It is probable that Louis XIV. possessed a large quantity of this silver furniture, which was melted down to meet the exigencies of a treasury depleted by his wars. The inlaid furniture of Boulle was perhaps its successor, but as late as 1691 de Launay, silversmith to the king, was turning out silver furniture. French influence must therefore be regarded as predominating in furniture of this material. The preponderance of Holland has yet to come. France was at the acme of her power in 1685.1 Lord Macaulay remarks that with the Stuart kings England fell in the scale of nations. It is noticeable that before that period was over she began to get rid of her national style of furniture, if so it may be called. With the most debased of that royal line the process was carried furthest, and the change would have been more sweeping still if the impoverished Royalists of the Restoration had had much money to spend on furniture. But while money was poured out like water at Whitehall to the king's favourites, the rents of land in the country had fallen five shillings in the pound. In the great country houses, however, the court fashions were observed.

Evelyn, April 17, 1673, says : ' The Countess of Arlington carried us up into her new dressing-roome at Goring House, where was a bed, two glasses, silver jars and vases, cabinets, and other so riche furniture as I had seldom seene; to this excesse of superfluity were we now arrived, and that not onely at Court, but almost universally, even to wantonesse and profusion.' At Penshurst and Hardwick chairs in the grand French style of this period are to be found. A carved and upholstered chair at Hardwick Hall has legs of the terminal shape, with gadroons upon the upper part. The lower part of the leg is fluted. The stretcher consists of two C-curves, each one joining a back leg to a front. The two touch on their convex sides, thus forming an X, and support a finial under the centre of the seat. At Penshurst is a suite comprising couch and chairs upholstered in velvet, and gilt. The legs are not terminal-shaped but have a rectangular section, with flutes and gadroons, and the massive kind of stretcher which I have before described. There is a complete absence of the turned work of the spiral-legged Stuart chair. It is of course impossible without documentary evidence to prove that such a suite as this was made in this country. There is no decisive reason why it must have been imported.

It is at any rate necessary to recognise that such a style was in use at the period of French ascendancy over England. When our country freed itself from foreign influence and fifty years later achieved a style of its own, the adherence of Chippendale and his contemporaries to French designs was still marked enough.

1 The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in this year, very probably brought over silversmiths amongst the Huguenot refugees.