In England, porcelain had been a comparatively rare luxury confined to the tables and closets of rich collectors until about 1630. Cromwell laid a heavy duty on it. China-shops under the Restoration became one of the favourite lounging-places of fops and curiosity hunters, and the appointments made there caused them to fall into bad repute. Later, emporiums of Oriental wares were known as India houses. Queen Mary while only the Princess of Orange in Holland, had developed quite a craze for porcelain and Indian goods of all kinds. When she became Queen of England, Sir Christopher Wren designed cabinets and shelves for her china in Hampton Court Palace. Lord Nottingham in his news-letter descriptive of Queen Mary’s movements (1689) says: “Her majesty being disappointed of her second play, amused herself with other diversions. She dined at Mrs. Graden’s, the famous woman in the hall, that sells fine ribbons and headdresses. From thence she went to Mrs. Ferguson’s to de Vetts and other Indian houses.” With such tastes in high places, it is not astonishing to find a popular furore for China and everything Oriental, spurious and real. This Chinese taste affected everything in architecture and interior decoration. With regard to architecture, the ill-understood Gothic had fallen into very bad odour. John Evelyn’s opinion of it (1697) is worth quoting. He says: “A certain fantastical and licencious manner of building which we have since called _Modern_ (or _Gothic_ rather) congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy and monkish piles without any just proportion, use or beauty.... So when we meet with the greatest industry and expensive carving, full of _fret_ and lamentable _Imagery_ a judicious spectator is distracted and quite confounded.... Not that there is not something of solid and odly artificial too, after a sort; but then the universal and unreasonable thickness of the walls, clumsy buttresses, towers, sharp-pointed arches, doors and other apertures without proportion; nonsense insertions of various marbles impertinently placed; turrets and pinnacles thickset with Munkies and chimæras and abundance of busy work and other incongruities dissipate and break the angles of the sight and so confound it that one cannot consider it with any steadiness.... Vast and gigantic buildings indeed but not worthy the name of architecture.” Domestic architecture, however, was undergoing considerable changes under the new influences. These changes were in the direction of comfort and cosiness, to the sacrifice of grandeur and magnificence. Of course, novelty aroused opposition. Evelyn (1697) protests: [Illustration: PLATE XIX]