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The bed was not the only space within the home to witness privacy: couples squabbled by the hearth and
window too, and other areas played host to intimacy and domestic activity. However, the home was, in many
respects, a much more public place than we now associate it as being. The bedroom in particular, did not exist.
The through-flow of people, as well as the general layout of houses, required a specific type of bed, which could
provide a private space. The curtains and woodwork were a parameter between this busy domestic space, and
one of privacy, rest and relative isolation. There are other objects from the domestic sphere which were created
to serve public and private functions, but perhaps none so effectively, or spatially poignantly, as the bed. When
criminals forced abuse and violence into that space, the parameters enclosed around the victim, and prevented
immediate discovery. Furthermore, when that criminality was brought before the court, the public was
imposed upon the private, as the bed became a space on trial. While these court records have allowed us to
analyse crimes of the bed, they are records of an area which had been inverted from its intended functions. The
bed was intended to be a haven for the individual and for the collective, but this was only afforded by relative
privacy, and privacy, in turn, fashioned opportunities for abuse.
References / Notes
1 Lucy Worsely, If Walls could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home (London: Faber and Faber 2012),
pp.3-5.
2 Poster beds were also known as ‘tester’ beds. Tester referred to the canopy of the bed.
3 Other examples of wood include bog-oak (the Inlaid Chamber at Sizergh Castle, Cumbria) and lignum
vitae (George Fox’s travelling bed, made in Barbados, and currently housed in Swarthmore Hall). As the
century went on, mahogany and maple were imported in large quantities, and furniture (including
beds) began to be made from these more malleable woods.
4 The Great Bed of Ware is currently housed by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (Museum no.
W.47-1931). William Shakespeare was one of many writers who gave special mention to the bed; ‘as
many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in
England.’ (William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night: Act three, scene two). See also Franc C. Chalfant (ed.),
Ben Johnson’s London; A Jacobean Place name Dictionary (University of Georgia Press, 1978), p. 192.
5 Lady Ann Fanshawe and Herbert Fanshawe (ed.), The Memoirs of Lady Ann Fanshawe (London: John
Bodley, 1907), p. 128
6 In 1610, a German traveller, named Lewis Frederick noted that the bed was a ‘swans down bed, eightfeet
wide.’ (William Brenchley Rye (ed.), England as seen by Foreigners in the Fays of Elizabeth and James
the First (London: J. R. Smith, 1865), p.62). John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn (London: Walter
Dunne, 1901), p.234; ‘In this wretched place, I lay on a bed stuffed with leaves, which made such a
crackling and so prick my skin through the tick that I could not sleep.’
7 Hudson, Roger (ed.) The Grand Quarrel: Women’s Memoirs of the English Civil War (Gloucestershire: The
Folio Society, 2003), p. 157.
8 For another example of the dynamics of the bed’s curtains see: Anon., A curtain-conference, being a
discourse betwixt (the late Lord Lambert, now) Iohn Lambert Esq; and his Lady, as they lay a bed together
one night at their house at Wimbleton. Related by the Lady Lambert to Tom Trim, her gentleman usher,
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