ripe with age, it wins immediate recognition as representative of a fine period of furniture. It is admitted by experts, and it is the proud boast of possessors of old oak, that the joiner's work of this style—the seventeenth century at its best—stands unequalled for its solidity and sound practical adhesion to fixed principles governing sturdy furniture fashioned for hard and continued usage. Of course, there were no screws used in those days, and little glue. The joints dovetailed into each other with great exactness and were fastened by the wooden pins so often visible in old examples. The modern copyist has a fine regard for these wooden pegs. He knows that his clients set store by them, and he accordingly sees to it that they are well in evidence in his replicas. But there is yet a distinction which may be noticed between his pegs and the originals. His are accurately round, turned by machinery to fit an equally circular machine-turned hole. They tell their own story instantly to a trained eye, to say nothing of the piece of furniture as a whole, which always has little conflicting touches to denote its modernity.

As an instance of the form of the sixteenth century continuing in use until mid-seventeenth-century days the illustration of an oak table (p. 63) brings out this point. The heavy baluster-like legs, only just removed from the earlier bulbous types, and the massive treatment belong to the days of James I., and yet such pieces really were made in Cromwellian days.

The rude simplicity of much of the farmhouse furniture is indicated by the Monk's Bench illustrated (p. 53). The back is convertible into a table top. The early plainness of style for so late a piece as 1650 is particularly noteworthy. This specimen is interesting by reason of its exceptionally large back.

On the same page is illustrated a chest with two drawers underneath. This form is termed a "Mule Chest," and is the earliest form of the chest of drawers. These Cromwellian chests with drawers continued to be made in the country for a hundred years, but in more fashionable circles they soon developed into the well-known Jacobean chest of drawers, the prototype of the form in use to-day. As an instance of this lingering of fashion the chest illustrated is dated 1701, quite fifty years after its first appearance as a new style.

MONK'S BENCH. C. 1650.

With back convertible into table top. Exceptionally large back.

(Note early plainness of style.)

(By courtesy of Messrs. A. B. Daniell & Sons.)

OAK CHEST WITH DRAWERS UNDERNEATH.

Termed a "Mule Chest." The earliest form of chest of drawers. This piece in style is Middle Seventeenth Century, but is dated 1701.

Oak General in its Use.—The oak as a wood was in general use both in the furniture of the richer classes and in the farmhouse furniture of seventeenth-century days and earlier. Inlaid work is unknown in furniture of this type. It was sparingly used in pieces of more important origin. The room shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum from Sizergh Castle has inlays of holly and bog oak. And the suite of furniture at Hardwicke Hall made for Bess of Hardwicke was made by English workmen who had been in Italy, the same persons who produced similar work at Longleat. Small panels with rough inlaid work are not uncommon in the seventeenth century in chests, bedsteads, and drawers. But the prevailing types of oak without the added inlays of other woods were rigidly adhered to in cabinet-makers' work for the farmhouse.

The great oak forests, such as Sherwood, furnished an abundance of timber for all domestic purposes, and up to the seventeenth century little other wood was used for any structural or artistic purpose. Practically oak may be considered as the national wood. From the Harry Grâce à Dieu of Henry VIII. and the Golden Hind of Drake to the Victory of Nelson, the great ships were of English oak. The magnificent hammer-beam roof of Westminster Hall is of the same wonderful wood. All over the country are scattered buildings timbered with oak beams, from cathedrals and ancient churches to farmhouses and mills. The oak piles of old London Bridge were taken up after six centuries and a half and found to be still sound at the heart. The mass of furniture of nearly three centuries ago has survived owing to the durability of its wood. To this day English oak commands great esteem, although foreign oak has taken its place in the general timber trade, yet there is none which possesses such strong and lasting qualities. It will stand a strain of 1,900 lbs. per square inch transversely to its fibres.

