CHAPTER 8

Beds

Privacy and Prestige

Tudor and Elizabethan beds were big. Paul Hentzner visited Windsor castle in 1578 where he saw “a chamber in which are the royal beds of Henry VII. and his queene, of Edward VI., and of Anne Bullen (Boleyn), all of them eleven feete square, and covered with quilts shining with gold and silver.” Even these royal beds were dwarfed by the bed made for the Duke of Burgundy for his marriage to Princess Isabella of Portugal in 1430: it was a magnificent 19' long and 12' 6" wide.

The Great Bed of Ware, at 10' 8" square, was also huge, though made in about 1595 when the size of beds was decreasing. Its overlarge size gave it instant fame. Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night in 1601, only half a dozen years after the bed was made, yet he could rely on the audience getting the point when he made Sir Toby Belch refer to “as many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware.”

The maker of the Astley Hall bed (figure 8.1) was like many of his col-leagues in recognizing that furniture of this scale needed to be treated as architec-ture: what he was really making was a private chamber within a public space. The scale of the bed had two effects: its exterior displayed the wealth of the owner. amd its interior provided him and his wife with privacy.

In the Elizabethan period, as today, privacy was one of the most impor-tant purchases the wealthy could make. Throughout the sixteenth century, both bed and dining chambers became increasingly common in the great houses. The bed chamber afforded a welcome personal space that was used for more than sleeping and dressing: inventories show that it was often equipped with furniture designed for writing, needlework, or chess-playing. The bed chamber was also used to receive high status guests and, particularly in the later seven-

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teenth and early eighteenth centu-ries, as a place where the lady of the house could entertain and gossip with personal friends. Whether the Jaco-bethan bed was located in a private chamber or was still in the great hall, its drawn curtains gave the master and his wife more than draft-free warmth: they provided a personal space that nobody else in the household enjoyed. The interior was a place of privacy and privilege.

The exterior of the bed made a comparable statement of power and prestige. It symbolized social power both by the wooden structure of the bed itself and by the textiles it sup-ported. Today, the wood has survived while the fabric has not, so we tend to think that the magnificence of the bed was the product of the joiner and

carver. In the period, however, textiles were more significant than wood.

Hangings and Bedstuff

Many of the silks and damasks that surrounded the bed were imported and thus more notable by far than the woodwork, which was made locally. The inventories of the period invari-ably emphasized the hangings. Chin-nery quotes a typical one:

A bedsteade of cutwirke, A teaster and vallans of black and cremysine velvet and frindged with cremysine silke and golde, Curtains of red and yallowe changeable taffetie, One downe

Figure 8.1: A magnificent Elizabethan bed. It is full of architectural features that literally made it a room within a room. With curtains closed, it provided luxurious privacy, when open it was an object of magnificent display. On a bed such as this, the woodwork would have equaled the hangings in importance. The plain panels indicate the depth of the bedding. Courtesy Astley Hall Museum and Art Gallery.

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bed, a bowlster, ij pillows, and ij wollen blancketts, One red rugge, one quilte of cremysine sarcenet… (1624)

The Victoria and Albert Museum has refurnished the Great Bed of Ware (figure 1.6) with hangings in a very similar color scheme: bright reds and yellows were the height of fashion. Randle Holme’s list of “Things use-full about a Bed and Bed-chamber”

and the inventory of Paget Place are both typical in paying closer attention to the hangings, carpets and needle-work than the furniture (see “Bedding and Bed Chambers” and “Bedding the Great Bed”).

The bedstuffs, or as we would call them today, the bedding, were as excessive as the hangings. Ralph Edwards (1964:30) tells us that the most luxurious medieval beds consisted of “a straw or wool pallet, two feather-beds, sheets (sometimes of silk), blan-

BEDS ROYAL AND HUMBLE

“A bed Royall, the vallance, curtaines (turned about the posts) and counter pane laced and fringed about: with a foote cloth of Turky worke about it: the Tester adorned with plumbes, according to the colours of the bed.”

“…a Bed with blanket of Cadow or Rugg: or covering: the sheets turned down, and boulster…this is a bed prepared for to lodge in, but having no Tester. Such are termed Truckle beds, because they trundle under other beds: or being made higher with ahead, so they may be set in a chamber corner, or under a cant roofe, they are called a field Bed or cant Bed. If it be soe, that it may have a canapy over it (that is a half tester) then it is termed a Canapy bed: to which belongeth curtaines and Vellance.

In the base of this square ly’s a bed staffe, of some termed a Burthen staffe.”

From Randle Holme: An Academie or Store House of Armory & Blazon (1649).

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kets, another feather-bed, and overall, an embroidered quilt, often trimmed with fur.” This huge pile was kept in place by bedstaves that slotted into holes in the top of the frame. Gener-ally, these holes are found only on the most impressive beds, indicating that the depth of the bedstuff signaled the height of the sleeper’s rank. Bedstaves were also pushed betwen the bedding and the bed frame. People slept in a semi-sitting position, propped on bol-sters leaning against the headboard.

William Harrison tells us with his customary pride that during Eliz-abeth’s reign comfortable bedding, which he calls “lodging,” spread to the farmers and artisans:

The second is the great amend-ment of lodging, for (said they) our fathers (yea) and we ourselves (also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, covered onlie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hopharlots (I use

BEDDING AND BED CHAMBERS IFrom Randle Holme: An Academie or Store House of Armory & Blazon (1649):

Things usefull about a Bed, and bed-chamber.

