INVENTORY SOURCE Ap p r o x, n u m b e r s Pr o p o r t io n (% )
PRO PCC Probate 2 400 40
CLRO Orphans’ Court 310 31
Printed inventories from
Archaeological Journals, etc 210 21
Mise, Manuscripts 80 8
TOTALS 1000 100
Clearly, the inventory sample does not provide a cross-section by status, occupation or geography of even the wealthier section of society, particularly after 1660 when it is heavily weighted towards London merchants and tradesmen. This has implications for how it can be used which are discussed in the relevant chapters.
b) Royal household records
The affairs of the ‘offices’ within the royal household concerned with the supply and care of table linen, the Ewery and the Laundry, are contained within the records of the Lord Steward’s department (PRO, LS). Few of these survive from the early seventeenth
century, but from 1660 until 1750 almost all of the books containing budgets, accounts,
98
99
A ll the inventories were inspected belonging to members of the following companies (with their company’s rank in brackets); Mercers (1), Drapers (3), Fishmongers (4), Goldsmiths (5), Merchant Taylors (6), Skinners (7), Salters (9), Clothworkers (12) and Dyers (13). A number o f inventories of members of other companies were also seen, particularly those from the Grocers (2), Haberdashers (8) and Vintners (11) companies,
yearly tradesmen’s contracts and memoranda are found in the Public Record Office. These were all extensively used in this thesis.
c) Customs records
Before the re-organisation of the Customs in 1565, a number of accounts survive for the subsidy of tunnage and poundage, and for Petty Custom (PRO E l22). These were
inspected but did not provide enough data for any significant analysis. However, between 1565 and 1697, some seventy London Port Books survive to enable imports of table linen by English merchants and merchant strangers to be analysed and compared for certain periods (PRO, E l90). The London Port Books do not survive after 1697, but summaries of imports are included in the Inspector General’s Ledgers (PRO Cust.3). These are not so useful for this thesis as the port books, because they include neither the ports of lading nor the consignees. Accordingly, they were sampled only at five-year intervals.
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111. 2.1 Detail o f fine quality diaper with a pattern o f cross diamonds. Low Countries, c. 1600 (possibly earlier).
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111. 2.2 Damask napkin with a portrait o f the Archduke Leopold who relieved Kortrijk in 1648. The date is given by a chronogram within the inscription.
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111. 2.3 Diagram o f damask with binding o f satin o f 5.
Basically, the warp threads float over or under four weft threads and under or over the fifth. In satin o f 7, they float over or under six, and under or over the seventh.
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111. 2.4 Detail o f damask with binding o f satin o f 5. Magnification approximately eight times.
111. 2 .5 Tablecloth fragment with the siege of Tournai [DOORNICK in Dutch]. Kortrijk, 1 7 0 9 .
111. 2.6 Detail of 111. 2.5 showing the bombaidier firing the first mortar to the left of the city.
H alf point repeat Full point or transverse repeat Longitudinal repeat
111. 2.7 Point repeat. (NB: Some authors refer to one half o f the image as the point repeat which in this thesis is considered as the half point repeat.)
Comber or transverse repeat Comber or transverse repeat
Part o f first register
Second register
Third register
Fourth register
Top o f first register
111. 2.8 Comber repeat. (NB: The inscription does not reverse across the cloth as in point repeat.)
Detail of tablecloth with a pleasure garden. Saxony, 1705-10, 186 (3 Saxon ells) by 196 cm. Satin of 5, comber repeat of 26 cm, longitudinal repeat of 107 cm, warp 30 th/cm , weft 20 th./cm.
111. 2.9
Shaft loom. D er Weber, lost Amman, 1568.
A woollen fabric in tabby weave is being produced on this two shaft loom. A loom for plain linens would have been similar.
111. 2.11 Drawloom for weaving silk brocades. L 'Encyclopédie, c. 1762. That for weaving linen damasks was similar.
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111. 2.12 Side view o f drawloom. L 'Encyclopédie, c. 1762.
