he knife was the
chief implement used until comparatively recent days, for forks are
quite a modern innovation. The spoon, it is true, goes back to hoary
antiquity, but in England, even in the Middle Ages, spoons were used
chiefly for ecclesiastical purposes. In Harrison's _Elizabethan England_
we read that the times had changed, for instead of "treen platters"
there were pewter plates, and tin or silver spoons instead of wood.

Cutlery: Knives, Forks, and Spoons.

The term "cutlery," derived from _coutellerie_, the French for cutlery,
had been evolved from _culter_, the Latin for knife. Primarily it
referred to cutting instruments, and especially to knives, but in a
general way, when speaking of table cutlery, spoons and forks may
appropriately be included. Early records referring to cutlery
indiscriminately use the terms knives and swords; indeed, the arms
granted to the London Cutlers' Company in the sixteenth year of the
reign of Edward IV are two swords, crossed; later a crest, consisting
of an elephant bearing a castle, was added. Homer tells us of knives
carried at the girdle in his day, and describes them as of triangular
form. The Anglo-Saxons and the Normans carried about with them met-soex
or eating knives, but it was not until the end of the fifteenth century
that knives were used at table, other than those which were carried at
the girdle, every man using his own cutlery. In England, Sheffield was
early noted for the manufacture of knives, for Chaucer tells us, "A
Scheffeld thwitel bare he in his hose." Another form of spelling the
word which denoted knife was _troytel_, and from these terms is derived
"whittle." The jack knife came in in the days of James I, after whom it
was named, the original term being Jacques-te-leg, these knives shutting
into a groove or handle without spring or lock.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--HANDSOMELY DECORATED KNIFE CASE AND CONTENTS.

(_In the Victoria and Albert Museum._)]

The making of a table knife even in early times necessitated the work of
many hands, for taking part in its production were the smiths who forged
it, the bladers who made the blade out of the metal already hammered,
and the haft-makers. When the knife was complete it was handed to the
sheath-makers, who fashioned the sheath of leather, and sometimes
encased it in metal. The host did not provide table cutlery for his
guests until the reign of Elizabeth. In earlier times it was left to the
traveller to