entry may or may not warrant
a conclusion that the family bought that quantity at a time--not a
very excessive store, considering the untidy habits of eating and the
difficulty of making new purchases at short notice.

Another mark of refinement is the resort to the _napron_, corruptly
_apron_, to protect the dress during the performance of kitchen work.
But the fifteenth century was evidently growing wealthier in its
articles of use and luxury; the garden and the kitchen only kept pace
with the bed-chamber and the dining-hall, the dairy and the laundry,
the stable and the out-buildings. An extensive nomenclature was
steadily growing up, and the Latin, old French, and Saxon terms were
giving way on all sides to the English. It has been now for some time
an allowed and understood thing that in these domestic backgrounds the
growth of our country and the minuter traits of private life are to be
studied with most clear and usurious profit.

The trencher, at first of bread, then of wood, after a while of
pewter, and eventually of pottery, porcelain or china-earth, as it was
called, and the precious metals, afforded abundant scope for the fancy
of the artist, even in the remote days when the material for it came
from the timber-dealer, and sets of twelve were sometimes decorated
on the face with subjects taken from real life, and on the back with
emblems of the purpose to which they were destined.

Puttenham, whose "Art of English Poetry" lay in MS. some years before
it was published in 1589, speaks of the posies on trenchers and
banqueting dishes. The author of "Our English Home" alludes to a very
curious set, painted in subjects and belonging to the reign of James
I., which was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries' rooms by
Colonel Sykes.

It is to be augured that, with the progress of refinement, the meats
were served upon the table on dishes instead of trenchers, and that
the latter were reserved for use by the guests of the family. For
in the "Serving-man's Comfort," 1598, one reads:--"Even so the
gentlemanly serving-man, whose life and manners doth equal his birth
and bringing up, scorneth the society of these sots, or to place
a dish where they give a trencher"; and speaking of the passion of
people for raising themselves above their extraction, the writer, a
little farther on, observes: "For the yeoman's son, as I said before,
leaving _gee haigh!_ for, _Butler, some more fair trenchers to the
table!_ bringeth