Virginia gentlemen of the late seventeenth century about him, was constrained to declare, "I neither abound nor want." He said of his house, "my own dwelling house furnished with accommodations for a comfortable and gentile living, as a good dwelling house with rooms, four of them hung, and nine of them plentifully furnished with all things necessary and convenient." But when shipping black walnut to England, however, he satisfied his longing for luxuries by ordering, by the first ship bound for his river, "a table, pair of stands, Case Drawers & looking Glass Answerable, two large leather carpets and set of dressing boxes answerable to the table and stand"; later, considerable plate, by way of knives, forks, spoons, porringers, and candlesticks, all to be crested.
Living everywhere, it would seem, had improved. A far inland mountain farmer in Rappahannock County, Virginia, George Nicholls, lists in his will, with a court cupboard, other chests and articles which even then denote decided comfort: "two tables, one six and one four foot, one form, one great looking glass, one couch, one great joyned chair, one pair of andirons . . . one feather bed and furniture, two high bedsteads."
In the records of the Society of Friends, in the Lower Meeting record books in Virginia, around 1700, is an inventory of one William Bresy, seemingly well provided for in life. Besides innumerable chairs, chests, trunks, frame cupboards, and beds, he records feather beds and furniture, one-half dozen leather chairs, three sealskin trunks, one small gilt trunk, one fine square table, one-half dozen "joyn't" stools, two "tracle" bedsteads, "three cover cloths, belonging to the cupboard in Susannah's room," three pewter "pye" plates, one pottle pot, two brass skimmers, three urn spits, two pieces of blue linen, one drip pan, two pewter chamber pots, one silver "beker," one sack cup, one silver dram cup, two old negro men, two old negro women, not to mention "one English man servant, thirty sheep, a mare and a colt."
