These remarks on the general character of the house are, of course, intended to apply to the ordinary dwelling-house, and not to the more extensive mansion--which already in the thirteenth century was made to surround, wholly or partly, an interior court--or to the castle. These more extensive edifices consisted only of a greater accumulation of the rooms and details which were found in the smaller house. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, no great change took place in the general characteristics of a private house. The hall was still the largest and most important room, and was now usually raised on an under vaulted room, which, to whatever use it may have been applied, was usually called the _cellar_. Part of it appears to have been sometimes employed as the stable. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the hall, which is evidently the main part of the building, was open to the roof, with cross beams, on which they hanged the troughs, and the stable was attached to it, and intervened between the house and the garden. In the Cokes Tale of Gamelyn, the hall has its posts, or columns, and there is attached to it a room called a _spence_, which was more frequently called the _buttery_, in which victuals of different kinds, and the wine and plate, were locked up, and the man who had the charge of it was called the _spencer_ or _despencer_, which it is hardly necessary to say was the origin of two common English surnames. The gentleman’s house, in Chaucer’s Sompnoures Tale, was a “large halle,” and is called a _court_, which had now become an ordinary term for a manor-house. _A stordy paas doun to the court he goth,_ _Wher as ther wonyd a man of gret honour._ --Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 7,744. In the Nonne Prestes Tale, the poor widow’s cottage also has its hall and _bour_, or chamber, although they were all sooty, of course, from the fires, which had no chimney to carry off the smoke. _Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle._ --Ib. l. 16,318. This house was situated within a court, or, as it is called, _yard_, which was enclosed by a hedge of sticks, and by a ditch:-- _A yerd sche had, enclosed al aboute_ _With stikkes, and a drye dich withoute._ In the Tale of Gamelyn, the yard, or court, as we use the Anglo-Saxon or the Anglo-Norman name for it, had a stronger fence, with a gate and wicket fastened by lock and bolt, and apparently a lodge for the porter. In the yard there was a draw-well, seven fathoms deep. While Gamelyn took possession of the hall, his brother shut himself up in the cellar, which could be made a safe place of refuge, when all the rest of the house was in the power of an enemy. The yard here had also a postern-gate. In the carpenter’s house, in Chaucer’s Milleres Tale, the chamber has a low window, to swing outwardly--