Chairs previous to the seventeenth century were used almost exclusively by persons of high dignity in Church and State and by the heads of families. People of less importance sat on stools or benches. The more important chairs were in the nature of thrones or chairs of state, raised on steps with arms, high backs, canopies and enrichments. The domestic chair used by heads of families embodied these principles. The seats were raised so as to render a footstool or stretcher necessary; they had arms and the high back was carved and inlaid. In the seventeenth century the well-known oak wainscot or panel-back chair was the type in vogue and persisted until the lighter French forms made their appearance in Carolean and Restoration times. Meanwhile, especially during the Commonwealth, side chairs, or chairs without arms, had been introduced into the farmhouses and the homes of the middle classes, and their convenience made them formidable rivals to the high-back chair, so much so that it may be said that, in the time of Queen Anne, they had superseded them. The high-back chair, however, remained and will ever remain in the form of easy chairs and in places where dignity of appearance is a consideration.