Chests were used as tables, and the tops had inlaid checkers to be used as chessboards. They were also used as sideboards on which to place dishes of food, the dining-table being a board which was placed on trestles, that could be removed and packed away when not required (Figs. 225, 226). A cross-legged chair and a three-legged stool is shown at Fig. 228, which were common shapes in the fourteenth century. The illustration, Fig. 227, is that of a bedroom of the same period, and is taken from an English manuscript of the date of 1400. For these illustrations, and many others on the subject of furniture, we are indebted to the work of Mr. J. H. Pollen on “Furniture and Woodwork.” The bed in the latter illustration has a flat canopy, or tester, with embroidered hangings. The walls of the room are panelled, and the floor is in checkered parquetry. There is a curious seat that is partly an open press, with pottery, and metal vases placed as decoration on the top. [Illustration: Fig. 226.—Dining Table on Trestles; Fourteenth Century. (P.)] [Illustration: Fig. 227.—Bedroom Interior; 1400. (P.)] [Illustration: Fig. 228.—Seats; Fourteenth Century. (P.)] [Illustration: Fig. 229.—The Coronation Chair, Westminster Abbey. (P.)] Chests, trunks, or _bahuts_, were at this period, and in the time of the Normans, the most important articles in furniture: they were often made with inlaid wood decorations, and had strap-work of iron and ornate hinges. They were the usual repositories of the household valuables, money, and other treasures, and were carried on horses or mules when the family moved about from place to place. By degrees the chest, with the addition of a back and arms, became the settles or principal seats in the living-room, and the back developed with an added hood or projecting covering into the daïs, or throne-like seat, that was placed at the end of the chief room—the place of honour. Another and later development of the chest was to raise it on legs, and to add a back arrangement to it, with shelves for the display of household plate, to which was given the name of _dressoir_, or dresser, the latter in time developing into the modern sideboard. Chests were also important articles of church furniture, in which the sacred vessels, treasures, books, and priests’ garments could be locked up, and a particular form of chest kept in church vestries was the cope chest, which took the semicircular shape of the copes when laid out flat in these chests. Examples of these chests are still to be seen in some of the large cathedrals. [Illustration: Fig. 230.—Travelling Carriage; English; Fourteenth Century. (P.)] The coronation chair (Fig. 229) gives a good idea of a state chair of the early Gothic period in England. [Illustration: Fig. 231.—Travelling Carriage; English; Fourteenth Century. (P.)]