Of visitors from other lands than France may be noted Cecilia, Margravine of Baden and sister of the King of Sweden, in 1565, Feother Pissenopscoia, an ambassador in search of a bride for Ivan I, Tsar of Muscovy, in 1583, and Ludovic Verreyken, ambassador from the archiducal court of Flanders in 1600. Visits were expected from Mary of Scots in 1562 and from James in 1590, but in fact Mary never came until she was a fugitive or James until he was King.[76] Elizabeth, however, on her side, sent complimentary embassies for the intended wedding of James in 1589, and the baptism of his son Henry in 1594. The most important visitor to James himself was the Queen's brother, Christian, King of Denmark, who came twice. His elaborate state visit in July and August 1606 left several unpleasant memories behind it. The Kings fell out over James's indifference to Christian's sister. Hunting bored Christian and James disliked being outshone by his brother-in-law in running at the ring. Nor did the subjects more readily mix, for the Danes thought the English haughty, and the English thought the Danes gross; and in particular the heavy drinking habits of the north, although by no means uncongenial to James personally, led to scenes which were scandalous in the eyes of all who remembered the austerer fashions of Elizabeth.[77] It was a general relief when Christian decided to abridge the period originally set down for his stay. He came again, briefly and informally, in 1614. Other Jacobean visitors were the Duke of Holstein, another brother of the Queen, in 1604, the Prince de Joinville in 1607, the Prince of Brunswick, a nephew of the Queen, in 1610, the Duc de Bouillon in 1612, and the Elector Palatine, for his wedding with the Princess Elizabeth, in the same year. James received congratulations on his accession from ambassadors extraordinary sent by the Emperor and the Kings of France and Spain, as well as from other representatives of minor powers. Subsequently Juan de Velasco, Constable of Castile, came as ambassador extraordinary from Spain, with other Spanish and Flemish commissioners, for the signing of a treaty of peace in 1604, and had the honour of being waited upon by Shakespeare as groom of the chamber.[78]

In addition to extraordinary ambassadors there were generally also permanent or 'lieger' ambassadors in residence. These varied in number with the shifting diplomacies of the time. France was the foreign country most constantly represented at Elizabeth's Court.[79] There was generally also a Scottish ambassador. Diplomatic relations with Spain were broken off in 1584;[80] and there were no Italian ambassadors, in spite of overtures to Venice, until the last few months of the reign, when the Doge and Senate sent over the Secretary Scaramelli.[81] The accession of James and the peace with Spain brought about a considerable change in international relations, and henceforward there were regularly 'lieger' ambassadors from France, Spain, Venice, and Flanders, as well as ambassadors or agents from the Dutch states, Savoy and Florence. For the entertainment of these an occasional dinner or supper with the King sufficed, together with invitations to such ceremonies of state, revels, and tilts as were held in ordinary course. But the revels were perturbed and an infinity of trouble given to the officials who organized them by the persistent jealousies and disputes for precedence which prevailed amongst the diplomatic representatives themselves. The records of these intrigues, which especially centred round the great Court masks, and often determined the dates on which they were held, occupy much space in the dispatches sent home to Paris and to Venice, and furnished Sir John Finet in 1656 with material for the curious pages of his Philoxenis. The rival claims of the 'Catholic' King of France and the 'most Christian' King of Spain to be regarded as the first Sovereign in Christendom had already caused trouble as far back as 1564.[82] The question had naturally been in abeyance during the rupture with Spain. Under James it broke out again, and each ambassador had the strictest order from his government not to abate a jot or tittle of his full claims to precedence. James, being rex pacificus, had no desire to commit himself to a decision on so knotty a point, and did his best to evade it, by not inviting both ambassadors to the same festivity. But even then one festivity differed from another in glory, and the attempt to keep an even balance gave rise to endless tracasseries. During the earlier years it seems clear that a variety of causes, amongst which must be counted his own superior astuteness, a liberal distribution of bribes, the Spanish proclivities of Anne, and probably also the deliberate trend of James's foreign policy, enabled Juan de Taxis to snatch more than one advantage from his French rivals. He secured an invitation to the Queen's mask both in 1604 and 1605. This double rebuff led to a change in the French embassy, and a similar success of De Taxis in 1608 so infuriated Henri IV that he threatened to withdraw his ambassador altogether, until James judged it discreet to call his attention to the still unpaid financial obligations which he had incurred to the English Crown in the previous reign. After the death of Henri in 1610 and the consequent rapprochement between France and Spain, the balance of political forces shifted, and, for a time at least, the English Court laid itself out to gratify rather than humiliate the French. Minor bones of precedence were worried between Venice and Flanders, and between Florence and Savoy, while the Spanish ambassador took offence if he was asked to appear in public with the representative of the revolted Spanish provinces of the Netherlands.[83]

