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“ best-fashioned and apparelled” servants were appointed to attend“ above the salt, the rest below.”
The beginning of every dish was reserved for the greatest personagesitting at the table, to whom it was drawn up by the waiters, and fromwhom it descended to the lower end, so that every one might taste thereof.In those early times the number of dishes at the tables of the nobilitywas so great, “ that for a man to dine with one of them, and taste ofeuerie dish that standeth before him, is rather to yeild vnto a conspiracie,with a great deale of meat for the speedie suppression of naturall health,than the vse of a necessarie meane to satisfie himselfe with a competentrepast, to susteine his bodie withall.”
^pOOUSh—In eating, spoons seem to have been almost the only aidto the fingers at a very late period of our history. Knives, ancient asthey are, were not manufactured in England till 1563;* and, therefore,
directed to attend the meat going into the hall; and “ if any unworthy fellow do unmannerlysett himself down before his betters, he must take him up and place him lower.”
* Spoons and knives seem coeval with Edward the Confessor ; but forks were little knownbefore the Restoration.—J. P. Andrews’s Cont. of Henry.
Knives were first made in England in 1563, by Thomas Matthews, on Fleet Bridge,London.— Holt’s Characters of the Kings and Queens of England.
This account is generally received; but against it we may place Chaucer ’s description ofthe accoutrements of a miller in the time of Edward III .
“ a STjefeltr tfoirnl bare lie fit St's fiose,
Bontie foas &ts fate, anti ramnstti foas St's nose.”
The Reve’s Tale.
“ A thwytel or whittle, a word not quite gone out of use, was a knife, such as was carriedabout the person so late as the time of Charles I. , by those whose quality did not entitle themto the distinction of a sword.”— Hunter’s Iiallamshire.
We must also mention two notes by Mr. Nicolas, in “ The Privy Purse Expenses ofHenry the Eighth.” “ In the 3d Edward IV . knives were forbidden from being imported.