=Its Establishment as a Popular Type.=--The varied improvements and the slightly differing characteristics make it perfectly clear, when examined in detail, that the gate table in various parts of the country had firmly established itself and had won popular approval as a permanent type. In the search for tables of this form, however wide the net is spread by those indefatigable seekers in out-of-the-way places, and by the small army of trade collectors who scour the country for the purpose of unearthing something rare and unique, the story is always the same. In the most remote districts such tables are still found: the growth of the use of this gate-leg form permeated every part of the country. It was copied and recopied, native touches were added, and the old leading lines followed by generation after generation of craftsmen. It had as great a vogue during the long period of its history as the styles of Chippendale chairs had at a later date, when every country cabinet-maker was seized with the desire to produce minor Chippendale in oak or beech or elm. [Illustration: SMALL GATE TABLE. VERY EARLY TYPE. Length, 3 ft.; breadth, 2 ft. 4 ins.; height, 2 ft. 3 ins. Urn legs with plain gates with survival of Gothic trestle feet.] [Illustration: GATE TABLE. MIDDLE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Early example. Height, 2 ft.; top, 2 ft. 9 ins. × 2 ft. 3 ins. Square gates and turned leg indicate early type. Trestle ends still retained. (_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)] [Illustration: RARE TABLE. With double gates. Egg and reel turning. Turned stretchers. (Examples such as this are worth £18 to £35 owing to rare form.)] [Illustration: RARE GATE TABLE. With double gates with only one flap and having turned stretchers. Tables with one flap are rare and usually have two gates. {_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)] =The Jacobean Period.=--Essentially the flower of the popular creations of the Jacobean furniture-designer, the gate table must always stand as reminiscent of the days of Charles I. and Charles II. No picture of this period is considered artistically complete unless there be a gate-leg table with its picturesque lines adding a technical touch of correctness to interiors. The portrait of Herrick, the parson-poet of Devon, imaginative though it be, whenever it appears on canvas or illustrating his lyrics, shows the poet beside a fine gate-leg table. Stage tradition is equally sure on the same point. A company of swaggering cavaliers at an inn is not complete without a group arranged at one of these tables quaffing wine from flagons.