Old Essex Housewares

Continuing my posts on the vocabulary of the Essex Wills and its place in English lexical history, an introduction to which can be found here.

The Essex Wills are naturally full of words for household goods. The majority are words that are still used, though the things to which they are applied may now be different in design or appearance. A large majority are words, or meanings of words, that are no longer used, but are carefully recorded in dictionaries, and especially in the Oxford English Dictionary. But a significant number have escaped notice by lexicographers and yet can be found, often in large numbers, in wills, inventories, and other non-literary documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and sometimes in earlier and later documents). 

bail kettle, bailed kettle

These items occur at least five times in the Essex Wills:

1561 (I. 116), 1590 (V. 165) bail kettle 

1561 (II. 124), 1569 (II.  72), 1572 (IX. 15) bailed kettle

Surprisingly, both can be found in very recent and quite ordinary, non-regional sources:

1871 Ann. Rep. Commissioner of Patents 1869 I. 528/1 With the bail-kettle, formed after the fashion of a common tea-kettle. 

1952 Hospital Management 73 69 Bail kettles 4 sizes. 

1918 Department Store Merchandise Manuals 99 Dutch ovens are cast iron bailed kettles with a tightly fitting cover. 

1938 Bull. Business Hist. Soc. 12 63 We consign none but bailed kettles.

What is a bail? It’s the curved and hinged handle that traditional kettles used to have; OED’s bail n.² sense 2 (attested from 1463):

The hoop-handle of a kettle or similar vessel.

This OED entry does not include bail kettle or any other compounds, while bailed adj.² (1548, 1603) has only the sense ‘hooped (and covered) as a wagon’.

The Essex Wills also have:

1581 (X. 43) bailless kettle

And again, surprisingly, we can find a modern example of this:

1980 J. P. Brain Tunica Treasure 139/3 Undoubtedly, most, if not all, of these bails came from some of the bail-less kettles in the collection.

basting ladle 

I have noticed only two examples of this in the Essex Wills:

1582 (IV. 170); 1592 (VI. 33) basting ladle

There is indeed a quotation in the OED illustrating this at basting n.² 1a:

1822 W. Kitchiner Cook’s Oracle (ed. 4) 187 Put a little bit of butter into your basting-ladle.

But it is not acknowledged with a ‘lemma’ (subordinate or nested headword). It really should, as the basting ladle was an item with a certain cultural significance, often referred to:

1613 Alcilia Philoparthens louing folly [STC 4275] And with the  basting ladle did him beate.

1633 T. Heywood Eng. Traveller [STC 13315] About went his Basting-Ladle.

1638 Hocus Pocus Junior [STC 13544] Halfe hollow, like a basting-Ladle.

1639 in F. W. Steer Farm & Cottage Inventories Mid-Essex (1950) 80 In the buttery 2 basting ladles.

1649 Mercurius Brittanicus No. 4 26 Harke, harke, what a noise is here with frying pans and scummers, and basting ladels, and dripping pans.

1650 10 Dec. in G. F. Dow Probate Rec. Essex County, Mass. (1916) I. 127 A skimer & a basting ladell.

1656 S. Holland Don Zara del Fogo (Wing H2437) Butter in a Basting-ladle.

[There are four more examples in EEBO down to 1683.]

1676 Probate Rec. Essex County, Mass. (1920) III. 49 Basting ladle, 1s. 6d.

1719 in F. W. Steer Farm & Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex 1635–1749 (1969) 247 A basting ladle of brass.

1772 F. Gentleman Cupid’s Revenge i. i. 15 When she talked of the dripping-pan, the basting ladle could not be far off.

1793 Gentleman’s Mag. Feb. 127/2 She seized the basting-ladle, and with it gave the king a severe blow on the back.

The basting ladle was both the sceptre and the weapon of the cook. He used it to beat his subordinates (and enemies) and it symbolized his supremacy in the kitchen. The term was common down to about 1870. The item, and its name, still exist of course, but the cultural connections have probably got lost.

bell

A familiar word used in a way that is difficult to interpret. It occurs in the Essex Wills as a ‘premodifier’ (a subordinate word standing before a noun so as to describe it) to characterize various  household items: bell candlestick occurs at least 8 times; e.g. 

1561 (I. 214) 2 bell candlesticks of latten

1577 (IX. 48) 1 of my best latten bell candlesticks 

bell chafer occurs once (reference unavailable) and two examples occur with pan:

1566 (II. 225) her bell brass pan

1567 (VIII. 126) a brass bell pan. 

One might guess that this has some relationship with OED’s bell-metal n. meaning ‘an alloy of copper and tin’. But in our examples, bell co-occurs with brass and latten (an alloy similar to brass), which would seem to rule that out. Perhaps it refers not to material, but to shape, style, or method of manufacture.  There seems to be no evidence on EEBO, but the following earlier and later examples are found:

1554 in E. Peacock Eng. Church Furniture (1866) App. 187 Item too bell candillstickes. Item one lesse candillstick of bell fasshion.


