_His table dormant in his halle alway_ _Stood redy covered al the longe day._
Yet, during the whole of this period, it continued to be the common practice to make the table for a meal, by merely laying a board upon trestles. The second cut on the preceding page (No. 97) is a very curious representation of such a table, from a manuscript of the thirteenth century, preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (MS. Arch. A. 154). It must be understood that the objects which are ranged alternately with the drinking-vessels are loaves of bread, not plates.
[Illustration: _No. 96. A Bench on Trestles._]
[Illustration: _No. 97. A Table on Trestles._]
THE OLD ENGLISH HALL.--THE KITCHEN, AND ITS CIRCUMSTANCES.--THE DINNER-TABLE.--MINSTRELSY.
As I have already stated, the hall continued to be the most important part of the house; and in large mansions it was made of proportional dimensions. It was a general place of rendezvous for the household, especially for the retainers and followers, and in the evening it seems usually to have been left entirely to them, and they made their beds and passed the night in it. Strangers or visitors were brought into the hall. In the curious old poem edited by Mr. Halliwell, entitled “The Boke of Curtasye,” we find especial directions on this subject. When a gentleman or yeoman came to the house of another, he was directed to leave his weapons with the porter at the outward gate or wicket, before he entered. It appears to have been the etiquette that if the person thus presenting himself were of higher rank than the person he visited, the latter should go out to receive him at the gate; if the contrary, the visitor was admitted through the gate, and proceeded to the hall.
_Whanne thou comes to a lordis gate,_ _The porter thou shalle fynde therate;_ _Take_ (give) _hym thow shalt thy wepyn tho_ (then), _And aske hym leve in to go._ * * * * * ... _yf he be of logh_ (low) _degré,_ _Than hym falles to come to the_.
At the hall door the visitor was to take off his hood and gloves--
_When thow come tho halle dor to,_ _Do of thy hode, thy gloves also._
If, when he entered the hall, the visitor found the family at meat, he stood at the bottom of the apartment in a respectful attitude, till the lord of the house sent a servant to lead him to a place where he was to sit at table. As you descended lower in society, such ceremonies were less observed; and the clergy in general seem to have been allowed a much greater licence than the laity. In the Sompneres Tale, in Chaucer, when the friar, who has received an insult from an inferior inhabitant, goes “to the court” to complain to the lord of the village, he finds the latter in his hall at the dinner table--