There are two harnesses, that nearest to the weaver for the satin binding, followed by the pattern harness.
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111. 2.13 Tafel 19 from Kumsch (1891), illustrating five German borders from the first half o f the eighteenth century.
Quand le prince va disner, et qu 'il est couvert, Vhuyssierde la salle va quérir le panetier qui doibt servir pour ce jour, et le meine en la paneterie. Et là le sommelier de la paneterie baille une serviette audict panetier, et la baise, en faisant credence, et le panetier la met sur son espaule senestre, les deux bouts pendant devant et derriéreA
- Olivier de La Marche, 1474
Dining was always more than the simple provision of sustenance, never more so than in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Feasts were used by monarchs, gentlemen and
merchants not only to entertain their guests and impress the onlookers but also to reinforce their self-image and status. In addition, the way in which meals were organised and served reflected particular conceptions of civility and hospitality, gentility and conversation. In recent years, a number of scholars have considered these matters including Michel Jeanneret, who in A Feast o/VForck which traces the theme of conviviality through European literature, writes,
In the Renaissance educated and cultured people, concerned about elegance and civility, establish a vast network of precepts to oversee table manners, lessons on conduct, advice on the menu, rules about service. At the same time, they regulate the conversation of diners and define the tone appropriate to convivial intercourse.^
Other scholars have studied the organisation of princely households and the part that dining played in the political as well as the social and cultural life of the court. Art historians and museum curators responsible for artefacts associated with the table, particularly silver, ceramics and linen, have examined dining ceremony to provide the context in which the objects were used. Apart from a number of monographs and articles, this increasing interest has resulted in several major exhibitions and international conferences. The corpus of work, however, has tended to concentrate upon splendid public occasions: the feasts following events such as coronations and the installations of the Knights of the Garter, as well as the sovereign or the nobility dining-in-state. This concentration has resulted from the nature of the written evidence, which largely consists of instructions relating to public dining in household books, and reports of the great celebrations at court by foreign ambassadors and other observers. In addition, perhaps all historians are not unmoved by the vibrant call of a court trumpet or the sensual charm of a masquer queen. As a result, there is little understanding of private dining whether in royal households or
1 La Marche (1837)*, 584. 2 Jeanneret (1991),3.
among the nobility, gentry or merchant elite. This represents a major shortcoming, as both contemporary and modem writers have emphasised the significance of the move towards greater privacy throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
It is dining ceremony, however, that determines the numbers, sizes and types of tables and cupboards that furnish the dining chamber, together with the supplies of napery and plate. Thus this chapter considers the ownership of furniture, plate and, in particular, table linen to see how it informs the nature of public and private dining, and reflects changes in attitudes and values.
3.1 DINING IN TUDOR HOUSEHOLDS
Within the Tudor noble household, three meals were generally provided: breakfast, dinner and supper. The principal meal was dinner which was served in the middle of the day (i.e. in daylight) and was of two courses, each comprised of many dishes. On public and some private occasions, the host and a few principal guests then retired for the banquet,
consisting of sweetmeats and spiced wine. This was served in a banqueting house, which though small, could be a lavish architectural conceit (111. 3.1).
Large households dined at a number of tables in several locations. For example. Viscount Montague on formal occasions dined with his immediate family in the great chamber at Cowdray, with a second table for his wife’s gentlewomen and certain ‘principal officers*. His steward and most of the officers and yeomen dined at three or four tables in the hall. The ceremony here was similar to that in the great chamber, but it should be remembered that the steward was a knight and the principal officers were young gentlemen, often from families of some standing. The ‘Scullerye man’ had ‘his dyett in his own office, and the boyes of the kitchen with h im ’
The organisation of such households is described in a number of household and courtesy books which also provide many insights into public dining. Mark Girouard has discussed
in Life in the English Country House some twenty of these books."* Taken alone, they
would suggest striking continuities in dining ceremony, with the Montague Household book of 1595 and ‘A Breviate touching the Order and Govemmente of a Nobleman’s House* of 1605 having distinct similarities with documents from a hundred years earlier.^ But do these two sets of instructions represent late examples of a dying tradition, and does their emphasis on formal dining hide from the reader significant changes in the frequency and nature of dining privately?