1590 Will of Helen Ford, widow, St Nicholas in S. Lang & M. McGregor Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (1993) 17 [modernized text] To her daughter Joan one platter and one bell candlestick.

chine

Some part of a manufactured article. There are five examples of chine in the Essex Wills: 

1559 (VIII. 138) a dozen of pewter or broad chines

1559 (VIII. 139) a dozen of broad chines pewter

1574 (III. 113) 1 bedsteadle..hath a broad chine

1575 (IV. 39) my brass pan with the broad chines

1597 (VI. 98) the best of my two brass pots with the broken chine.

Evidently this is not OED’s chine n.¹ ‘fissure’ or chine n.² ‘backbone’. It might be connected in some way with chine n.³ sense 1 ‘the projecting rim at the heads of casks, etc., formed by the ends of the staves’ (dating from before 1475) in that it clearly refers to some material object that may or may not form part of a larger whole. The objections to this view are that (a) the context is domestic rather than coopery, (b) the material involved seems to be metal, except in the case of the ‘bedsteadle’, and (c) the OED’s chine is a rim formed by the ends of the staves rather than a continuous surface.

Compare also these examples of the derivative adjective chined:

1562 (I. 152) 1 broad chined [platter]

1567 (II. 49), 1569 (II.  89) broad chined

1602 (VII. 58) broken-chined candlestick

It does look as if the thing referred to is the rim of a plate or pot, or the base of a candlestick. But why are Essex Wills’ chines only either ‘broad’ or ‘broken’?

colefatte

This item occurs only once:

1582 (V. 13) the ‘colefatte’ in the brewhouse

Since fat was an earlier form of the now standard vat, perhaps this is coal vat. We normally think of a vat as a container for liquid, but OED’s vat n.¹, sense 3a, is ‘a cask, barrel, or other vessel for holding or storing dry goods’ and sense 3b is ‘formerly used as a measure of capacity for coal’. These correspond to fat n.¹, senses 3 ‘a cask or barrel to contain dry things’ (1540 onwards) and 4 ‘used as a measure of capacity’ (1413 onwards).

A few examples from outside the Essex Wills lend support to this idea:

[date?] in Pre-Reformation Rec. All Saints’ Church, Bristol (2004) 259 Item for nails and for hauling the bars to the cole fate [?coal vat] - 20d. Item for clamps of iron to the cole fate - 7d. Item for 9 studs to the cole fate.

1700 C. Povey A discovery of indirect practices in the coal-trade [Wing P3040] Every  Coal Fat Containing Sixty six Gallons.

1858 P. L. Simmonds Dict. Trade Products 398/1 Vat, a large wooden or metal cistern or tub;..The old London coal vat contained 9 bushels.

cragg 

cragg seems to be a word of incredibly limited distribution, and hence it’s not in the OED. The Essex Wills contain as many examples as are to be found elsewhere:

1582 (X. 177) crages

1596 (VI. 188) 1 hand basket, 1 cragg, a brewing tub

1602 (VII. 142) 3 milk bowls, 1 ‘crage’, 1 biggest brewing tub

The English Dialect Dictionary has an entry for cragge, sb. It tells us that it is obsolete, found in Essex and southern counties, is also written cragg, and means ‘a small beer-vessel’. Previous lexicographers who recorded it are Ray (1691) and Grose (1790). The latter means Francis Grose’s Glossary of Provincial and Local Words, which gives exactly the same definition. He may well have simply borrowed it from:

1691 J. Ray A Collection of Words not generally Used [Wing R 389] 94 (South and East Country Words) A Cragge; a small Beer-Vessel.

The etymology is not established.

cup dish

This looks like a fairly obvious compound of cup and dish. What could it have meant? My first guess was that the cup dish was the partner of the cup before the word saucer had that application, which, according to the OED, it acquired only around 1700 (and if you think about it, it’s an odd use of a word which originally meant ‘a receptacle for condiments’). Alternatively, cup in this compound could be cup n. 1b ‘a hollow vessel of wood or metal, used for drinking’, in which case cup dish would be a kind of tautological compound. It occurs at least three times in the Essex Wills:

1585 (V. 51), 1585 (X. 201) cupdish

1598 (XII. 44) a cupdish, 2 dishes, 1/2 dozen trenchers

It is also found in these works (via Early English Books Online):

1648 J. Goodwin Neophytopresbyteros [Wing G1183] 133 What mighty waves are here raised in a  cup dish of water?

a1646 J. Gregory Gregorii Posthuma (1649) [Wing G1926] The Pæonians adored the Sun under the form of a Cup-dish.

1657 E. Wright Certain Errors Navigation [Wing W3689] chapter xvii, This pin must be made of lattin, with a very sharp point, and is to be fastned upright in a round box of wood, which must be of the fashion of a great  cup-dish, containing the rose within it, being covered above with a clear round glasse.

