at cupboard, court cupboard, livery cupboard, side cupboard, hanging
cupboard, sideboard cupboard, and cupboard with drawers. To this list
might be added corner cupboard. The word court cupboard is found from
the years 1647 to 1704. It was a high piece of furniture with an
enclosed closet or drawers, originally intended to display plate, and
was the highest-priced cupboard found. Upon it were set, in New England,
both glass and plate. The livery cupboard, similar in its uses, seldom
had an enclosed portion. "Turn pillar cuberds," painted and carved
cupboards, were found. The item of cupboard in any inventory was usually
accompanied by that of a cupboard cloth. This latter seemed to be the
most elegant and luxurious article in the whole house. Cupboard cloths
of holland, "laced," "pantado," "cambrick," "kalliko," "green wrought
with silk fringe"--all are named. Cushions also, "to set upon a cubberds
head," are frequently named. They were made of damask, needlework,
velvet or cloth. A corner cupboard was apparently a small affair; a
japanned one is named. What we now call a corner cupboard was then known
as a beaufet.

The hall was naturally on one side of the entry and opening into it. On
the other side, in large houses, was the parlor; this room was sometimes
used as a dining-room, sometimes as a state bedroom. It frequently held,
in addition to furniture like that of the hall, a chest or chests of
drawers to hold the family linen, and also that family idol--the best
bed.

Of the exact shape and height of the bedsteads used by the early
colonists, I find no accurate nor very suggestive descriptions. The
terms used in wills, inventories, and letters seem too vague and curt to
give us a correct picture. What was the "half-headed bedstead" left with
"Curtaince & Valance of Dornix" by will by Simon Eire in Boston in 1658?
Or, to give a fuller description of a similar one in the sale of
furniture of the King's Arms in Boston, in 1651, "one half-headed
Bedsted with Blew Pillars." I fancy they were bedsteads with moderately
high headboards. It is easy enough to obtain full items of the bed
itself and the bed-furniture, its coverings and hangings. We read of
"ffether beds," "flocke beds," "downe bedds," "wool beds," and even
"charf beds," the latter worth but three shillings apiece, all of
importance enough to be named in wills and left with as much dignity of
bequest as Shakespeare's famous "second-best bed." Even so influent