II
THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

THE ordering of court life and ceremonial was in the hands of a group of departments which made up the somewhat complicated establishment of the royal Household. But the Household, at a time when the personal capacity of the Crown was as yet imperfectly differentiated from its national capacity, was not merely a domestic organization; it was still to a large extent an instrument of central executive government. It must in fact be regarded as the direct descendant of the eleventh-century curia regis, through which all the important functions, deliberative, judicial, financial, and administrative, had been carried out. The curia had consisted partly of the territorial magnates, earls, and barons, who had been, or whose fathers had been, the King's comitatus in battle; partly of knights still in attendance upon the King's person, and hoping some day, in reward for their services, to become territorial magnates in turn; partly, and to an increasing extent as government became more complicated and difficult, of clerks whose trained skill with the pen and with figures made them more practically useful than the lay knights in all those branches of affairs which entailed book-keeping and correspondence. All the members of the curia, in smaller or greater numbers, according to the magnitude of the business to be transacted and the willingness of the lords to leave their estates, sat with the King from time to time, and advised him as his consilium; but except on great occasions of state it was left to the knights to wait at his table and order his servants about, and to the clerks to write and send his letters, and to act as his assessors or his deputies in the exercise of justice or the collection and spending of his revenue. In course of time some of the functions of the original curia had become specialized in distinct departments, which acquired a permanent habitation at Westminster, ceased to follow the King's wanderings, and were no longer regarded as part of the personal Household. Thus the curia as a judicial body became the Courts of Law; the curia as a financial body became the Exchequer; while at a somewhat later date the Chancery undertook the double function of issuing royal grants and other formal correspondence of the Crown, and of supplementing the Courts of Law by exercising an equitable jurisdiction in cases which ordinary law was inadequate to cover. To the central curia or Household, still composed of lay and clerical officers lodged in the King's palace and eating in his hall, wherever that might happen to be, three things were left. It ministered to the material well-being and splendour of the Sovereign himself; it exercised under his personal direction such functions of administration, for example the control of foreign policy and war, as had not passed to the specialized departments; and, perhaps most important of all, it remained potentially able to resume at his will the exercise of functions precisely analogous to those which had so passed. This paradox of the duplicate exercise of royal functions, through the specialized departments and through the Household, lies at the bottom of an understanding of mediaeval government.

The differentiation of the Courts of Law, the Exchequer, and the Chancery from the Household was complete by the thirteenth century; but the same tendency towards the budding off of quasi-independent departments of state from the administrative nucleus continued to manifest itself in a minor degree up to and even, for all their centralizing instinct, within the period of the Tudors. Moreover, as the scale of the Household became larger and its individual ministers began to require assistance, there grew up a corresponding tendency towards the formation of separate offices within the nucleus itself. The staffing of these offices with servants of various grades, their responsibilities and interrelations, and the control of them through the chief officers of the Household, were determined by royal ordinances, which go into minute detail, and reveal a complex organization, based upon long-standing tradition, and at the same time flexible in its capacity of adaptation to shifting circumstances. The main structure of the Household, as we find it under Elizabeth, appears to have been already fixed in the time of Edward IV and even in that of Edward II, although minor changes had been introduced, largely through Tudor imitation of the French hôtel du roi, just as there had been minor changes under Richard II and his Lancastrian successors, some of which are noted to our advantage by a clerk of literary tastes, who about 1478 bethought him to compile in the so-called Liber Niger a systematic account or rationale of the establishment in which doubtless he played a part. And the beginnings of the same structure can be traced back farther still, through ordinances of Edward I in 1279 to the Constitutio Domus Regis as it stood at the end of Henry I's reign in 1135, and even perhaps, so far as the principal officers are concerned, to the Normanized Anglo-Saxon Court of pre-Conquest days. And after Elizabeth's reign the structure lasted, again with modifications of detail, for nearly two centuries more, until it was somewhat severely overhauled, in a moment of reforming zeal, by what is known as Burke's Act of 1782.[84] This conservatism of structure may perhaps justify us in finding an explanation of the tripartite character which the organization of the Household at every stage displays, as arising naturally out of the local arrangement of a primitive royal habitation. The palace stood in a court-yard, and it consisted essentially of a hall where the King feasted and took counsel with his comitatus, and of a chamber where he retired to sleep and to be private, and where he probably kept his treasure-chest. The duties of his personal servants fell either in the court-yard or in the hall or in the chamber. In the court-yard the constabularii drilled the royal body-guard and the marescalli looked after the horses; in the hall the dapiferi and the pincernae ministered food and drink; in the chamber the camerarii or cubicularii, aided as time went on by the clerici, watched the King's treasure and his bed, and stood ready to receive and transmit his personal mandates. Originally, it would seem, there were several officers of each class. Afterwards they were reduced to one, or one was chosen as magister over the rest; whatever the process, a single chief officer, with a group of subordinates beneath him, emerges as representative of each of the three departments. Perhaps the change was assisted by the demand of the barons, jealous of the rise in their absence of new men at Court, to have Household posts conferred upon them as part of their hereditaments. By the middle of the twelfth century there were already a hereditary Great Chamberlain, a High Steward, a High Constable, a Chief Butler, and an Earl Marshal.[85] But, obviously, if the King was in the habit of appointing two chamberlains or two stewards, he could make one of each pair hereditary, and still have another at his own appointment. And he could call on the hereditary officer to officiate on state occasions and the appointed officer to officiate in daily life. The hereditary man would have the greater dignity and the appointed man the greater power. This, rather than deputation by the hereditary officers, seems to be the explanation of the existence of a Chamberlain of the Household side by side with the Lord Great Chamberlain and of a Steward of the Household side by side with the Lord High Steward. It is really only another example of the duplication of functions, through officers of state on the one hand, and Household officers on the other, to which attention has already been called; with the added feature that in this case the officers of state seem to have had sinecures from the beginning.