This last quotation describes the making of a sea-compass. Since the rose was round, and could swivel in any direction on the pin, I suspect that the box was roughly hemispherical, in which case the second interpretation of cup dish may be correct.

curble, curbled 

There are several examples in the Essex Wills:

1560 (I. 257) a cauldron (that for Joan with a curble)

1591 (XI. 150) 1 brass ‘curble’ as it hangeth in the kitchen

[no date] (I. 180) a cauldron with a ‘cerbbell’

1596 (XII. 201) 1 great brass pan hanged with a kirble

1601 (XII. 179) 1 curbled pan and my best copper kettle

OED’s curble n. has two senses.

sense 1: = curb n. 1, which is ‘a chain or strap passing under the lower jaw of a horse’ (1598) 

sense 2: = curb n. 8, which is ‘a frame round the top of a well’ (?1780)

The sense of the word in the Essex Wills is not in the OED and is unclear, and the examples are earlier than the senses in the OED. It must refer to some kind of attachment to a kitchen implement by which it hangs: compare OED’s curb n. 8b ‘a framing round the top of a brewer’s copper’. Possibly it referred to the apparatus for raising and lowering a cauldron or pan over the fire; compare:

1857 T. Wright Dict. Obs. & Provincial Eng., Kirble, the windlass of a well.

I have found one other example from the eastern counties:

[date?] in East Anglian (1900) 8–9 383 Item I give to Agnes my wief the cownter table in the hall the cupborde in the hall and the great panne with the curble and also all the beds and bedding.

There seems to be nothing relevant in Early English Books Online.

kettle brass

Presumably a kind of brass from which kettles are made. Four examples occur in the Essex Wills:

1569 (II.  242) kettle brass

1576 (III. 208) kettle brass pot

1581 (X. 3) kettle brass

1584 (V. 51) 1 posnet of kettlebrass

Additionally we find:

1655 E. Terry Voy. to East-India (1777) 14 These Boos and Baas, as they call them, were formerly bought in great plenty, for small quantities of kettle-brass, and iron hoops taken off our empty casks, which were all for this long voyage hoop’d with iron.

1913 M. Bell Old Pewter vii. 12 Harrison, in a ‘Description of England in Shakespeare’s Youth’, when eulogising English pewterers and pewter, says: ‘I have also been informed that it consisteth of a composition which hath 30 lbs. of kettle-brass to 1000 lbs. of tin, whereunto they add 3 or 4 lbs. of tin-gloss (in modern parlance, bismuth)’.

pottle 

Used several times in the Essex Wills as a premodifier with the names of kitchen containers (kettle, skillet). The OED has a section of compounds that covers this use ‘with the sense “having the capacity of one pottle”’, i.e. (sense 1b) half a gallon or 2.3 litres; but OED does not have these compounds:

1558 (VIII. 111) pottle skillet

1575 (IX. 5), 1584 (V. 5), 1553? (II. 143) pottle kettle

stample

There are three examples of stample in the Essex Wills:

1563 (I. 221) 1 brazen mortar with the ‘stample’ thereof

1572 (III. 281) a latten mortar with the ‘stampell’

1578 (IV. 191) my spice mortar and the ‘stampell’

Evidently this means ‘pestle’. Equally obviously it must be a derivative of stamp, with the -le ending found in the names of devices.

But there seem to be no other examples of this noun elsewhere. Only a verb stample is traceable, but it has a corresponding sense:

a1500 MS Balliol College 354 f. cvii in S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson The Index of Middle English Prose. Handlist VIII: Manuscripts containing Middle English Prose in Oxford College Libraries (1991) 10/2 Take a quantitie of vineger as mvche of the iuse of rue a quantitie of grenes and a quantytie of sowre bucade stample them well together.

1597 W. Langham Garden of Health [STC 15195] Stample it and apply it warme.

1599 R. Perceval Dict. Spanish & Eng. [STC 19620] Machucàr, to stample with pestle.

1630 T. Bonham The Chyrugians Closet [STC 3279] Boyle them in the broath of flesh, then stample and straine them... Boyle the hearbes in aq: q.s. vnto tendernesse, then stample them.

1896 W. W. Skeat Nine Specimens of Eng. Dialects Vol. 32 40 ’A striv’th vor stample ’e abroad. [Glossed as ‘tread upon’.]

tinker’s kettle

Perhaps this is a variety of kettle obtainable from a tinker (as opposed to a blacksmith, say?). Judging by the last example below, it was a superior kind. These are some of the examples in the Essex Wills:

1569 (II. 89)  a latten chafing dish, a tinker’s kettle

1575 (IV. 39) a brass kettle called a tinker’s kettle

1588 (XI. 203)  the greatest kettle, a tinker’s kettle, a smaller kettle

1588 (XI. 203) an old tinker’s kettle of a pottle

1592 (XI. 42)  a great kettle, a tinker’s kettle, a posnet

1596 (XI. 53) tinker’s posnet

1600 (XII. 94) my best kettle called the tinker’s kettle

There is a discussion of its meaning in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Courts (1976), page 27, which says that a clause in a will ‘“The tinker’s kettle commonly used to wash vessels in” tells of other uses’. It shows that this must have been a reasonable large open vessel. Similarly the expression is defined in Southampton Records Series (1992) 35, page 477 as ‘a pot or cauldron’.