Sturdy Independence of Country Furniture.—The hardness of the oak as a wood is one of the factors which determined the styles of decoration of the furniture into which it was fashioned. It was not easily capable of intricate carved work, even in the hands of accomplished craftsmen. The fantastic flower and fruit pieces of Grinling Gibbons and other carvers were in lime or chestnut, and the age of walnut, a more pliant and softer wood to work in than oak, was yet to come. The country maker, little versed in the subtleties of cabinet-work, contented himself with a narrow range of types, which lasted over a considerable period. This is especially noticeable in his chairs, and specimens are found of the same form as the middle seventeenth century belonging to the last decade of the eighteenth century.

The typical sideboard of the seventeenth century only varies slightly in form according to the part of the country from which it comes. The general design is always permanent. A large cupboard below, two smaller ones above, set somewhat back from the front of the lower one, the sides of the upper ones sometimes canted off, leaving two triangular spaces of flat top at the ends of the bottom one. The whole is surmounted by a top shelf, supported by the upper cupboards and two boldly turned pillars. This is usually the design. The decoration is of the simplest, and presents nothing beyond the powers of the village carpenter. The mouldings are simple; there is slight conventional carving, frequently consisting of hollow flutings, and the pillars, boldly turned, are very rarely enriched by any ornament. A careful examination of such pieces is always interesting from a technical point of view. The framing of the panels is seen to be worked out by the plane, but the panels themselves more often than not have been reduced to approximate flatness with an adze. If viewed in a side light the surface is thus slightly varied, showing the differences in the planes of the various facets produced by the adze and giving an effect entirely different from the mechanical smoothing of a surface by the use of a plane.

EARLY OAK TABLE. C. 1640.

Retaining Elizabethan bulbous form of leg and having Cromwellian style feet. Brass handles added later.

JOINT STOOLS.

Height, 1 ft. 10-1/2 ins.

(About 1640.)

Height, 1 ft. 8-1/2 ins.

Height, 1 ft. 5 ins.

(About 1660.)

The framing of the front and ends of these sideboards is in detail exactly like the ordinary Jacobean wall panelling or wainscot. The mouldings are all worked on the rails or styles, not mitred and glued on, no mitred mouldings being used except occasionally in the centre panel between the doors. The framing is mortised together and pinned with oak pins. The doors are usually hung on iron strap hinges, and the handles of the doors are of wrought iron. Frequently the doors of the upper cupboards are hung on pivots, not hinges. Such a sideboard belongs to the middle period of the seventeenth century, and is representative of a wide class used in farmhouses.

It is easier to follow the various movements in the design of the seventeenth-century table than a century later, when more complex circumstances governed its use. The illustrations on p. 57 give early forms, with some suggestion as to the progression in design.

The early oak Table is a curious compound of design. It has retained the Elizabethan bulbous form of leg and has the Cromwellian foot. In date the piece is about 1640. The brass handle has been added later.

The Joint Stools on the lower half of the page afford a picture of slowly advancing invention in turned work. The one on the left of the group is the earliest, and is about 1640 in date. Its legs are seen to be of coarser work, roughly turned, but typically early Jacobean in breadth of treatment. The two on the right are about 1660 in date. The left-hand one shows the urn-shaped leg of the strong, broad treatment (as in the Table illustrated p. 63), brought into subjection and exhibiting a gracefulness of form and balance that make furniture of this type so lovable. The smaller stool shows the ball-carving associated with the Restoration period, and found in gate tables. A combination of these styles of turning is shown in the graceful oak Table illustrated p. 65, in date about 1680.

Chests of Drawers.—The conservative spirit of the minor craftsmen is especially noticeable in the articles of everyday use. The merchant's account ledger with its green back and cross-stitched pattern in vellum strips, still in use, is to be found in the same style in Holbein pictures of the days of the Hanseatic League. Brass and copper candlesticks have a long lineage, and their form is only a slight variant from very early examples. The evolution of ornament is especially interesting; the old stoneware Bellarmine form still remains in the bearded mask at the lip of china jugs at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The two buttons at the back of the coattails continue long after their primary use to loop up the sword-belt has vanished.

