ILLUSTRATIONS OF DOMESTIC CUSTOMS DURING THE IMIDDLE AGES.
ORNAMENTAL FRUIT-TRENCHERS INSCRIBED WITH POSIES.
The usages of social life amongst our ancestors present a subject of interesting enquiry, appearing to deserve more careful consideration than it has hitherto received. The most minute details connected with pagan customs, and the illustration of domestic usages, costume, or the refinements of advancing civilisation amongst the Greeks and Romans, have been investigated with the utmost diligence, whilst the curious evidences relating to the private life of bygone times, in our own country, have been very imperfectly noticed. Those national monuments which display the constructive genius of our forefathers in their ecclesiastical, castellated, or domestic edifices, have for some time arrested the attention of numerous lovers of antiquity, and the smallest details of architectural ornament or arrangement have been examined with keen interest. Should the numerous scattered evidences which remain be regarded as devoid of interest, which may enable the antiquary to revive the stirring picture of daily life and social manners within those ancient walls, of which every feature has become now so familiar to us?
The investigation of the domestic habits of former times is a subject of much variety and extent, and the vestiges presented to us may frequently appear so trivial in their nature as to be unworthy of consideration. Amongst minor objects connected with festive usages, those now brought before the notice of our readers may possibly appear to be of that trivial character, and to have received already from antiquarians as full a share of attention as they can deserve. It does not appear, however, that any correct representation of the curiously ornamented "fruit-trenchers," in fashion during the sixteenth century, has hitherto been given, in illustration of various conjectures advanced regarding them; and I would hope that the examples, which I have been kindly permitted to submit to the readers of the Journal, may not prove devoid of interest; possibly, even that they may prove the means of drawing forth some further information.
