It is unnecessary further to multiply examples. While one great house of the period differs from another in unimportant ways, those in which ornaments are extensively applied are without exception disfigured by them. The Elizabethan architectural ornamentation is at once pretentious and grotesquely ugly. It was only in so far as they held to a straightforward provision for domestic needs, and avoided architectural pretensions, that the English people of the Elizabethan Age produced really good domestic architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 132.--Portal of Wollaton Hall.] Toward the close of the sixteenth century many Flemish and Dutch ornamental workers had come into England, and had brought in the tasteless forms of design that had been current with them. The ungrammatical and inelegant misuse of the orders, and the meaningless barocco scrollwork, with which the Elizabethan houses were overloaded, may be largely due to them. But these modes of design were readily assimilated by the native English workmen, and approved by the aristocratic English taste. The architect, in the more modern sense, did not yet exist. The design and execution of these buildings were in the hands of the master builders. No complete drawings were prepared in advance. Only the general scheme in rough sketches of plans and elevations was furnished, and these were freely modified, and the details developed, as the work proceeded under the direction of the master mason. It was a survival of the mediæval system, and no better system could be devised so long as the workmen were suitably trained to their craft, worked together on traditional lines, and were governed by a common understanding, common aims, and a strong feeling of artistic fellowship. But the Elizabethan workmen were not thus associated and governed. The older traditions of design had been largely lost, and the builders were attempting to use architectural forms which they did not understand. The aberrations that resulted from the efforts of these craftsmen to use the classic orders were ludicrous, as we have abundantly seen. The orders were entirely foreign to the genius and to the requirements of the English people, and were altogether out of place in English house building. Their departure from their own proper traditions and architectural habits at length weakened the building craftsmen, so that they finally lost their occupation with the rise of the modern professional architect, who first appeared in England in the person of Inigo Jones, whose work we may consider in the next chapter. CHAPTER XIV ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND II. _Jones and Wren_