=The Slow Assimilation of Foreign Styles in Furniture.=--Farmhouse furniture almost eschewed fashion. In seventeenth-century days it pursued the even tenor of its way untrammelled by town influences. England in those days was not traversed by roads that lent themselves to neighbourly communication. A hundred years later Wedgwood found the wretched roads in Staffordshire, where waggons sunk axle-deep in ruts and pits, a hindrance to his business, and William Cobbett in his _Rural Rides_ leaves a record of Surrey woefully primitive at Hindhead, with dangerous hills and bogs, where the "horses took the lead and crept down, partly upon their feet and partly upon their hocks." From the days of James I. to those of James II., from the first Stuart Sovereign to the last of that ill-starred house, the country passed through rapid stages of volcanic history. The opening years of the century saw the colonisation of Ulster by the Scots and the English settlers, and the sailing of the _Mayflower_ and the foundation of New England by the Puritans, nine years after the publication of the Authorised version of the Bible. Under Charles I. came the struggle between the despotic power of the Crown and the newly awakened will of the people. Parliamentary right came into conflict with royal prerogative. The smouldering fire burst into flame when John Hampden, a country gentleman, refused to pay Ship Money, which was levied on the inland counties in 1637, and the arrest of five members of Parliament in 1642--Hampden, Pym, Holles, Haselrig, and Strode--precipitated the country into civil war. For seven years a continual series of battles were waged by the contending forces. The Eastern Counties formed themselves into a martial association, and the King set up his standard at Nottingham. From Bristol to Hull and from Nantwich to Newbury fierce engagements tore the country asunder. An Irish army was raised for the King, and the Scots under Leslie crossed the border in the Parliamentarian cause. With the execution of Charles I. came other dangers; the sword was not sheathed, nor had revolution left a contented country-side. Cromwell divided the kingdom into eleven military districts, and under his rule England took her place at the head of the Protestant States in Europe. [Illustration: OAK CHEST OF DRAWERS. Curious Jacobean type, with sunk panels and unusually high stand. This stand is the well-known eighteenth-century foot.] [Illustration: OAK CHEST OF DRAWERS. Charles II. type, with sunk panels and arcaded stand and feet typical of the period.]