It is possible to find various proverbial and allusive uses of the expression, e.g. ‘to sound worse than a tinker’s kettle’ or ‘the coin may mend a tinker’s kettle’; but these seem to depend on a literal meaning ‘a kettle owned or used by a tinker’ and not to indicate a particular kind of kettle.

Continuing my posts on the vocabulary of the Essex Wills and its place in English lexical history, an introduction to which can be found in this blog.

The Essex Wills are naturally full of words for household goods. The majority are words that are still used, though the things to which they are applied may now be different in design or appearance. A large majority are words, or meanings of words, that are no longer used, but are carefully recorded in dictionaries, and especially in the Oxford English Dictionary. But a significant number have escaped notice by lexicographers and yet can be found, often in large numbers, in wills, inventories, and other non-literary documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and sometimes in earlier and later documents). 

tables

bench board

The Essex Wills contain four examples of this term:

1566 (II. 160) my table in the hall with the benchboard and the form

1571 (III. 238), 1572 (X. 14) benchboard

1596 (XI. 138) my table which I call a bench board.

It also occurs in the Essex Gentry wills:

1568 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 270 the table, cupboard, form, benchboard, stained cloths.

In seventeenth century inventories from Essex:

1637 in  F. W. Steer Farm & Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex 1635–1749 (1969) 71, 2 stooles, 2 bench boards.

1638 in F. W. Steer Farm & Cottage Inventories Mid-Essex (1950) 77 In the hall one benc board, 16s.

It is doubtful whether the example below refers to the same thing:

1833 Edinb. Rev. Oct. 102 Seated on their bench-board, they would allow them to dispose of suits, or take measure of crimes and misdemeanours, and furnish penalties that should fit.

The older kind of table, as other items examined here show, was the flat board that was mounted on trestles or other supports when needed and could at other times be stowed away. Possibly bench board referred to a table that was thought to resemble a bench in having permanent supports, i.e. the modern kind of table. Perhaps the 1596 testator says ‘which I call my bench board’ because this was regarded as a new design whose name was not yet fixed. Alternatively it might have been a table used with a bench.

dorman 

There are at least three examples of this in the Essex Wills:

1573 (III. 86) a form and a pair of dormans standing in the hall

1577 (IX. 29) the long table in the hall lying on the dormans

1590 (V. 159) a table with a pair of dormans and 2 forms in the hall

It is evident from the above that dormans can (i) come in pairs, and (ii) support a ‘table’. The latter is not likely to be a table as we think of it, with built-in legs, but table n. 6c ‘a movable board placed on trestles or supports for the serving and eating of a meal’. If so, dormans must be trestles or supports of a similar kind. 

The OED senses of dorman n. are: 

1 = DORMANT n. 1 ‘a fixed horizontal beam’

2a = DORMANT n. 2 ‘a projecting vertical window in the sloping roof of a house’

2b = dormer-tile (relating to dormer in the previous sense). 

The Essex Wills also contain a word dormer in what is probably the same sense as dorman above, seeing how similar it is to the 1590 example of that word (OED has no relevant sense of dormer n.):

1597 (XII. 167) the long table in the hall with the form, dormers, blackboard, benches

Curiously, there is also a better known lexical item dormant table (OED’s dormant adj. 3 a ‘fixed, stationary’, 3b dormant table ‘a table fixed to the floor, or forming a fixed piece of furniture’. This is the more prestigious table with fixed legs (such as a bench board might be), while a dorman was only a component, used to make up the humble trestle table. 

This has (in my view) misled one historian (N. J. G. Pounds The Culture of the English People (1994) 141), who writes (re the 1573 Essex Wills example above) ‘it is all the more surprising to find in a husbandman’s cottage in 1573 “a pair of dormans standing in the hall”. The “dormant” table was of more solid construction..instead of trestles, it had four or more legs…’ 

There seems to be no evidence on Early English Books Online for dormans.

fold table

On the face of it, this would seem to be a table that folds. There are numerous examples in the Essex Wills:

1563 (VIII. 109) a little fold table

1573 (IX. 187) 1 ‘foulte’ table with a form in the hall

1578 (IX. 31) the fold table with the form

1587 (V. 207)  folte table

1587 (V. 207) foult table

1596 (VI. 227  folt table

There occur also:

1559 (II.  110)  folding table

1601 (XII. 127)  folded table

which are transparently tables that fold, which would appear to support the interpretation.

However, the form fold premodifying table needs explaining. What part of the family of fold words does it belong to? 

It may be an irregular past participle, though it seems a bit strange to call a folding table a ‘folded table’. The verb fold does have a ‘strong’ past participle form folden. This is used as an adjective, OED folden adj., under which, pleasingly, there are two examples of folden board / table:

1512 in W. H. Stevenson Rec. Borough Nottingham (1885) III. 114   Unam tabulam vocatam ‘a folden borde’ cum tribus foliis.

1572 in J. Raine Wills & Inventories N. Counties Eng. (1835) I. 348   One lyttle fauden table.

