338 ILLUSTRATIONS Ob' DOMESTIC CUSTOMS

sorts," was dispensed upon the ornamental trenchers above described. It is not easy to fix the period at which their use commenced: in the "Doucean Museum" at Goodrich Court, there is a set of roundels, closely resembling those in the pos- session of Mr. Clarke Jervoise, which, as Sir Samuel Meyrick states in the Catalogue of that curious collection, appear, by the badge of the rose and pomegranate conjoined, to be of the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. '^ Possibly they may have been introduced with many foreign " conceits" and luxuries from Prance and Germany, during that reign. In the times of Plizabeth mention first occurs of fruit-dishes of any ornamental ware, the service of the table having previously been performed with dishes, platters, and saucers of pewter, and " treen" or wooden trenchers; or, in more stately esta- bhshments, with silver plate. Shakspeare makes mention of " China dishes^" but it is more probable that they were of the ornamental ware fabricated in Italy, and properly termed Maiolica, than of oriental porcelain. The first mention of " porselyn" in Pngland occurs in 1587-8, when its rarity was so great, that a porringer and a cup of that costly ware were selected as new year's gifts presented to the queen by Burghley and CeciP. Shortly after, mention is made by several writers of " earthen vessell painted ; costly fruit-dishes of fine earth painted ; fine dishes of earth painted, such as are brought from Venice"." Those elegant Italian wares, which in Prance appear to have superseded the more homely appliances of the festive table, about the middle of the sixteenth century, were doubt- less adopted at the tables of the higher classes in our own country, towards its close. The wooden fruit-trencher was not, however, wholly disused during the seventeenth century, and amongst sets of roundels which may be assigned to the reign of James I. or Charles I., those in the possession of Mr. Hailstone may be mentioned, exhibited in the museum formed during the meeting of the Institute at York. They were purchased in a broker's shop at Bradford, Yorkshire ; in dimensions they resendjle the trenchers of the reign of Elizabeth, already described; but their decoration is of a more ordinary character. On each tablet is pasted a line en- graving, of coarse execution, and gaudily coloured, represent- '1 Ocnt. Mag., VL N. S. 4f)2. ^ Niehol's Progresses, ii. 528. ° Measure for Measure Aet ii. sc. 1. ^ Minslieii, Florio, Howell, &e.