I know not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry, That date from the days of their mothers' mothers, But well I know how it is with me Continually I see the hands of the generations That owned each shiny familiar thing In play on its knobs and indentations, And with its ancient fashioning Still dallying. A comfortable and well-furnished home was for most classes of society a product of the nineteenth century. The history of the home, like that of the house, has been one of innovation at the higher and richer levels of society and of imitation at the lower. This downward spread of standards of comfort, if not always of good taste, was made possible by a rising level of real wealth, and in this there can be little doubt but that the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries marked a turning-point. It was then, for the first time at least since the beginning of the Middle Ages, that the real incomes of the rural classes – yeoman, copyholder, husbandman – showed any appreciable increase, giving them a disposable surplus and a discretionary power over its use. It was during this period that the forms of domestic life which have remained with us ever since were first developed. Tables, benches and chairs, cupboards and sideboards began to assume their familiar shapes. The solar or parlour developed distinct from the hall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]