In Harrison’s time the greater part of the building in cities and towns was of timber, only a few of the houses of the commonalty being of stone.  In an old plate giving a view of the north side of Cheapside, London, in 1638, we see little but quaint gable ends and rows of small windows set close together.  The houses are of wood and plaster, each story overhanging the other, terminating in sharp pediments; the roofs projecting on cantilevers, and the windows occupying the whole front of each of the lower stories.  They presented a lively and gay appearance on holidays, when the pentices of the shop fronts were hung with colored draperies, and the balconies were crowded with spectators, and every pane of glass showed a face.  In the open country, where timber was scarce, the houses were, between studs, impaneled with clay-red, white, or blue.  One of the Spaniards who came over in the suite of Philip remarked the large diet in these homely cottages:  “These English,” quoth he, “have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king.”  “Whereby it appeareth,” comments Harrison, “that he liked better of our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of their own thin diet in their prince-like habitations and palaces.”  The timber houses were covered with tiles; the other sort with straw or reeds.  The fairest houses were ceiled within with mortar and covered with plaster, the whiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison’s admiration.  The walls were hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted cloth, whereon were divers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled with oak.  Stoves had just begun to be used, and only in some houses of the gentry, “who build them not to work and feed in, as in Germany and elsewhere, but now and then to sweat in, as occasion and need shall require.”  Glass in windows, which was then good and cheap, and made even in England, had generally taken the place of the lattices and of the horn, and of the beryl which noblemen formerly used in windows.  Gentlemen were beginning to build their houses of brick and stone, in stately and magnificent fashion.  The furniture of the houses had also grown in a manner “passing delicacy,” and not of the nobility and gentry only, but of the lowest sort.  In noblemen’s houses there was abundance of arras, rich hangings of tapestry, and silver vessels, plate often to the value of one thousand and two thousand pounds.  The knights, gentlemen, and merchants had great provision of tapestry, Turkie work, pewter, brass, fine linen, and cupboards of plate worth perhaps a thousand pounds.  Even the inferior artificers and many farmers had learned also to garnish their cupboards with plate, their joined beds with silk hangings, and their tables with fine linen—­evidences of wealth for which Harrison thanks God and reproaches no man, though he cannot see how it is brought about, when all things are grown to such excessive prices.