Dutch and Flemish Furniture
Charles II, who, while a royal refugee, spent much
time in Holland, had acquired the new taste. It was
there, doubtless, that he saw visions of wealth in the
Indies that later led him to grant the English East India
Company a charter, and to embark on a disastrous and
inglorious war, which resulted in London hearing foreign
guns for the first time since England was a nation. His
keen appreciation of Oriental works of art, however, was
somewhat dulled when his bride, Catherine of Braganza,
brought him a shipload of cabinets and ceramics in lieu
of the dowry her mother had promised, although Evelyn,
in his description of Hampton Court (1662), says : " The
Queen brought over with her from Portugal such Indian
cabinets as had never before been seen here."
It is frequently asserted with apparent authority
that Mary carried the Dutch taste for porcelain and the
manufactures of the Far East into England ; but, as we
have seen, this idea is not well founded. Herself a
china-maniac, she merely set the royal stamp of approval
on contemporary taste, and made Hampton Court a
model of the style rejugie. That style dominated Eng-
lish and Dutch homes before she heartlessly danced in
the Palace of Whitehall from which her father had
fled.
Hampton Court, remodelled under her directions, was
not completed till 1693. Many documents show that
the style refugie was popular in English aristocratic
homes before that date.
Under William and Mary, London swarmed with
Dutch merchants and refugee Huguenot arts and crafts-
men, and was almost as much of an Eastern bazaar as
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