Describing a bed belonging to Dr. Robertson at Buxton, a writer in the Building News, January 20, 1882, remarks: 'A second frieze has been added to increase the height, and the bases of the footposts have been lengthened for the same reason. This is often the case with old beds made to suit Tudor manor-houses with low rooms. A careful examination of the foot or side-posts of an old bedstead will generally show the height to which it has been raised.' A small shelf was sometimes set at the head of the bed. Many old beds have their panels scorched by the candle placed on it. Chaucer in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales writes: -

'For him was lever have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed.'

Sometimes a cupboard in the bed-head held a shrine.

1 For details of bedding before 1577 see Harrison's Description of England, 'On the Manner of Building and Furniture of our Houses.'

Of Elizabethan beds there are two examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The most grandiose (Plate xviii.) is that which was made for one of the Courtenay family, whose arms are placed upon the frieze of the tester or canopy over the bed-foot. This bed is a mixture of the characteristic and the unusual. Above the tester projects the ostrich feather crest of the family, and flanking it at the corners are huge grotesque heads. On the three open under-sides of the tester are rows of pendants set at regular intervals. The bed-foot rises in a variously curved pyramidal shape, and the pillars which support the tester rest upon four S-curved carved brackets. All these points mark this example as being peculiar. On the other hand, in the detail of the carving it has very much which is highly characteristic of its date of 1593. This bed is as useful as can be for familiarising us with those patterns which, in the chapter on the Renaissance house, I have mentioned as occurring, some of them, outside and in. In the first place, the upper part of the bed-head displays the planted arch as it appears on 'The Feathers' at Ludlow and other places mentioned.

Plate XVIII. Bedstead, Oak Dated 1593

XVIII. Bedstead, oak. Dated 1593. The ' Courtenay bedstead.' V. & A. M.

Dimensions : Height 103½, Length 94, Breadth 68 inches.

Below there is a range of panels, and then comes a border of continuous semi-circles, repeated also, the other way up, on a border of the bed-foot, between the great supporting pedestals of the pillars. This semi-circle or fan pattern, as I have described it in the chapter on the Renaissance house, appears either singly or in continuity over and over again on cabinets, chests, chairs, or tables. Quite as common are the S-curves which run below the before-mentioned border on the bed-foot, or are joined and opposed in pairs on the large panels of the pedestals. The lowest set of panels on the bedhead are ornamented with large diamonds - a particularly favourite shape for panelling of bed-testers and fronts of chests. Finally, the stiles which separate these diamond-carved panels have the upright leaf, with many branches or serrations, which is also extremely general.