Pillows were thought meet only for sick
women. As for servants, they were lucky if they had a sheet over them,
for there was nothing under them to keep the straw from pricking their
hardened hides. The third notable thing was the exchange of treene
(wooden) platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin.
Wooden stuff was plenty, but a good farmer would not have above four
pieces of pewter in his house; with all his frugality, he was unable to
pay his rent of four pounds without selling a cow or horse. It was a time
of idleness, and if a farmer at an alehouse, in a bravery to show what he
had, slapped down his purse with six shillings in it, all the rest
together could not match it. But now, says Harrison, though the rent of
four pounds has improved to forty, the farmer has six or seven years'
rent, lying by him, to purchase a new term, garnish his cupboard with
pewter, buy three or four feather-beds, coverlets, carpets of tapestry, a
silver salt, a nest of bowls for wine, and a dozen spoons. All these
things speak of the growing wealth and luxury of the age. Only a little
before this date, in 1568, Lord Buckhurst, who had been ordered to
entertain the Cardinal de Chatillon in Queen Elizabeth's palace at Sheen,
complains of the meanness of the furniture of his rooms. He showed the
officers who preceded the cardinal such furniture and stuff as he had,
but it did not please them. They wanted plate, he had none; such glass
vessels as he had they thought too base.
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