Another Museum specimen of Elizabethan carved oak is a fourpost bedstead, with the arms of the Countess of Devon, which bears date 1593, and has all the characteristics of the time.

There is also a good example of Elizabethan woodwork in part of the interior of the Charterhouse, immortalised by Thackeray, when, as “Greyfriars,” in “The Newcomes,” he described it as the old school “where the colonel, and Clive, and I were brought up,” and it was here that, as a “poor brother,” the old colonel had returned to spend the evening of his gentle life, and, to quote Thackeray’s pathetic lines, “when the chapel bell began to toll, he lifted up his head a little, and said ‘Adsum!’ It was the word we used at school when names were called.”

This famous relic of old London, which fortunately escaped the great fire in 1666, was formerly an old monastery which Henry VIII. dissolved in 1537, and the house was given some few years later to Sir Edward, afterwards Lord North, from whom the Duke of Norfolk purchased it in 1565, and the handsome staircase, carved with terminal figures and Renaissance ornament, was probably built either by Lord North or his successor.  The woodwork of the Great Hall, where the pensioners still dine every day, is very rich, the fluted columns with Corinthian capitals, the interlaced strap work, and other details of carved oak, are characteristic of the best sixteenth century woodwork in England; the shield bears the date of 1571.  This was the year when the Duke of Norfolk, who was afterwards beheaded, was released from the Tower on a kind of furlough, and probably amused himself with the enrichment of his mansion, then called Howard House.  In the old Governors’ room, formerly the drawing room of the Howards, there is a specimen of the large wooden chimney piece of the end of the sixteenth century, painted instead of carved.  After the Duke of Norfolk’s death, the house was granted by the Crown to his son, the Earl of Suffolk, who sold it in 1611 to the founder of the present hospital, Sir Thomas Sutton, a citizen who was reputed to be one of the wealthiest of his time, and some of the furniture given by him will be found noticed in the chapter on the Jacobean period.

[Illustration:  Dining Hall in the Charterhouse.  Shewing Oak Screen and front of Minstrels’ Gallery, dated 1571.  Period:  Elizabethan.]

[Illustration:  Screen in the Hall of Gray’s Inn.  With Table and Desks referred to.]

There are in London other excellent examples of Elizabethan oak carving.  Amongst those easily accessible and valuable for reference are the Hall of Gray’s Inn, built in 1560, the second year of the Queen’s reign, and Middle Temple Hall, built in 1570-2.  An illustration of the carved screen supporting the Minstrels’ Gallery in the older Hall is given by permission of Mr. William R. Douthwaite, librarian of the “Inn,” for whose work, “Gray’s Inn, its History and Associations,” it was specially