The king, of course, may be supposed to have had unlimited means at his disposal for the improvement of his houses, and to have been better able than less exalted personages to gratify his wishes; but his subjects were also actuated by the same desires, and an examination of the large houses of the fourteenth century shows a considerable advance in the provision of rooms for special purposes, and indicates that the old restricted accommodation was no longer sufficient for the changing habits of the time. This expansion of the house was general, and was not confined to any particular district. To mention a few instances, there are in the North Alnwick Castle, built by the Percys about 1340, of which all but the external walls has been modernised; and Raby Castle, the home of the Nevills, Earls of Westmorland, built about 1378, also largely modernised. In the Midlands are Kenilworth Castle, almost rebuilt by John of Gaunt in the closing years of the fourteenth century; Warwick Castle, also almost entirely rebuilt by Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, a few years earlier; Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire, built by the De Broughtons about the beginning of the fourteenth century; Drayton House in Northamptonshire, by Simon de Drayton in 1328; and Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, where the greater part of the work is of this period. In the South is Penshurst Place for which a licence to crenellate was granted to John de Pulteney in 1341. The smaller houses of this period do not, of course, show such extensive improvements as the large places just mentioned, nevertheless in them may be seen the same tendency towards greater civilisation. Even in the far North, where the disturbed state of the Border retarded the development of household comfort, we have the commodious house of Naworth in Cumberland, and the smaller house of Yanwath in Westmorland. In Yorkshire is Markenfield Hall; in Cheshire, Baguley, of which little besides its timber hall is left; in Northamptonshire the small but fine house at Northborough; in Berkshire is Sutton Courtney, so much altered, however, as to have lost its original character; while in Somerset is the very curious “Castle” of Nunney, where the rooms are placed over each other more after the fashion of the earlier keeps than of the long and low manor houses which were by this time the prevailing type. In all these houses the hall was still the chief apartment, but it is supplemented by more subsidiary rooms than are to be found in earlier examples. The references in contemporary literature and documents are not numerous, but we have already seen that at Oakham in the Inquisition of 1340 the house consisted of a hall, four chambers, and a kitchen. If we turn to Chaucer, who lived during a large part of the fourteenth century, dying in 1400, we find in the few incidental references to domestic arrangements which occur that the hall was by far the most important room, although it had “chambers” and a “bower” to supplement it.