But we still have to explain why there is no -en. This is not difficult, as a number of past participles in modern English have lost this ending, for example find, with former participle founden, now found.

folden could have been similarly reduced to fold by loss of the suffix –en. A past participle form fold (with loss of –en) is actually shown in the forms list for the verb fold v.¹

However, we also have to explain why the Essex Wills examples contain several forms with final –t. A participial form with final –t is also exemplified in the forms list for the verb fold v.¹: Middle English y-falt, folte, fifteenth-century falt. 

This looks more like a ‘weak’ formation of the same type as bent from  bend and felt from feel than a reduced form of folden. So whether this lexical item is regarded as only a variant of folden adj. or as a separate entity depends partly on how we interpret its formation.

Another possibility is simply that the final /d/ of fold has been assimilated to the initial /t/ of the following word table.

The form foult is also found here (where assimilation of /d/ to /t/ is again possible before ch /tʃ/):

1588 in D. Yaxley Researcher’s Glossary (2003) 37 one foulte chayer of black & redd Mockadow vijs.

The sense remains a bit puzzling. A ‘folding table’ is an obvious compound, but a ‘folded table’ seems a less intuitive description, if it is the same thing.

No examples seem to be available elsewhere.

frame

This is another term associated in the Essex Wills with table, like dorman, and probably with a similar meaning, since the table lies or stands on the frame; but as it does not seem to come in a pair, it is perhaps some kind of single removable structure for supporting a table: 

1561 (II. 124) the table with the frame

1567 (II. 182) a table with a frame

1572 (X. 14) my table and frame to it

1586 (V. 86) a little frame form

1588 (V. 94) the ashen table as it standeth on the frame in the hall

1590 (XI. 28)  [to] Sybil an elm chest and Elizabeth a frame chest, Richard..a fir chest, Susan..a great oak chest

1595 (VI. 221) a table lying on a frame

It also occurs in the Essex Gentry wills:

1589 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 203 the long table and frame and an old long form.

1589 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 203 a table with a frame.

The Essex Wills also have:

1587 (V. 109)  a joined framed table

Outside the Essex Wills we find the following evidence:

1582 Inventory of James Benchkin’s goods, 30 November in Constance Brown Kuriyama Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance Life (2002) Appendix 191 Item one table with a frame. [Canterbury]

1598 An Inventory of the Stuff in the College Chambers (King’s College) in Collected Papers of Henry Bradshaw (1889) (164–180):
168 Item a square table with a frame & ij formes
172 Inprimis a table with a frame a forme & a benche
176 a table with a frame

1605 Inventory of John Marlow’s goods, 21 February in Constance Brown Kuriyama Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance Life (2002) Appendix 191 234 A litle table with a frame.

It is evidently a specific use of OED’s frame n. 5a ‘a supporting structure of which the outline or skeleton is not filled in; a framework’. This entry has been revised, but the use seems to be too localized in time and space to have been entered. All the evidence comes from the south-east of England within a period of about 40 years.

sheet/shett table, shot/shut table

sheet/shett

1561 (I. 54) the sheet table with the form that standeth by it

(Felsted) 1570 (II.  246) sheet table with the table of the bench

(?Chelmsford) 1576 (IX. 123) a ‘shete’ table, a frame table

(Wimbish) 1579 (IV. 208) my ‘sheet’ table and the form

(Great Baddow) 1591 (XI. 90) a joined shett table

(Debden) 1594 (VI. 113) 1 ‘shett’ table in the hall

shot/shut:

1563 (I. 247) 1 shut table in the hall

(Thaxted) 1570 (IX. 111) my shut table;

(Great Henney) 1572 (IV.  203) a shut table in the hall

(Great Easton) 1581 (X. 66) the shot table standing at her mother’s

(Tollesbury) 1582 (X. 48) a table shot with leaves

(Great Leighs) 1584 (V. 189) a shut table in the hall

Also:

(White Roothing) 1582/3 (X. 48) the shot-leaved table with a cupboard in it

No other examples found; there seems to be nothing on Early English Books Online. 

It is not clear whether the sheet/shett table and the shot/shut table are the same things. If they were, it would be necessary to explain the relationship of form. ‘shot’ or ‘shut’ seems to have some connection with the presence of ‘leaves’ for extending the table. 

sheet n.¹ does not seem to be used in any sense that could relate to this. 

The word shut n.¹ is promising, as (a) it has a ME form schett; (b) sense 1c is ‘A hinged or sliding door or plate for closing an aperture’; and (c) there is a compound shut-knife (albeit very much later) ‘clasp-knife’, which embodies the same notion of something that folds away.

‘A close stool under my nose’ and the Essex Wills

Continuing my posts on the vocabulary of the Essex Wills and its place in English lexical history, an introduction to which can be found here.

The Essex Wills are naturally full of words for household goods. The majority are words that are still used, though the things to which they are applied may now be different in design or appearance. A large majority are words, or meanings of words, that are no longer used, but are carefully recorded in dictionaries, and especially in the Oxford English Dictionary. But a significant number have escaped notice by lexicographers and yet can be found, often in large numbers, in wills, inventories, and other non-literary documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and sometimes in earlier and later documents). 

