But as herein all these sortes doe farre exceede
their elders and predecessours, so in tyme past the costly
furniture _stayed there_, whereas now it is descended yet lower,
even unto the inferior artificiers and most fermers[39] who have
learned to garnish also their cupbordes with plate, their beddes
with tapestrie and silk hanginges, and their table with fine
naperie whereby the wealth of our countrie doth infinitely
appeare...."
[39] Farmers.
Much of this wealth has, of course, been scattered. Time, poverty,
war, the rise and fall of families, have caused the dispersion of
these treasures. Sometimes you find valuable old prints or china in
obscure and unlikely places. A friend of the writer, overtaken by a
storm, sought shelter in a lone Welsh cottage. She admired and bought
a rather curious jug. It turned out to be a somewhat rare and valuable
ware, and a sketch of it has since been reproduced in the _Connoisseur_.
I have myself discovered three Bartolozzi engravings in cottages in
this parish. We give an illustration of a seventeenth-century
powder-horn which was found at Glastonbury by Charles Griffin in 1833
in the wall of an old house which formerly stood where the Wilts and
Dorset Bank is now erected. Mr. Griffin's account of its discovery is
as follows:--
"When I was a boy about fifteen years of age I took a ladder up
into the attic to see if there was anything hid in some holes that
were just under the roof.
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