Note 5 — Chapter I · THE WIDOWED AND THE FATHERLESS.

“The state of society in the Mount’s Bay only half a century ago,” says Dr. John Davy, “was peculiar and different from what it is at present. Cornwall was then without great roads. The roads which traversed the country were bridle-paths rather than carriage roads. Carriages were almost unknown, and carts even very little used. I have heard my mother relate that when she was a girl there was only one cart in the town of Penzance, and if a carriage appeared in the streets it attracted universal attention. Pack-horses were then in general use for conveying merchandise, and the prevailing manner of travelling was on horseback. In the same town, where the population was about 2000 persons, there was only one carpet; the floors of rooms were sprinkled with sea sand, and there was not a silver fork. The only newspaper which then circulated in the West of England was the ‘Sherborne Mercury,’ and it was carried through the country, not by the post, but by a man on horseback, specially employed in distributing it.... Visiting was then conducted differently from what it is at present. Dinner-parties were almost unknown, excepting at the annual feast time. Christmas, too, was then a season of peculiar indulgence and conviviality, and a round of entertainments were given, consisting of tea and supper. Excepting at these two periods, visiting was almost entirely confined to tea-parties, which assembled at three o’clock and broke up at nine, and the amusement of the evening was commonly some round game at cards, as Pope Joan or Commerce.... Amongst the middle and higher classes there was little taste for literature, still less for science, and their pursuits were rarely of a dignified or intellectual kind. Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cock-fighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in. Smuggling was carried on to a great extent, and drunkenness and a low scale of morals were naturally associated with it.... Few places have exhibited greater changes within the last half century than Penzance. Not a single family belonging to the great gentry now in existence west of Hayle, or in the Mount’s Bay, was known one hundred years ago.”

“Carriages, it may be added, are of French invention. Under Francis I. (A.D. 1515-1547), who was contemporary with our Henry VIII., there were but two in Paris, one of which belonged to the Queen, and the other to Diana, the natural daughter of the French Henry II. There were but three in Paris in 1550; Henry IV. of France (A.D. 1589-1610) had one, but of very rude construction, and without straps or springs. The first courtier who set up this equipage in France was John de Laval de Bois-Dauphin, who could not travel otherwise on account of his enormous bulk. Previously to the use of carriages the kings of France travelled on horseback, the princesses were carried in litters, and ladies rode behind their squires. The first carriage seen in England was in the reign of Mary, about 1553; but the art of making them was unknown in this country at that time. Close carriages of good workmanship began to be used by persons of the highest quality at the close of the sixteenth century; Fitz-Allen earl of Arundel is said to have been the first who used them, and this was in 1580; their construction was various. They were first made in England about the year 1590, when they were called ‘whirlicotes.’ In the year 1601, an Act was passed to prevent the effeminacy of men riding in carriages (43d Elizabeth). The Duke of Buckingham, in 1619, was the first who had a carriage with six horses to it; and the Duke of Northumberland, on obtaining his liberation from the Tower (where he had been imprisoned since the Gunpowder Plot) and hearing that Buckingham was drawn about with six horses to his carriage, ordered, out of rivalry, eight horses to be put to his, and in that manner passed from the Tower through the City.”—Haydn’s Dictionary.

“In the twelfth century carpets were articles of luxury. It is mentioned by old English historians, as an instance of Becket’s splendid style of living, that his sumptuous apartments were, every day in winter, strewn with clean straw or hay. This was about the year 1160. The manufacture of woollen carpets was introduced into France from Persia at the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. Some artisans, who had quitted France in disgust, came over to England and established the carpet manufacture among us about 1750. Our Kidderminster, Axminster, and Wilton manufactures are the growth of the last hundred years.”—Ibid.