[Illustration:  Arm Chairs.

Chair upholstered in Spitalfields silk.  Hampton Court Palace.

Carved and upholstered Chair.  Hardwick Hall.

Chair upholstered in Spitalfields silk.  Knole, Sevenoaks.

Period:  William III.  To Queen Anne.]

There is still preserved in a lumber room one of the old benches of seventeenth century work—­now replaced in the hall by modern folding chairs.  This is of oak, with turned skittle-shaped legs slanting outwards, and connected and strengthened by plain stretchers.  The old tables are still in their places.

[Illustration:  Carved Oak Screen.  In the Hall of the Stationers’ Company, erected in 1674:  the Royal Coat of Arms has been since added.]

Another example of seventeenth century oak panelling is the handsome chapel of the Mercers’ Hall—­the only city Company possessing their own chapel—­but only the lining of the walls and the reredos are of the original work, the remainder having been added some ten or twelve years ago, when some of the original carving was made use of in the new work.  Indeed, in this magnificent hall, about the most spacious of the old City Corporation Palaces, there is a great deal of new work mixed with old—­new chimney-pieces and old overmantels—­some of Grinling Gibbons’ carved enrichments, so painted and varnished as to have lost much of their character; these have been applied to the oak panels in the large dining hall.

The woodwork lining of living rooms had been undergoing changes since the commencement of the period of which we are now writing.  In 1638 a man named Christopher had taken out a patent for enamelling and gilding leather, which was used as a wall decoration over the oak panelling.  This decorated leather hitherto had been imported from Holland and Spain; when this was not used, and tapestry, which was very expensive, was not obtainable, the plaster was roughly ornamented.  Somewhat later than this, pictures were let into the wainscot to form part of the decoration, for in 1669 Evelyn, when writing of the house of the “Earle of Norwich,” in Epping Forest, says, “A good many pictures put into the wainstcot which Mr. Baker, his lordship’s predecessor, brought from Spaine.”  Indeed, subsequently the wainscot became simply the frame for pictures, and we have the same writer deploring the disuse of timber, and expressing his opinion that a sumptuary law ought to be passed to restore the “ancient use of timber.”  Although no law was enacted on the subject, yet, some twenty years later, the whirligig of fashion brought about the revival of the custom of lining rooms with oak panelling.