Furniture: seats

back bench, back settle

The presumption is that this means a bench or settle with a back. Compare back-chair (OED BACK comb. form 2, 1649 ‘a chair with a back’) . There seem to be no examples in Early English Books Online.

1561 (II.  124) the back bench in the hall

1562 (I. 217) backbench

1588 (V. 97) back settle

1594 (XI. 46) wainscot backsettles that are nailed to the walls

close chair

This must mean the same as OED CLOSE-STOOL n., sense a, which is somewhat coyly defined as ‘a chamber utensil enclosed in a stool or box.’ Here are the Essex Wills examples:

1568 (VIII. 187) a close chair with the pot

1572 (III. 63) table, form and close chair

1588 (XI. 18) the close little chair of rods

And here are some earlier occurrences from other sources:

1513 in D. Yaxley Researcher’s Glossary (2003) 37 j Close chayer (also 1588, 1597).

1994 N. J. G. Pounds Culture Eng. People 148 The close-stool or commode had made its appearance during the previous century… The earliest reference to this particular piece of furniture met with by this writer was the ‘close chayer’, recorded in a London inventory of about 1530... Another inventory of about 1572 makes it quite clear that the ‘close chair’ was amongst the furnishing of the hall.

There are several examples in Early English Books Online, from 1579 onwards. 

Around the second quarter of the seventeenth century a new meaning, ‘sedan chair’, comes in. This meaning (a collocation of CLOSE adj. 4b ‘private, secluded’ and CHAIR n. 10 ‘an enclosed chair or covered vehicle for one person, carried on poles by two men; a sedan’) is not mentioned in the OED either, although it occurs in a quotation at SLIP n.3:

1778   Encycl. Brit. II. 1053/2   The person intending to bathe..is carried in a close chair..to one of the slips which open into the bath. There he descends by steps into the water.

This polysemy, of course, offers opportunities for jokes and misunderstandings, as for example in Richard Brome’s comedy The Sparagus Garden (1640) v. vi. sig. K4, 

Enter the Sedan, Hoy[den] in it, in womans cloaths. 

Brit[tleware]. Pray gentleman stay, for I suppose She’s here: here’s number one and twenty; & this is sure the litter. 

Litter-man. What peep you for; you ought not to do so sir. 

Brit[tleware]. By what Commission ought you to carry my wife in a Close stoole under my nose. 

Litter-man. Tis a close Chayre by your leave: And I pray forbeare, you know not who we carry.

Forgotten Words: the Essex Wills as Witness

Continuing my posts on the vocabulary of the Essex Wills and its place in English lexical history, an introduction to which can be found here.

The Essex Wills are naturally full of words for household goods. The majority are words that are still used, though the things to which they are applied may now be different in design or appearance. A large majority are words, or meanings of words, that are no longer used, but are carefully recorded in dictionaries, and especially in the Oxford English Dictionary. But a significant number have escaped notice by lexicographers and yet can be found, often in large numbers, in wills, inventories, and other non-literary documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and sometimes in earlier and later documents). 

Furniture: terms relating to beds

bedsteadle 

There are numerous instances of this word from 1558 onwards. Typical cases are:

1559 (I. 87) To John a bedstead. To Agnes my daughter a bedsteadle. 

1575 (III. 165) my joined bedsteadle, a bedstead. 

The approximate meaning is the framework on which a bed is made, but differing in some unspecified manner from a bedstead. 

The second element does not appear to be a derivative (such as a diminutive) of stead, i.e. of the second element of bedstead (OED STEAD n. 8, recorded from a1475 onwards). 

Rather, steadle seems to be a variant of  OED STADDLE n., of which steddle is recorded as a variant, and which has a sense ‘a supporting framework’ (3d). This is attested only from a1800; but the word steadle is used both alone and in a compound with trundle, which means a ‘truckle bed’:

Essex Wills (1582, X. 229) my bed standing on the sollar with the steadles.

Essex Wills (1591, VI. 130) a flockbed and a pair of trundle steadles belonging.

The word also occurs in the edited volumes of Essex gentry wills:

1566 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 276 a posted bedsteadle.

1585 in F. G. Emmison Elizabethan Life: Essex Gentry’s Wills (1978) 88, 2 of the best bedsteadles with 2 of the best testers belonging.

We get some confirmation for this from the Middle English Dictionary at stathel (n.) (which is the Middle English equivalent of  OED’s staddle n.). MED has the variants: ‘Also .. stedel(e, stedil, stedul(le; pl. stedel(l)es’ and gives, at sense (b): ‘bed ~, the framework of a bed, a bedstead’, with the sole illustrative example:

(1483) in M. R. James The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Emmanuel College: A Descriptive Catalogue (1904) 11 Item, yn the grette chambur ii bede stedellys..Item, in the lytyll chambyr a bedde stedyll.

The provenance of this text, and indeed its identity, is unclear, but its being preserved in a Cambridge library make it possible that it is an East Anglian MS.

This evidence can be supplemented by a number of other documents, all from south-eastern England:

1582 Inventory of James Benchkin’s goods, 30 November in Constance Brown Kuriyama Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance Life (2002) Appendix 191 Item one joyned bedstedell. (There is also an instance on p. 193, from Canterbury.)