In America the early carved chests of the Puritan colonists were followed by similar designs contemporary with our own Jacobean style for a period well towards the end of the seventeenth century. The panels on chairs and chests have the same arcaded designs as found in Elizabethan bedsteads and fireplaces. These become gradually crystallised in conventional form, and Lockwood, the American writer on old colonial furniture, has reduced the types coincident with our own Jacobean styles into ten distinct patterns, until the advent of the well-known chests of drawers with geometric raised ornament laid on, which pieces of furniture in Restoration days were set upon a stand.

We have shown in the illustration (p. 53) the earliest form of the chest with drawers underneath. The stage transitional between this and the multifarious designs with bevelled panels in geometric design is exemplified by the chest, in date about 1660, illustrated (p. 63), having two drawers and a centre bevelled panel, and with two arcaded panels on each side of this and also arcaded panels at the ends of the chest. This form was rapidly succeeded by the well-known chests of drawers on ball feet or on stand so much appreciated by collectors.

We illustrate a sufficient number of pieces to cover the usual styles and to assist the beginner to identify examples coming under his observation. Although it should be noted that as these chests of drawers are so much sought after they are manufactured nowadays by the hundred and out of old wood, so that great care should be exercised in paying big prices for them unless under expert guidance.

The specimen appearing on p. 65 is a fine example, in date 1660, and when the ball feet are original, as in this example, the genuineness of the chest of drawers is undoubted. Too often stands or feet are added, and it is exceedingly rare to find that the brass handles are original. Quite an industry is carried on in reproducing old brass escutcheons and handles from rare designs and carefully imparting to them signs of age, so that they may be used in made-up chests of drawers and tables.

Of types of stands, the two chests of drawers illustrated p. 69 are fair examples. The upper chest is a curious Jacobean type with sunk panels and having an unusually high stand. There is a suggestion that this has been added later, as the foot is eighteenth-century in character.

The lower chest is of the Charles II. type with sunk panels and having the arcaded foot of that period. It will be observed that in addition to the four drawers it has a drawer at the bottom.

OAK TABLE. C. 1650.

CHEST. ABOUT 1660.

With bevelled panels and drawers and arcaded panels and ends.

(By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin.)

SMALL OAK TABLE. C. 1680.

Showing two forms of mouldings in legs and stretcher.

(By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin.)

JACOBEAN CHEST OF DRAWERS. C. 1660.

Height, 2 ft. 11-3/4 ins.; depth, 1 ft. 11 ins.; width, 3 ft. 3-1/2 ins. The ball foot, not always present, indicates genuine example.

The treatment of the stand or legs of these chests exercised the ingenuity of various generations of cabinet-makers. In the specimen illustrated p. 69, the eighteenth century is reached. The transition from passing Jacobean styles into those of Queen Anne is clearly seen. The bevelled panels still remain, with added geometric intricacies of design, and a new feature appears in the fluted sides. But the most interesting feature is the cabriole leg, so definitely indicative of the eighteenth century.

The Slow Assimilation of Foreign Styles in Furniture.—Farmhouse furniture almost eschewed fashion. In seventeenth-century days it pursued the even tenor of its way untrammelled by town influences. England in those days was not traversed by roads that lent themselves to neighbourly communication. A hundred years later Wedgwood found the wretched roads in Staffordshire, where waggons sunk axle-deep in ruts and pits, a hindrance to his business, and William Cobbett in his Rural Rides leaves a record of Surrey woefully primitive at Hindhead, with dangerous hills and bogs, where the "horses took the lead and crept down, partly upon their feet and partly upon their hocks."

From the days of James I. to those of James II., from the first Stuart Sovereign to the last of that ill-starred house, the country passed through rapid stages of volcanic history. The opening years of the century saw the colonisation of Ulster by the Scots and the English settlers, and the sailing of the Mayflower and the foundation of New England by the Puritans, nine years after the publication of the Authorised version of the Bible. Under Charles I. came the struggle between the despotic power of the Crown and the newly awakened will of the people. Parliamentary right came into conflict with royal prerogative. The smouldering fire burst into flame when John Hampden, a country gentleman, refused to pay Ship Money, which was levied on the inland counties in 1637, and the arrest of five members of Parliament in 1642—Hampden, Pym, Holles, Haselrig, and Strode—precipitated the country into civil war.

