THERE is, perhaps, no branch of the subject of furniture more difficult to approach than that of bedsteads, and this not because they were by any means scarce, but because the bedsteads of the seventeenth century in this country have utterly disappeared, and the inventories give such meagre descriptions that almost the only clues are the valuations there given, and a study of the English bedstead of the same period.

There is, of course, a distinction between a bed and a bedstead, more marked a century ago than to-day - the bedstead being the frame or furniture part, while the bed referred to the mattress.

In England, before the Norman Conquest (1066), and even in the period immediately following, bedsteads were scarce, reserved for the master of the house or ladies, there often being but one to a house, while the other members of the household lay on mattresses of straw laid on the floor or on tables, chests, or benches.

The bedsteads were sometimes built into the walls like bunks, but more often had four massive posts, with top and sometimes sides of wood, and heavy curtains, making a sort of sleeping-chamber in itself, and, it is asserted, were sometimes placed out of doors. However this may be, in some of the old manuscripts and tapestries we find bedsteads represented with tiled roofs, which would indicate that they were exposed to the weather. At any rate, when we consider that the castles and homes of that early day were without glass or other protection for the windows, we can readily understand why that particular style should have originated.

The style, having been brought into existence by necessity, developed along the same line toward a more graceful and delicate design, first losing the sides of wood but retaining the high head-board; then in the early Jacobean period the high head-board gave way to a lower one with curtains at the back and with smaller posts; later the solid wood top was superseded by a frame designed merely to hold a canopy of various kinds of cloth.

The bedsteads in use in England at the time this country was settled were made of oak, often elaborately carved in designs such as are found on the oak furniture here. They were large and cumbersome, and therefore difficult of transportation, and, except in the South, whither English life had been transported bodily, we doubt very much whether in the first fifty years very many found their way to this country. Some, however, must have found their way to New England, for Miss Helen E. Smith, in "Colonial Days and Ways," gives a portion of a letter sent to a correspondent in England, in 1647, by Mrs. Margaret Lake, a sister-in-law of Governor Winthrop, in which she asks to have sent her, among other things, "a bedsteede of carven oake (ye one in which I sleept in my fathers house) with ye valances and curtayns and tapistry coverlid belongyngs."

During the last three-quarters of the seventeenth century the fashion in England was to have plain, slender bed-posts, which were covered with fabric so that no wood showed. The oak bedsteads continued to be used until as late as 1700.

Figure 798 shows the famous Countess of Devon's bedstead which is preserved at the South Kensington Museum. This illustration is given, not because we believe such beautiful bedsteads were in use in this country, but because it is a splendid example of the general type of carved oak bedsteads which must have been here, such as was mentioned by Mrs. Lake, and also because it combines to an unusual degree the patterns of carving found on many of the chests and other carved oak pieces in this country, thus tending to prove the statement heretofore made that practically all of the early carving on oak furniture in this country was taken from English models. Many of the designs shown on this bedstead are to be seen on the chests and cupboards found in this country. The carving is, however, of a much higher order, and the grotesque figures seen on the bedstead we have never found on American pieces. This bedstead, with its heavy oak tester and head-board, also illustrates the development of the bedstead from an enclosed chamber. It dates in the last years of the sixteenth century.

This bedstead represents very well the carved oak bedsteads of the better class in use in England during the early seventeenth century, and there is no reason to doubt that some of the bedsteads inventoried at high figures in the colonial records were much like this one, though far less elaborate. Thus, at Yorktown, Virginia, in the estate of a Dr. McKenzie, who died in 1755, are mentioned "I oak Marlbrough bedstead £8," and another of the same sort valued at £6, both of which are far above the usual valuation.

In New England records we find, from the first, in nearly every inventory, mention of feather beds, valued at from £2 to £3, a very high valuation, often equal to that of all the rest of the furniture put together. The probable reason is that all the early feather beds were brought here by the settlers, for it could be hardly possible that such a quantity of feathers as these beds would require could have been taken so early from domestic chickens and geese. At Plymouth, in 16331 is mentioned "1 flock bed and old bolster £1 3s" - flock beds being made of chopped rags; at Salem, in 1647, "a straw bed," and in 1673, "a canvas bed filled with cattails" and "a silk grass bed"; in 1654, "a hair bed"; and at New York, in 1676, "a chaff bed"; all of which items are repeatedly met with throughout the inventories both North and South, showing that almost any soft substance was utilised for the beds when feathers were not obtainable. In many instances these beds were probably placed on the floor, for in many inventories they are mentioned without any bedsteads whatever.

Figure 798. Oak Bedstead, late sixteenth century.