1605 Inventory of John Marlow’s goods, 21 February in Constance Brown Kuriyama Christopher Marlowe: a Renaissance Life (2002) Appendix 191 235 Item a playne bedstedle, matt and rope, and a flocke bed and a fether bed.

The English Dialect Dictionary, at bed n., has ‘bed-steddle, a bedstead’ with two Essex citations (1814 Monthly Mag. I. 498) and two Kent citations, one of 1793 (Pluckley Poorhouse Accounts)  and Memorials of Eastry (870) 224. 

1893 Trans. Essex Archaeol. Soc. 4 15 Bedsteadle occurs in 1705, a dialectical form of ‘bedstead’, which is still localized in N. Essex, and which I have seen in a Sible Hedingham will of rather earlier date than this instance. Neither Dr. Murray nor Forby mentions it.

Finally we find the twentieth-century dialect dictionary of Essex testifying to the fact that this is a genuine Essex word:

1923 E. Gepp Essex Dialect Dictionary (ed. 2) 19 Bedsteadle: a bedstead. Apparently a peculiar Essex form. See Staddle. Ibid. 108 Steadle: for  bedsteadle. It is a form of staddle, a foundation, stand (9th c.), q.v. 

Only the Essex Wills suggest, by using the two words in the same contexts, that there was a distinction between a bedsteadle and a bedstead. No evidence seems to be available on EEBO. 

Bedsteadle is an unentered word with a history stretching from 1483 to 1923.

girt, girted

An adjective describing a bedstead, bedsteadle, or trundle bed. With the exception of the example below, I have found it only in the Essex Wills, and the meaning is unclear. OED’s GIRT adj., sense 1, is given the definition ‘in sense of the verb’, presumably GIRD v.1 of which it is the old past participle. This verb, as we know, means ‘to surround or encircle’, but there seem not to be any senses specifically with beds as the object, or anything closer than sense 4c ‘to put (a cord, etc.) round something’ (only in Swift’s Gulliver). 

Although the apparently ‘double’ past participle form girted is notionally covered by the fact that girt can be a variant of the main form of the verb gird, there is also a verb GIRT v., of which sense 2 is ‘to secure with a girth’ (1663, 1841).

1587 (X. 79) gyrt bedsteadle

1595 (XI. 135) girte bedstead

1560 (I. 11) 1 trundlebed girted with 2 little old featherbeds

1571 (III. 19) girted bedstead

1581 (X. 231) girted bedstead

The only other example found is considerably later. Somewhat surprisingly it occurs in a translation, raising the implication that there existed an equivalent in French. Moreover the text itself is ordinary ‘standard’ English.

1715 tr. C. de Renneville French Inquisition 77 At length, on Friday the 8th of September, I was much surpriz’d to hear the Tower open’d before Four in the Morning, and to see Ru coming into my Room, bringing a Girt Bedstead, then he brought a Straw Bed, a Quilt, a Boulster, a Blanket, and a deep Rush Chair, all quite new.

It is distinctly possible that the term is equivalent to a trussed bed or trussed bedstead (OED TRUSSED adj. 1), which is the same as a trussing bed or trussing bedstead. None of these are directly defined, but an 1861 quotations tells us:

Portable beds were often called ‘trussing’ beds.

So probably a girted bedstead was a portable one.

half-head, half-headed 

These terms relating to styles of bed are common in the Essex Wills, the former as noun and premodifier, the latter as adjective. As one might expect, the derived adjective half-headed appears later than the noun half-head.

half-head:

1563 (VIII. 74)  a bedsteadle with a half head

1572 (III. 62)  bedsteadle..the other with a half head;

1574 (III. 423)  a joined bed with a half head

1584 (X. 3)  the bedstead with the half head

1591 (VI. 196)  a bedsteadle joined with a half head

1591 (XI. 150)  1 joined bed with a half-head

1592 (XI. 278)   a standing bed with a half-head and featherbed

1600 (XII. 216)  1 posted bedstead..with a half-head

1602 (VII. 142)  2 flock beds with half-heads

note also half a head:

1573 (III. 298) a posted bedsteadle with half a head

That this is not a specifically Essex term is shown by:

1597 Will of Hugh Cicill, carpenter, St Philip in S. Lang M. & McGregor Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (1993) 25 Or ells at that time to buye for her one newe Bedsteede withe a halfe hea[d] at his choice.

half-headed:

1582 (IV. 158) half-headed bed

1587 (X. 254) half-headed bedsteadle

1590 (XI. 120), 1594 (XI. 244), 1591 (XI. 35) half-headed bedstead

The terms are used of beds that are recorded as having a tester, and so presumably describe a bed whose tester (in the later sense of the canopy over the bed) that covers only the upper end, as opposed to the traditional ‘four-poster’ with a canopy covering the full length of the bed. Yaxley (2003: 12) explains half-headed bed as ‘bed with canopy covering only top half of bed, supported only by the posts of the bedhead’. This would be borne out by an apparent contrast with whole-headed:

1585 (V. 294) whole-headed joined bed

Historians have given other explanations, namely that the terms refer to the vertical part at the head of the bed (tester in its earlier meaning), but the evidence seems to fit this better. (Note also the contrast with ceiled bed in quotation 1751 below.)

