Hungerford Pollen has quoted a royal precept which was promulgated in this
year, and it plainly shows that our ancestors were becoming more refined
in their tastes. The terms of this precept were as follows, viz., "the
King's great chamber at Westminster be painted a green colour like a
curtain, that in the great gable or frontispiece of the said chamber, a
French inscription should be painted, and that the King's little wardrobe
should be painted of a green colour to imitate a curtain."

In another 100 or 150 years we find mediaeval Art approaching its best
period, not only in England, but in the great Flemish cities, such as
Bruges and Ghent, which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries played
so important a part in the history of that time. The taste for Gothic
architecture had now well set in, and we find that in this as in every
change of style, the fashion in woodwork naturally followed that of
ornament in stone; indeed, in many cases it is more than probable that the
same hands which planned the cathedral or monastery also drew the designs
for furniture, especially as the finest specimens of wood-carving were
devoted to the service of the church.

The examples, therefore, of the woodwork of this period to which we have
access are found to be mostly of Gothic pattern, with quaint distorted
conceptions of animals and reptiles, adapted to ornament the structural
part of the furniture, or for the enrichment of the panels.

To the end of the thirteenth century belongs the Coronation chair made for
King Edward I., 1296-1300, and now in Westminster Abbey. This historic
relic is of oak, and the woodcut on the following page gives an idea of
the design and decorative carving. It is said that the pinnacles on each
side of the gabled back were formerly surmounted by two leopards, of which
only small portions remain. The famous Coronation stone which, according