Sir S. Meyrick informs us that the great hall of Borthwick Castle, in Scotland, dating from Henry III., 1216-1272, has (1836) on its vaulted ceiling the remains of painting such as occur in old illuminations; and there can yet be traced the representation of a castle with its battlements, towers, and pinnacles, and the legend 'Ye Temple of Honor.'

Unless the wainscoting of this period was as good as that of later times in the matter of joinery, it is probable that the introduction of tapestry was conducive to greater comfort, and also, perhaps, to economy. We have seen from the Close Roll extracts how this, that, and the other castle required money to be spent on its repainting. Now tapestries were portable, and, packed with other coverings into oak chests, could be taken from castle to castle as required. Tapestry from the commencement of the twelfth century was, according to M. Eugene Muntz's La Tapisserie, well known in Western Europe. Other authorities date its general use a century later. In the first half of the fourteenth century it was being made at Arras, the town which gives its name to the manufacture. In 1447 the Duke of Exeter bequeaths to his son, Sir Henry Holland, all the stuff of his wardrobe and his arras, so that it probably was generally used in England in the early part of the fifteenth century. Some old castles in France have still the hooks on their walls from which the arras was hung, and at Winchester Cathedral they are yet to be seen.

There it was used to decorate the nave upon high days and holidays.

We have now - in default of existing specimens of the actual furniture placed in rooms - acquired at least certain definite information as to their general decoration. We may conclude that in the houses of the rich, from the thirteenth century onwards, there need have been no deficiency of colour from wall-paintings, coloured windows, and later from tapestry hangings.1 In another work I have had occasion to express a regret that the royal palaces are not such universal museums of furniture as a collector might wish. This, of course, is due to changes of fashion and the habit of relegating to the lumber-room everything that showed signs of wear. Other reasons might be adduced to account in part for the disappearance of the older types, so that royal residences such as those of Windsor and Buckingham Palace are now mainly filled with French furniture of the eighteenth century. It would appear, from a list of the so-called 'Jocular Tenures' in Mr. W. J. Loftie's Coronation Book of Edward VII., quoted from Sandford's Coronation of James II., that the Lord Great Chamberlain claimed to carry the king's shirt and clothes to the king on the morning of his coronation, and with the help of the Chamberlain of the Household to dress his Majesty. For this service he claimed the bed, bedding, and furniture of the king's chamber, with forty yards of crimson velvet and other perquisites.

The Court of Claims disallowed the furniture and other things claimed, but conceded the velvet and compromised for the rest for £ 200. I am indebted to Mr. Albert Hartshorne, F.S.A., for the information that a Chippendale cabinet belonging to a member of his family is said to have come from the bedchamber of George 11. on his death in 1760, into the possession of a Lord of the Bedchamber, William Ferdinand Carey, eighth Baron Hunsdon. It found its way to St. Osyth's Priory, Essex, whence it was sold about 1844. At the same date the Rev. J. Marsden, for long vicar of Spalding, bought a table which also came from the king's bedchamber, having been, it is said, claimed by the Lord of the Bedchamber as his right. In such ways may much of the more ancient furniture from the royal palaces have been scattered.

1 See Appendix 1.

As the existing specimens of English Gothic furniture are mostly of ecclesiastical type, it will only be necessary to refer to a few of them in a work which is chiefly devoted to secular examples of furniture. Types of Gothic chests will be described in greater detail to show the advance made by the joiner when he bethought himself of light panelling.