For seven years a continual series of battles were waged by the contending forces. The Eastern Counties formed themselves into a martial association, and the King set up his standard at Nottingham. From Bristol to Hull and from Nantwich to Newbury fierce engagements tore the country asunder. An Irish army was raised for the King, and the Scots under Leslie crossed the border in the Parliamentarian cause. With the execution of Charles I. came other dangers; the sword was not sheathed, nor had revolution left a contented country-side. Cromwell divided the kingdom into eleven military districts, and under his rule England took her place at the head of the Protestant States in Europe.

With the death of the Protector and the restoration of the Stuarts, when Charles II. returned home, came an influx of foreign customs and foreign arts learned by expelled royalists in their enforced sojourn on the Continent. London and the Court instantly became the centre of voluptuous fashion. The pages of Pepys's Diary afford instructive pictures of the last quarter of the century at Whitehall with the Merry Monarch exhibited in vivid colours, and more intimate still are the word-portraits cleverly etched by the Count de Grammont in his Memoirs of the gay circle at Court. And after Charles came his brother James, nor were civil strife and Court intrigue memories of the past. Restlessness still characterises the closing years of the century. The insurrection of Monmouth in the West of England was followed by the Bloody Assize of Judge Jeffreys. The air is filled with trouble, and blundering statecraft brings fresh disaster, culminating in the ignominious flight of the King. Nor does this complete the changing scenes of the seventeenth century. A new era under William the Dutchman brought new and permanent influences, and religious toleration and constitutional government became firmly rooted as the heritage of the people of this country.

OAK CHEST OF DRAWERS.

Curious Jacobean type, with sunk panels and unusually high stand. This stand is the well-known eighteenth-century foot.

OAK CHEST OF DRAWERS.

Charles II. type, with sunk panels and arcaded stand and feet typical of the period.

It is essential that a rough idea of the period be gained in order to appreciate the kaleidoscopic character of the events that rapidly succeeded each other. The paralysis of the arts during the civil war had not a little influence on the furniture of the period belonging to the class of which we treat in this volume. The wealth of noble and patrician families had been scattered, estates had been confiscated, and sumptuous furniture and appointments pillaged and destroyed, especially when it offended the narrow tastes of the Puritan soldiery. Some of the minor pieces no doubt found their way into humbler homes and served as models for simpler folk. With a dearth of aristocratic patrons there were no new art impulses to stir craftsmen to their highest moods, but in spite of war and disturbances affecting all classes, furniture for common use had to be made, and the ready-found types exercised a continued influence on all the earlier work.

In regard to farmhouse furniture the following types represent in the main the seventeenth-century styles: the bedstead, the sideboard or dresser, the table and the chair in its various forms, the Bible-box and the cradle. The Jacobean chest of drawers, a development of the dower-chest, came in mid-seventeenth-century days, and prior to the William and Mary styles. The sideboard, a development of the bacon-cupboard, came into fashion in the middle of the century. It was a reflex of the grander furniture of the manor house and the nobleman's mansion. It is difficult to fix exact dates to Jacobean furniture of this character. As a general rule it is safer to place it at a later date than is the usual custom.

The Changing Habits of the People.—The shifting phases of the restless seventeenth century make it exceedingly difficult, in spite of experts, to decide definitely as to the exact date of furniture. The country being in such an unsettled state obviously influenced the manufacture of domestic furniture. Its natural evolution was broken and the restraint of the Jacobean forms was in the main due to the conditions prevailing in regard to their manufacture. The long list of battles given in the chronological table at the commencement of this chapter is advisedly recorded to show the intense upheaval which was caused by the civil wars which raged from north to south, from east to west, and convulsed any artistic impulses which may have been in process of materialisation.