3 Hope (1919), 133. 4 Girouard (1978), 319-20. 5 Hope (1919) & Banks (1800)* .
Montague’s book includes detailed instructions to the Yeoman of the Ewery - the department responsible for the napery, and the ewers and basins used in the washing of hands - for the setting of his table,
He shall then laye the table cloth fayre uppon both his armes, and goe together with the yeoman usher with due reverence to the table of my dyett, makeinge two curtesies thereto, the one about the middest of the chamber, the other when he cometh to ytt, and there kissinge y^^ shall lay y^^..
Several authors have commented upon the arresting affinities between the liturgy of the Holy Office and dining ceremony, especially this bowing or genuflecting to the empty place-setting of the lord, and the kissing of towels and tablecloths, as well as the ‘arming’ towels which were worn by the sewer and carver as symbols of their offices, in a similar manner to the way the clergy wore their stoles for the mass. David Loades traces ‘this development of a liturgy of deference that was later to be widely imitated’ to the papal Court, in exile at Avignon during the fourteenth century.^ Thus the link which lay initially with the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ, passed to the king as God’s anointed ruler and then by extension to the nobility.
Apart from the ordering of ceremonial, household instructions defined both the organisational stmcture of the household and the access to its head. It is probably a different emphasis regarding these strands that gives disparate views of continuity and change within the household of Henry VIII. Simon Thurley focusing upon the house hold’s departmental organisation, sees continuity from Edward TV’s ‘Black Book’ of 1472 through the reigns of Henry VII and his son.® In contrast, David Starkey, who considers access to the sovereign as of prime importance in the political and social life of the Court, views the Black Book as an end, and not a beginning.
About 1495, Henry VII reorganised the secret or privy chamber with its own staff of six grooms led by the Groom of the Stool. This brought the English Court into line with both France and Burgundy. In 1518, Henry VIII, also reflecting French practice, created an additional set of higher class officers, the Gentlemen of the privy chamber. O f the
significance of these events Starkey writes, ‘the innovations of c. 1495 had created a Secret Chamber which institutionalized distance; those of 1518 reshaped the privy chamber, into an institutionalization of intimacy’ The import of these changes for understanding the linen holdings in Henry VIII’s inventories is twofold. The innovation of c. 1495 gave the Groom of the Stool responsibility for the equipment of the privy chamber, apparently
6 Hope (1919), 130.
7 Loades (1992), 10. 8 Thurley (1993), 145.
including the napery and plate, and that of 1518 ultimately affected the arrangements for dining within the household.
Dining occurred in several locations within Henry’s palaces. The Lord Steward’s
department which cared for the bodily needs of the household, consisted of some nineteen departments, or offices. The staff of many of these ate in the offices where they worked such as the kitchen and the bakehouse, although those that provided service such as the officers of the pantry and the ewery dined elsewhere. The lower servants of the Court ate in the great hall. Its decline in importance, which was noticeable from early in the fifteenth century, continued through Henry’s reign although a great hall was built at Hampton Court. However, there was none at Nonsuch where the lower servants ate in the * dining chamber in the outer court’.H o u s e h o ld officials dined in the guard or watching
chamber, where the Eltham Ordinances specified the Lord Chamberlain should *keepe his boord’. Beyond this, was the presence chamber where the King, on occasion, dined in public in considerable splendour, hedged about with elaborate ceremonial. It was also used for the entertainment of ambassadors and otherwise as a dining chamber for the most senior members of the Court. Subsequently, it was taken over by the Gentlemen Pensioners after their institution in Cromwell’s reform of 1539. Linked to the presence chamber, typically by gallery and closet, was the privy chamber where the King frequently dined served by his personal staff (111. 3.2). Sometimes the King would eat in greater privacy and
informality within the secret lodgings, such as at Hunsdon in 1528 in ‘a chamber within a towre where his hignes sometyme useth to suppe aparte’.^^
As the royal ordinances relate to the ordering of dining-in-state, little is known of dining ‘privately’ in the privy chamber or secret lodgings. Similarly, for the merchants of the City of London, regulations, menus and table plans give a picture of livery dinners in the halls of the elite companies, but little is known of dining practice in their homes. None the less some indications are given by the nature of both their linen holdings and dining furniture.
