In the accompanying cut (No. 190), from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E. iv.), Joseph is represented counting out the money from his _huche_, to buy up the corn of Egypt, during the years of plenty.
[Illustration: _No. 191. Sitting on the Huche._]
The chests were kept in the chambers, as being the most retired and secure part of the house, and, from the terms in which the breaking open of the chambers is spoken of in the foregoing extracts, we are led to suppose that the chambers themselves were usually locked. The ordinary place for the chests or hutches, or, at least, of the principal chest, was by the side, or more usually at the foot, of the bed. We have just seen that this was the place in which Constant Duhamel kept his _huche_. Under these circumstances it was very commonly used for a seat, and is often introduced as such, both in the literature of the middle ages, and in the illuminations of the manuscripts. In the romance of “Garin” (tom. i. p. 214), the king’s messenger finds the count of Flanders, Fromont, in a tent, according to one manuscript, seated on a coffer (_sor un coffre où se sist_). So, also, in the “Roman de la Violette,” p. 25, the heroine and her treacherous guest are represented as seated upon “a coffer banded with copper” (_sor j. coffre bendé de coivre_). Our cut No. 191, taken from one of the engravings in the great work of Willemin, represents a scribe thus seated on a coffer or _huche_, and engaged apparently in writing a letter. Our next cut (No. 192), taken from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 15 E. vi.), represents a lady and gentleman, seated on apparently a coffer, the former of whom is presenting a ring to the other.
This latter object, the ring, acts also a very frequent and very important part in the social history of the middle ages. A ring was often given as a token of affection between lovers, as may perhaps be intended by the subject of our last cut, or between relatives or friends. In the romance of “Widukind,” tom. ii. p. 20, the queen gives her ring to her lover in a secret interview in her tent. So, in the romance of “Horn,” the lady Rigmel gave her lover, Horn, a ring as a token. It was often, moreover, given not merely as a token of remembrance, but as a means of recognition. In the well-known early English romance of “Sir Tristram,” the mother of the hero, dying in childbirth of him after his father had been slain, gives a ring to the knight to whose care she entrusted the infant, as a token by which his parentage should be known when he grew up:--