It is not an unusual term, and certainly ought to be in the OED. The examples listed above are all earlier than those (all from the seventeenth century) listed in Weiner 1997: 242. The term was still in use in the 19th century:

1721 Particular & Inventory Sir John Blunt 44, 4 square Stools, a half headed Bedstead, a Feather Bed and Bolster. 

1728 Catalogue Household Furniture Thomas Coke 4 A half-headed Bedstead, blue Curtains, a Feather Bed.

1732 Inventory Richard Woolley 10 In the Garrets. A Bedstead and Bedding, a Mat, a half headed Curtain Rod.

1751 Inventory of Andrew Revill of Ecclesfield Parish in Agricultural Hist. Rev. (1969) 17 115 Near Chamber: 2 half headed Beds and 2 Ceild Beds £1.5.0.

1830 Belle Assemblée Sept. 114/2 Two rooms; in one was a half-headed bedstead, with a flock or straw bed—I know not which.

1871 Exchange & Mart 8 March 303/2 Wanted, an Arabian half-headed bedstead, iron or otherwise, plain, but in good condition.

Note also half a headed bedstead:

1600 Will of Nicholas Woulfe, carpenter, St Philip in S. Lang & M. McGregor Tudor Wills Proved in Bristol 1546–1603 (1993) 73 Halfe a headded bedsteed with a flock bedd.

Half-headed is entered in the OED (unrevised entry) only in the sense ‘half-intelligent’. No evidence seems to be available on EEBO.

post bed, post bedsteadle

OED’s POST n.1 has been revised, but this item was probably too rare to find its way into the entry. It is not common in the Essex Wills, but there are a few later examples. The meaning is presumably the same as four-posted bed.

1564 (VIII. 144) my postbed that I lie in

1569 (II.  238), 1582 (IV. 148) post bed

Also:

1570 (IX. 89) post bedsteadle

1582 (IV. 212) postern bedstead

The later examples are:

1846 C. MacFarlane Romance of Travel I. vii. 158 What the worthy monk calls a bed was probably much the same piece of furniture still used as a seat by the Turkish sultan when he gives an audience of ceremony, and which is something between a post-bed and a sofa.

1847 J. D. Lang Cooksland iv. 122 This bed-room, in which I found a Colonial cedar post-bed.

1891 Harper’s Mag. 83 824 Joe led Penelope towards the old storehouse chamber in which the Irish traveller was quietly sleeping under the parted curtain a of the ancient post bed.

The truth about eavesdropping; with a little light from Essex

Eavesdropping (noun and adjective) is illustrated in the OED (entry not yet revised) with examples from 1601 to ante 1861. An 1853 quotation aptly says: 

Eavesdropping consists in privily listening

a pretty good substitute for an explicit definition (which OED2 does not give).

This dual lexical item is attached to the entry for eavesdropper (noun). This word is given two definitions, which I will quote in reverse order. 

The first definition is the familiar:

One who listens secretly to conversation.

The second is a cross-reference to a quotation of 1641 which gives a legal definition:

Evesdroppers are such as stand under wals or windowes..to heare news. 

(The mention of ‘walls or windows’ is a clue to the origin of the term.) Eavesdropper goes back at least to 1487, when a certain Henry Rowley was adjudged by Nottingham juratores to be

communis evys-dropper et vagator in noctibus (a common eavesdropper and nightwalker)

There is of course a verb eavesdrop, but it is much later (1606) than eavesdropper; hence the latter is unlikely to be derived from it. Instead eavesdropper comes from a now obsolete noun, eavesdrop or (to modernize its Old English form) eavesdrip. This has nothing whatever to do with ‘privy listening’. As I said, ‘walls or windows’ gives a clue. It is the place where you stand to do your secret listening, or as the OED defines it:

the space of ground which is liable to receive the rain-water thrown off by the eaves of a building

literally:

the dripping of water from the eaves of a house.

The noun eavesdrop is very rarely recorded. The OED has an example from an Old English Kentish Charter and then no evidence till 1639 from the Wills and Inventories of Bury St Edmunds in a rather disguised form:

The..edifices..gardens, waies, water courses, easem^ts, ewse-dreepes, and appurtenances.

And after this two nineteenth century examples. The OED has a note in small type explaining the meaning further:

chiefly used with reference to the ancient custom or law which prohibited a proprietor from building at a less distance than two feet from the boundary of his land, lest he should injure his neighbour’s land by ‘eavesdrop’.

So while the completely transferred use of the verb, the agent noun, and the verbal noun are common and familiar, the original use is extremely rare (there are no examples on EEBO).

Into this gap of evidence comes an example of eavesdropping (noun) from the Essex Wills (1598 XII. 16): 

a chase way or passage to the premises, with sufficient ground for the eavesdropping

This is both the literal meaning ‘the space of ground which is liable to receive the rain-water thrown off by the eaves of a building’ and earlier by three years than the first example in the OED.