Wall paintings had come into use in the houses of the better sort, and the hardwood finishings of the parlor and other important rooms displayed elaborate carvings and a massiveness and dignity of scheme. Among the newer styles of chairs was one of the folding sort, which exactly resembled our camp stools. Griffins, centaurs, and the like were patterns for candle and torch holders, which were often of wrought iron of an elaborate design. The branch of latten with four lights, mentioned in the inventory quoted, referred to a sort of chandelier, holding four candles, which was suspended from the centre of the ceiling and was raised and lowered by means of a cord and pulley. As the people began to lose taste for the hall, on account of its publicity, they gradually withdrew from it to the parlors for many of the purposes to which the hall had been originally devoted. The recess seat at the windows was the favorite place for the female members of the household when employed in needlework and other sedentary occupations, and the apartment was commonly used for the family meals. In a little treatise dating at the close of the fifteenth century, one of the speakers is made to say: "So down we came again into the parlor, and there found divers gentlemen, all strangers to me; and what should I say more, but to dinner we went." The table, we are told, "was fair spread with diaper cloths, the cupboard garnished with goodly plate." Also, the parlors relieved the bedchambers of many of the uses to which they had been put, and secured to them greater privacy. Largely because of the lack of any other place, ladies had been accustomed to receive their friends in their bedchambers, but now the parlor was used for a reception room, and there was spent much of the time which the female part of the family had previously passed in the bower or the chamber.