And in a few days, a few short days, all was at an end; and the pomp and the pageantry, the mirth and the revelry, was but as a dream--a most bitter, indeed, and painful dream to hundreds who had bartered away their substance for the sake of a transient glitter: "We seken fast after felicite But we go wrong ful often trewely, Thus may we sayen alle." Homely indeed, after the paraphernalia of the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," would appear the homes of England on the return of their masters. For though the nobles had begun to remove the martial fronts of their castles, and endeavoured to render them more commodious, yet in architecture the nation participated neither the spirit nor the taste of its sovereign. The mansions of the gentlemen were, we are told, still sordid; the huts of the peasantry poor and wretched. The former were generally thatched buildings composed of timber, or, where wood was scarce, of large posts inserted in the earth, filled up in the interstices with rubbish, plastered within, and covered on the outside with coarse clay. The latter were light frames, prepared in the forest at small expense, and when erected, probably covered with mud. In cities the houses were constructed mostly of the same materials, for bricks were still too costly for general use; and the stories seem to have projected forward as they rose in height, intercepting sunshine and air from the streets beneath. The apartments were stifling, lighted by lattices, so contrived as to prohibit the occasional and salutary admission of external air. The floors were of clay, strewed with rushes, which often remained for years a receptacle of every pollution.[112] In an inventory of the goods and chattels of Sir Andrew Foskewe, Knight, dated in the 30th year of King Henry the Eighth, are the following furnitures. We select the hall and the best parlour, in which he entertained company, first premising that he possessed a large and noble service of rich plate worth an amazing sum, and so much land as proved him to be a wealthy man:-- "The hall.--A hangin of greine say, bordered with darneng (or needlework); item a grete side table, with standinge tressels; item a small joyned cuberde, of waynscott, and a short piece of counterfett carpett upon it; item a square cuberde, and a large piece of counterfett wyndowe, and five formes, &c. "Perler.--Imprim., a hangynge of greene say and red, panede; item a table with two tressels, and a greyne verders carpet upon it; three greyne verders cushyns; a joyned cupberd, and a carpett upon it; a piece of verders carpet in one window, and a piece of counterfeit carpett in the other; one Flemishe chaire; four joyned stooles; a joyned forme; a wyker skryne; two large awndyerns, a fyer forke, a fyer pan, a payer of tonges; item a lowe joyned stole; two joyned foote-stoles; a rounde table of cipress; and a piece of counterfeitt carpett upon it; item a paynted table (or picture) of the Epiphany of our Lord."[113]