Bed stocks, as bed posts, sides, ends, Head and Tester. Mat, or sack-cloth Bottom. Cord, Bed staves, and stay for the feet. Curtain Rods and hookes, and rings, either Brass or Horn. Beds, of chaffe, Wool or flocks, Feathers, and down in Ticks or Bed Tick. Bolsters, pillows. Blanketts, Ruggs, Quilts, Counterpan, caddows. Curtaines, Valens, Tester head cloth; all either fringed, Laced or plaine alike. Inner curtaines and Valens, which are generally White silk or Linen. Tester Bobbs of Wood gilt, or covered suteable to the curtaines. Tester top either flat, or Raised, or canopy like, or half Testered. Basis, or the lower Valens at the seat of the Bed, which reacheth to the ground, and fringed for state as the upper Valens, either with Inch fring, caul fring, Tufted fring, snailing fring, Gimpe fring with Tufts and Buttons, Velum fring, &c.

The Chamber

Hangings about the Rome, of all sorts, as Arras, Tapestry, damask, silk, cloth or stuffe: in paines or with Rods, or gilt leather, or plaine, else Pictures of Friends and Relations to Adorne the Rome. Table, stands, dressing Box with drawers, a large Myrour, or Looking glass. Couch, chair, stooles, and chaires, a closs-stool. Window curtaines, Flower potts. Fire grate, and a good Fire in the winter, Fire shovel, Tongs, Fork and Bellows.

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their owne termes), and a good round logge under their heads in steed of a bolster, or pillow. If it were so that our fathers, or the good man of the house, had within seven years after his mar-riage purchased a matteres or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne, that peradventure laye seldom in a bed of downe or whole fethers; so well were they contented, and with such base kind of furni-ture: …Pillowes (said they) were thought meete onlie for women in childbed. As for servants, if they had any sheet above them, it was well, for seldome had they anie under their bodies, to keepe them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the canvas of the pallet, and rased their hardened hides.

The passage echoes his account of the social diffusion of plate on court cupboards (pp.11-13), and we should note that he makes no mention of the furniture, if any, upon which this bed-ding was laid.

Tester Beds

While Jacobethan home owners took great pride in colorful, expensive bed hangings and in deep piles of bedding, they were far from neglectful of the bed itself. They loved carved and in-laid oak so much that the opportunity of a large bedhead was just too good for the carver and his patron to pass up. The Great Bed of Ware, for in-stance, has magnificent hangings, but its carving and inlay is by no means overshadowed.

After the Restoration, the beds of the court and the nobility became notable only for their textiles, the wood was nothing but a supporting

BEDDING AND BED CHAMBERS IIFrom An Inventory of all maner of stuff remaining in Paget Place, St Clement Danes at London 15th February 1552:

In My Lord’s bed Chamber

a joined bedsted of walnuttreea testor of gold sarsenet imbroded and double valanced5 curtaines of blew and orange sarseneta bed of downe wt. a bolstera chaire of black velvet – a chayre of needle workea square table wt. a grene carpeta cupbourde wt. a grene carpeta red mantle ij paires of tablesa chesse bourd, a deske of ivorya little square stole, a fote stoleth’ angings of arras of the story of David 4 pair

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Figure 8.2: A tester bed, northern English, dated 1663. The form and decoration have been much simplified from the bed pictured in figure in 8.1, but its structure is basically the same. The upper panels are carved with arabesques, strapwork, and an arcade and the date; the stiles are carved with running guilloches, and the other rails and muntins with scrolls and lozenges. The lower panels are plain because they would have been covered by the pillows. The tester is fully paneled and has running guilloches on the stiles and a molded cornice. The headboard, footboard, and tester clearly show their close relationship with the fronts of joined coffers. Courtesy Camcote House Collection.

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BEDDING THE GREAT BEDKate Hay, a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, describes how late sixteenth-century bedding has been recreated in authentic detail for the Great Bed of Ware (see figure 1.6):

The first layer of the bed would have been hemp rope, strung between the holes in the bedstock. To prevent the mattress sinking through the stringing, a bedmat made of plaited rushes was laid over the top. Three mattresses would probably have been used, the lowest filled with woollen flock, the second with feathers, and the top with down, making a very soft sleeping surface. One mat-tress is covered in striped ticking, with a period pattern, and two with plain canvas. Bedstaves, long wooden poles, were pushed down the sides of the bed-stock to keep all the matttresses in place.

Two plain linen sheets have been specially woven. These were authentically made in narrow strips of just under two feet wide which were then sewn together. The bed has been provided with a bolster, and eight pillows. Four of the pillows have linen pillow cases, and four have blackwork embroidery. On two of the pillowcases the design of the embroidery copies a pillowcase in the Museum’s collection and on the other two the design has been taken from contemporary design drawings in the way embroiderers would have worked in the 16th century.

Two woollen blankets were made using traditional methods, with a twill weave and woven blue stripes at the end. Over these was laid a quilt. The quilt is in ‘shot sarcenet’, a silk with the warp and weft in different colours so that it shows different colours as the light falls from different directions. The pattern for the embroidery on the quilt is taken from a 16th century quilt in the Muse-um’s collection, and the two colours are ‘carnation’, (pink), and green, one of the most popular colour combinations recorded in inventories. The counter-pane was often used to display luxurious fabrics, such as the one used for the bed, a fabric woven in wool with linen and gold thread. This also follows the pattern of a 16th century textile in the V&A’s collection.

The curtains and valances are in bold stripes of red and yellow say, a twill-woven wool. This was chosen because it is very frequently mentioned in inven-tories of the period, and was the most popular colour combination in invento-ries from the south of England. The curtains also have a woollen fringe trim.

The final result shows the bed as closely as possible to its probable appearance when it was first used in the 1590s.