The mantelpieces are extremely interesting, as many of them are of the old inverted funnel shape, and are supplied with tiers of shelves— sometimes as many as six—for the reception of ornaments. Upon these now stands a good deal of blue and white china, many pieces of which belonged to Queen Mary. Pieces that are known to have belonged to her are two blue and white jars and two goddesses in Queen Mary’s Closet, and two goddesses and two vases, about eighteen inches high, on the mantelpiece of William III’s Presence Chamber. Charles II, who, while a royal refugee, spent much time in Holland, had acquired the new taste. It was there, doubtless, that he saw visions of wealth in the Indies that later led him to grant the English East India Company a charter, and to embark on a disastrous and inglorious war, which resulted in London hearing foreign guns for the first time since England was a nation. His keen appreciation of Oriental works of art, however, was somewhat dulled when his bride, Catherine of Braganza, brought him a shipload of cabinets and ceramics in lieu of the dowry her mother had promised, although Evelyn, in his description of Hampton Court (1662), says: “The Queen brought over with her from Portugal such Indian cabinets as had never before been seen here.” It is frequently asserted with apparent authority that Mary carried the Dutch taste for porcelain and the manufactures of the Far East into England; but, as we have seen, this idea is not well founded. Herself a china-maniac, she merely set the royal stamp of approval on contemporary taste, and made Hampton Court a model of the _style refugié_. That style dominated English and Dutch homes before she heartlessly danced in the Palace of Whitehall from which her father had fled. Hampton Court, remodelled under her directions, was not completed till 1693. Many documents show that the _style refugié_ was popular in English aristocratic homes before that date. [Illustration: PLATE LI.—_Mirrors, Console Table and Candlesticks, by Marot._ ] Under William and Mary, London swarmed with Dutch merchants and refugee Huguenot arts and craftsmen, and was almost as much of an Eastern bazaar as Amsterdam was. Mary set the pace, and wealth and aristocracy gladly followed. As an example of the vogue, we cannot do better than take the diary of the wealthy John Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, and quote a few entries of expenditure.