3.2 NAPER Y ^GENERA TED ’ B Y TUDOR DINING CEREMONY
Both damask and diaper napery were usually exported to England from the Low Countries particularly from Kortrijk in Flanders, in the loom piece, about thirty-five yards in length. In great households, three matching pieces of tabling, towelling and napkining were bought and cut into cloths of the required lengths. Before 1600, many damasks were woven with side borders but most diapers were borderless. From such pieces, tablecloths, towels and napkins could be cut to any length. For some of the finest damasks, woven with top and
10 Thurley (1993), 119. 11 Thurley (1993), 138.
weaver. For such pieces, liaison between the supplier and the customer was required, as the length and width of the tablecloth prescribed the size of the table on which it was to be laid.
a) Tablecloths
Diaper tabling was produced in different qualities and several widths, the narrower often being used for secondary tables and cupboards. Likewise, damask tabling was woven in several qualities but largely in three widths: 2 V2, 3 and 4 ells which were referred to in the Kortrijk guild regulations as 10,12 and 16 quarters of an ell (approximately iVs, 2V4and 3 yds).^^ In the seventeenth century, tablecloths were
sometimes stipulated to fall to within one or two handspans from the floor on either side.^^ During the previous century, pictorial evidence suggests a greater variety, but with the majority falling to within a foot of the floor. With this fall, tablecloths 2V2, 3 and 4 ells broad would cover tables with widths of some 3ft (0.9m), 4ft (1.2m) and 6ft 4in (1.9m) respectively.
Throughout the sixteenth century, a minority of damask tablecloths were of the narrowest width of 21/2 ells, most cloths being either 3 or 4 ells wide. Early in the century, the majority of cloths in the inventories of the nobility were 4 ells wide, with some two-thirds of the tablecloths of both Cardinal Wolsey and the Duke of Buckingham being of this width (see Table 3. l).i^ As the century progressed there was a swing towards 3 ells-wide
cloths, exemplified by only a third of the unused pieces left on Henry VIH’s death being 4 ells in width. In 1601, Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury left an even smaller proportion of 4 ells-wide pieces: just two out of fifteen. By the middle of the seventeenth century, 3 ells-wide tabling became standard and 2 V2 and 4 ells-wide cloth were rarely used in England.
12 Occasionally other widths are found. In addition to the tablecloths in Table 3.1, Leicester had four,
2V4 yds wide, which was possibly a generous measurement o f 14/4 tabling. Included among Heniy VIH ’s 4 ells-wide cloths in Table 3.1 is one of the ‘Kinges Armes crowned in a garter’ measuring 3V4 yds. This is equivalent to 17/4 tabling which, unlike 14/4 tabling, is not included among the permitted widths in the Kortrijk guild regulations.
1 3 Burgers (1987), 150.
14 Tables were about 28 in. high; thus the breadths of tables with falls to within 12 in. of the floor are as follows:-
2V2 ells (10/4) tabling width 68 ins less two drops of 16 ins is 36 ins
3 ells (12/4) ” 81 ins ” ” 49 ins
4 ells (16/4) ” 108 ins ” ” 76 ins
1 5 The surviving examples from c.1530 are all 16/4 wide: e.g. Abegg Stiftung 4824; V & A , T277- 1913; Dutch Private Coll., Burgers (1986) 111. 92a; Bemheimer (1996), Lot 453, pattern identical to