The residence of Charles II. abroad, had accustomed him and his friends to the much more luxurious furniture of France and Holland.  With the Restoration came a foreign Queen, a foreign Court, French manners, and French literature.  Cabinets, chairs, tables, and couches, were imported into England from the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Portugal; and our craftsmen profited by new ideas and new patterns, and what was of equal consequence, an increased demand for decorative articles of furniture.  The King of Portugal had ceded Bombay, one of the Portuguese Indian stations, to the new Queen, and there is a chair of this Indo-Portuguese work, carved in ebony, now in the museum at Oxford, which was given by Charles II. either to Elias Ashmole or to Evelyn:  the illustration on the next page shews all the details of the carving.  Another woodcut, on a smaller scale, represents a similar chair grouped with a settee of a like design, together with a small folding chair which Mr. G.T.  Robinson, in his article on “Seats,” has described as Italian, but which we take the liberty of pronouncing Flemish, judging by one now in the South Kensington Museum.

In connection with this Indo-Portuguese furniture, it would seem that spiral turning became known and fashionable in England during the reign of Charles II., and in some chairs of English make, which have come under the writer’s notice, the legs have been carved to imitate the effect of spiral turning—­an amount of superfluous labour which would scarcely have been incurred, but for the fact that the country house-carpenter of this time had an imported model, which he copied, without knowing how to produce by the lathe the effect which had just come into fashion.  There are, too, in some illustrations in “Shaw’s Ancient Furniture,” some lamp-holders, in which this spiral turning is overdone, as is generally the case when any particular kind of ornament comes into vogue.

[Illustration:  Settee And Chair.  In carved ebony, part of Indo-Portuguese suite at Penshurst Place, with Flemish folding chair.  Period:  Charles II.]

[Illustration:  Carved Ebony Chair of Indo-portuguese Work, Given by Charles II. to Elias Ashmole, Esq. (In the Museum at Oxford).]

Probably the illustrated suite of furniture at Penshurst Place, which comprises thirteen pieces, was imported about this time; two of the smaller chairs appear to have their original cushions, the others have been lately re-covered by Lord de l’Isle and Dudley.  The spindles of the backs of two of the chairs are of ivory:  the carving, which is in solid ebony, is much finer on some than on others.

We gather a good deal of information about the furniture of this period from the famous diary of Evelyn.  He thus describes Hampton Court Palace, as it appeared to him at the time of its preparation for the reception of Catherine of Braganza, the bride of Charles II., who spent the royal honeymoon in this historic building, which had in its time sheltered for their brief spans of favour the six wives of Henry VIII. and the sickly boyhood of Edward VI.:—­