DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52829#0183
109
to shew that I doo reioice rather, to see how God hath blessed vs with
his good gifts; and whilst I behold how that in a time wherein all
things are growen to most excessiue prices, and what commonlie so euer
is to be had, is dailie plucked from the commonalitie by such as look
into eurie trade, we do yet finde the meanes to atchiue such furniture as
heretofore hath beene vnpossible.”
He proceeds, speaking (in the persons of some old men then dwelling
in his village) of the amendment of lodging: “ our fathers, (yea we
ourselues also), haue lien full oft vpon straw pallets, on rough mats
couered onlie with a sheet, vnder couerlets made of dogswain or
hopharlots, (I vse their owne terms), and a good round log under their
heads, insteed of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers, or
the goodman of the house, had, within seuen yeares after his marriage,
purchased a mattress or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaff to rest
his head vpon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lorde of
the towne, that, peradventure, laie seldome in a bed of downe or whole
fethers; so well were they contented, and with such base kind of
furniture: which is also not verie much amended as yet in some parts
of Bedfordshire, and elsewhere further off from our southerne parts.
Pillowes (say they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed.
As for seruants, if they had anie sheet aboue them, it was well, for
seldome had they anie vnder their bodies, to keepe them from the
pricking straws that ran oft through the canuas of the pallet, and rased
their hardened hides.”
The next remarkable thing, he adds, “ is the exchange of vessel], as
of treene platters into pewter, and wooden spoones into siluer or tin ; for
so common were all sorts of treene stuffe in old time, that a man should
hardly find four peeces of pewter, (of which one was, peraduenture, a
salt), in a good farmer’s house. Whereas in my time, although per-
to shew that I doo reioice rather, to see how God hath blessed vs with
his good gifts; and whilst I behold how that in a time wherein all
things are growen to most excessiue prices, and what commonlie so euer
is to be had, is dailie plucked from the commonalitie by such as look
into eurie trade, we do yet finde the meanes to atchiue such furniture as
heretofore hath beene vnpossible.”
He proceeds, speaking (in the persons of some old men then dwelling
in his village) of the amendment of lodging: “ our fathers, (yea we
ourselues also), haue lien full oft vpon straw pallets, on rough mats
couered onlie with a sheet, vnder couerlets made of dogswain or
hopharlots, (I vse their owne terms), and a good round log under their
heads, insteed of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that our fathers, or
the goodman of the house, had, within seuen yeares after his marriage,
purchased a mattress or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaff to rest
his head vpon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lorde of
the towne, that, peradventure, laie seldome in a bed of downe or whole
fethers; so well were they contented, and with such base kind of
furniture: which is also not verie much amended as yet in some parts
of Bedfordshire, and elsewhere further off from our southerne parts.
Pillowes (say they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed.
As for seruants, if they had anie sheet aboue them, it was well, for
seldome had they anie vnder their bodies, to keepe them from the
pricking straws that ran oft through the canuas of the pallet, and rased
their hardened hides.”
The next remarkable thing, he adds, “ is the exchange of vessel], as
of treene platters into pewter, and wooden spoones into siluer or tin ; for
so common were all sorts of treene stuffe in old time, that a man should
hardly find four peeces of pewter, (of which one was, peraduenture, a
salt), in a good farmer’s house. Whereas in my time, although per-