From these and similar inventories we find that the only furniture in the hall, or main room of the house--often occupying the whole of the ground floor--and the parlor, or sitting-room, when there was one, consisted of two or three chairs, a few joint-stools--that is, stools made of wood jointed or fitted together, as distinguished from those more rudely made--a table of the plainest construction, and possibly one or more "painted cloths" hung on the walls. These painted cloths were cheap substitutes for the tapestries with which great mansions were adorned, and they were often found in the cottages of the poor. The paintings were generally crude representations of Biblical stories, together with maxims or mottoes, which were sometimes on scrolls or "labels" proceeding from the mouths of the characters. Shakespeare refers to these cloths several times; for instance, in _As You Like It_ (iii. 2. 291), where Jaques says to Orlando: "You are full of pretty answers; have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives and conned them out of rings?"--referring to the mottoes, or "posies," as they were called, often inscribed in finger-rings. Orlando replies: "Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth, from whence you have studied your questions." Falstaff (_1 Henry IV._ iv. 2. 28) says that his recruits are "ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth." In an anonymous play, _No Whipping nor Tripping_, printed in 1601, we find this passage:-- "Read what is written on the painted cloth: Do no man wrong; be good unto the poor; Beware the mouse, the maggot, and the moth, And ever have an eye unto the door," etc. When carpets are mentioned in these inventories, they are coverings for the tables, not for the floors, which, even in kings' palaces, were strewn with rushes. Grumio, in _The Taming of the Shrew_ (iv. 1. 52) sees "the carpets laid" for supper on his master's return home. A Stratford inventory of 1590 mentions "a carpet for a table." Carpets were also used for window-seats, but were seldom placed on the floor except to kneel upon, or for other special purposes. The bedroom furniture was equally rude and scanty, though better than it had been when the old folk of the time were young. Harrison says:-- "Our fathers and we ourselves have lien full oft upon straw pallets covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain or hopharlots [coarse, rough cloths], and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster. If it were that our fathers or the good man of the house had a mattress or flock-bed, and thereto a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the town, so well were they contented." But feather beds had now come into use, with pillows, and "flaxen sheets," and other comfortable appliances. Henry Field had "one bed-covering of yellow and green" among his household goods.