But to consider some of the furniture of this period in detail.  Until the sixteenth century was well advanced, the word “table” in our language meant an index, or pocket book (tablets), or a list, not an article of furniture; it was, as we have noticed in the time of Elizabeth, composed of boards generally hinged in the middle for convenience of storage, and supported on trestles which were sometimes ornamented by carved work.  The word trestle, by the way, is derived from the “threstule,” i.e., three-footed supports, and these three-legged stools and benches formed in those days the seats for everyone except the master of the house.  Chairs were, as we have seen, scarce articles; sometimes there was only one, a throne-like seat for an honoured guest or for the master or mistress of the house, and doubtless our present phrase of “taking the chair” is a survival of the high place a chair then held amongst the household gods of a gentleman’s mansion.  Shakespeare possibly had the boards and trestles in his mind when, about 1596, he wrote in “Romeo and Juliet”—­

                        “Come, musicians, play! 
    A hall! a hall! give room and foot it, girls,
    More light, ye knaves, and turn the tables up.”

And as the scene in “King Henry the Fourth” is placed some years earlier than that of “Romeo and Juliet,” it is probable that “table” had then its earlier meaning, for the Archbishop of York says:—­

“...  The King is weary Of dainty and such picking grievances; And, therefore, will he wipe his tables clean And keep no tell-tale to his memory.”

Mr. Maskell, in his handbook on “Ivories,” tells us that the word “table” was also used in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to denote the religious carvings and paintings in churches; and he quotes Chaucer to show that the word was used to describe the game of “draughts.”

    “They dancen and they play at chess and tables.”

Now, however, at the time of which we are writing, chairs were becoming more plentiful and the table was a definite article of furniture.  In inventories of the time and for some twenty years previous, as has been already noticed in the preceding chapter, we find mention of “joyned table,” framed table, “standing” and “dormant” table, and the word “board” had gradually disappeared, although it remains to us as a souvenir of the past in the name we still give to any body of men meeting for the transaction of business, or in its more social meaning, expressing festivity.  The width of these earlier tables had been about 30 inches, and guests sat on one side only, with their backs to the wall, in order, it may be supposed, to be the more ready to resist any sudden raid, which might be made on the house, during the relaxation of the supper hour, and this custom remained long after there was any necessity for its observance.