In the days of plots, when Titus Oates set half the nation by the ears, when James solemnly warned the merry Charles of plots against his life, provoking the cynical retort, "They will never kill me, James, to make you king," secret drawers were no doubt a necessity to a fashionable cabinet. Catherine of Braganza, his queen, brought with her from Portugal many sumptuous fashions in furniture, notably cabinets and chairs of Spanish and Portuguese workmanship. The cavaliers scattered by the Civil War returned, and as in their enforced exile on the Continent they had cultivated foreign tastes, it was only natural that Dutch, French, and Italian work found its way to this country and effected the character of the early furniture of the Charles II. period. From Portugal came the high-backed chair, having the back and the seat of leather cut with fine design, and coloured or gilded. This leather work is of exquisite character, and we reproduce a portion of a Portuguese chair-back of this period to show the artistic excellence of the design. With Catherine of Braganza came the marriage dower of Bombay, and from India, where the settlement of Goa had been Portuguese for centuries, were sent to Europe the carved chairs in ebony, inlaid in ivory, made by the native workmen from Portuguese and Italian models, but enriched with pierced carving and intricate inlay of ivory in a manner which only an Oriental craftsman can produce. Having become fashionable in Portugal, they made their appearance in England, and rapidly became popular. At Penshurst Place there are several fine specimens of this Indo-Portuguese work, with the spindles of the chair-backs of carved ivory; and in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford there is the well-known chair which was presented by Charles II. to Elias Ashmole. [Illustration: _By permission of Messrs. Hampton & Sons._ PORTUGUESE HIGH-BACK CHAIR. Seat and back formed of two panels of old stamped leather, studded with brass bosses.] Both in this later Stuart period and in the days of the first Charles inlay was considerably used to heighten the carved designs on oak tables, chairs, and cabinets. The growth of commerce was responsible for the introduction of many varieties of foreign woods, which were used to produce finer effects in marquetry than the rude inlay of Elizabethan days. The Frontispiece to this volume represents a very handsome cabinet of English workmanship, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. It is an unusually fine example of the middle seventeenth century, and bears the date 1653, the year when Cromwell forcibly dissolved the Rump Parliament and was declared "Lord Protector of the Commonwealth."