The settle illustrated is a plainer variety of the settle made for use by fashionable folk with delicately panelled back. Very often, in cottage furniture, chests and other pieces are broken up to make into smaller furniture or to be incorporated into furniture of a later design. Often it is found that the underframing of an old gate table made in the seventeenth or eighteenth century is from an earlier chest. In the present instance it will be seen that the back panels of the settle have been made from an older chest, which bears the inscribed initials, still visible, "I.E." In date this settle is about 1675, and is contemporary with the square-backed chair illustrated on the same page. Here the panel in back projects, that is, it is slightly bevelled forward. The bevelling of the panel is always a sign that a chair is later in date than the year 1670. Illustrated on the same page is a remarkable chair having the initials "A.S.C.B." and the date 1777 carved on it. It is a striking instance of the adherence to old time-honoured form by the local cabinet-maker, with touches that, even although the date were not present, would tell their own story. This dull wood proclaims a message in accents no less sure than the sturdy yeoman's to Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and as a chair in date _anno Domini_ 1777 may afford to "smile at the claims of long descent" of more pretentious and fashionable furniture. It is like a rich vein of dialect running in some old country song ripe with phrase of Saxon days. It seems incredible that this survival of early-Jacobean days should have been put together by a village craftsman true to convention and exact in seat and arms and stretcher. But it was not done unthinkingly. Here is a chair, astounding to note, made when Sheraton was creating his new styles to supplant Chippendale, and when Hepplewhite stood between the two masters as a _via media_. And the back of this village chair has two distinct features translated from Hepplewhite's school--the wheatear crest and the panel with its broken corner! [Illustration: OAK CHAIRS. DATE ABOUT 1680. Showing the inclination of the craftsmen to assimilate designs then being fashioned in walnut. (_By the courtesy of Messrs. Phillips, Hitchin._)]