The cushions or “quysshens” for the chairs, of embroidered velvet, were also very important appendages to the otherwise hard oaken and ebony seats, and as the actual date of the will of Alderman Glasseor quoted below is 1589, we may gather from the extract given, something of the character and value of these ornamental accessories which would probably have been in use for some five and twenty or thirty years previously.

“Inventory of the contents of the parler of St. Jone’s, within the cittie of Chester,” of which place Alderman Glasseor was vice-chamberlain:—­

   “A drawinge table of joyned work with a frame,” valued at “xl
   shillings,” equilius Labour L20 your present money.

   Two formes covered with Turkey work to the same belonginge. xiij
   shillings and iiij pence

   A joyned frame xvj_d_.

   A bord ij_s_. vj_d_.

   A little side table upon a frame ij_s_. v_d_.

   A pair of virginalls with the frame xxx_s_.

   Sixe joyned stooles covr’d with nedle werke xv_s_.

   Sixe other joyned stooles vj_s_.

   One cheare of nedle worke iij_s_. iiij_d_.

   Two little fote stooles iiij_d_.

   One longe carpett of Turky werke vil_i_.

   A shortte carpett of the same werke xiij_s_. iij_d_.

   One cupbord carpett of the same x_s_.

   Sixe quysshens of Turkye xij_s_.

   Sixe quysshens of tapestree xx_s_.

   And others of velvet “embroidered wt gold and silver armes in the
   middesle.”

   Eight pictures xls.  Maps, a pedigree of Earl Leicester in “joyned
   frame” and a list of books.

This Alderman Glasseor was apparently a man of taste and culture for those days; he had “casting bottles” of silver for sprinkling perfumes after dinner, and he also had a country house “at the sea,” where his parlour was furnished with “a canapy bedd.”

As the century advances, and we get well into Elizabeth’s reign, wood carving becomes more ambitious, and although it is impossible to distinguish the work of Flemish carvers who had settled in England from that of our native craftsmen, these doubtless acquired from the former much of their skill.  In the costumes and in the faces of figures or busts, produced in the highly ornamental oak chimney pieces of the time, or in the carved portions of the fourpost bedsteads, the national characteristics are preserved, and, with a certain grotesqueness introduced into the treatment of accessories, combine to distinguish the English school of Elizabethan ornament from other contemporary work.

Knole, Longleaf, Burleigh, Hatfield, Hardwick, and Audley End are familiar instances of the change in interior decoration which accompanied that in architecture; terminal figures, that is, pedestals diminishing towards their bases, surmounted by busts of men or women, elaborate interlaced strap work carved in low relief, trophies of fruit and flowers, take the places of the more Gothic treatment formerly in vogue.  The change in the design of furniture naturally followed, for in cases where Flemish or Italian carvers were not employed, the actual execution was often by the hand of the house carpenter, who was influenced by what he saw around him.