Editorial note — APPENDIX.
Reading edition
It was customary, in olden times, to place a “Salt Vat” in the centre of the dinner table. This vessel was often highly ornamented like Archbishop’s Parker’s Salt Vat, still preserved in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Appendix, Note E.
Persons of rank sat between the Salt Vat and the head of the table—while dependents or inferior persons sat below it.
An old English Ballad says—
“Thou art a carle of mean degree,
The salt it doth stand between me and thee.”
And in Bishop Hall’s Satires—
... “That he do, on no default,
Even presume to sit above the salt.”