enerally began
to be numerous, and the houses were often built around a court, the
additions being chiefly to the number of offices and chambers. Wood
continued to be the usual material for their construction. A new
apartment was added to the house--the parlor, so called because it was
the talking room. It was derived from the religious houses, in which
the parlor was the reception room. As furniture was scanty, the rooms
of the mediaeval house were almost bare. Chairs were very few, and
seats in the masonry of the wall continued for centuries to be the
principal accommodation of the kind; benches for seats and places of
deposit of personal or household articles were usually made of a few
boards laid across trestles. In the thirteenth century, the beds in
the chamber came to be partitioned off by curtains, which showed an
advance in modesty, as it was customary to sleep wholly undressed.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the comforts of the houses were quite
primitive; even the houses themselves were generally without
architectural grace and frequently very unsubstantial. When watchmen
were appointed in the towns, they were provided with a "hook" with
which to pull down a house when on fire, if its proximity to others
threatened their destruction. As there was an absence of luxury in the
houses and their furnishings, much value was placed on plate, which
came to be a sign of wealth and social distinction. Dress, also,
aided in marking distinctions between the wealthy and those in less
fortunate circumstances, as did the luxuries found upon the tables of
the former.

This fact of the general character of the discomforts of living,
without regard to rank or condition, gave occasion for sumptuary
laws--"the toe of the peasant pressed closely on the heel of the lord,
and the gulf that parted them was the number of dishes upon their
table, the quality of the cloth they put on, and the kind of fur they
might wear to keep off the cold."

Glass began to be introduced into dwelling houses in the time of
Henry III., but was regarded as a great luxury. Pipes for carrying the
refuse water and slops from the houses to sewers or cesspools were one
of the great sanitary reforms of the reign of Edward I. The same able
monarch made the use of baths popular among his people. The floors of
the houses continued to be covered with an armful of hay, or a bundle
of birch boughs or of rushes, although during the fourteenth century
some of the wea