The tripartite organization is traceable clearly enough in the Household of Elizabeth, as in that of her predecessors. There was, of course, a close co-operation at many points between the different departments; and, indeed, the simplicity of the original scheme had inevitably been interfered with, as the sovereigns began more and more to retire from their hall and to subdivide their chamber in order to adapt it to the complicated needs of an increasingly luxurious private life. The department of the court-yard, moreover, would appear, long before Elizabeth's time, to have shed many of what must be supposed to have been its original functions. The hereditary Lord High Constable had left no constabularius behind him at court, and although the Earl Marshal, also hereditary, continued to exercise certain functions, such as an oversight over the heralds, he was in no sense the head of a Household department. The Knight Marshal, who exercised a jurisdiction over breaches of peace within the verge (virgata) of twelve leagues round the court, was nominally at least his deputy, but the only other marshals in the Household were officers of the Hall. Similarly the oversight of the guard seems to have passed to the Chamberlain. Nor had the Marshal any longer the responsibility for the stable which the etymology of his name suggests.[86] The Stable was, indeed, still a distinct department, but its head was the Master of the Horse, who, although he ranked as one of the three chief officers of the Household, was of comparatively recent origin.[87]

By a somewhat troublesome variation in the use of terms, the Lord Steward's department is sometimes called the 'Household' in a very narrow sense, which excludes the Chamber and the Stable. The author of the Liber Niger distinguishes it as the domus providentiae from the Chamber as the domus magnificentiae.[88] Roughly speaking, it concerned itself with the material necessities, the food and drink, the lighting and the fuel, of the Sovereign and his court, while all else that ministered to his personal life and the dignity of his state, his lodging and his apparel, his entertainments, his study and his recreations, fell within the sphere of the Chamber. Its original nucleus was still represented under Elizabeth by the officers of the Hall, Marshals, Sewers, and Surveyors; but the Hall had shrunk in importance since the Sovereign had ceased to dine in it, and some of these posts had long been duplicated within the Chamber itself, and even there were tending to become honorific rather than effective.[89] The real functions of the department were now exercised in the subsidiary offices of provision, which had grown up round the Hall. Of these there were twenty, each under a Serjeant or other head with an appropriate staff of clerks, yeomen, grooms, pages, and children. They were the Kitchen, the Bake-house, the Pantry, the Cellar, the Buttery, the Pitcher-house, the Spicery, the Chandlery, the Wafery, the Confectionery, the Ewery, the Laundry, the Larder, the Boiling-house, the Accatry, the Poultry, the Scalding-house, the Pastry, the Scullery, and the Woodyard. The department also included the Almonry under a Lord High Almoner, who was an ecclesiastic, and the Porters. Administrative control was exercised by the Board of Green Cloth, consisting of the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household, and the Cofferer or household cashier.[90] These had the assistance of a staff of clerks and clerk comptrollers, known as the Counting House. Above all was the chief officer of the department, the Lord Steward of the Household. The Steward, whose name seems to be an exact equivalent for both the Latin terms dapifer and Senescallus, is not likely to have had in the beginning any priority over the camerarius; but historical reasons had brought him to the forefront towards the end of the thirteenth century, and thereafter he continued to rank as first officer of the Household. Henry VIII, following a French analogy, had renamed him Grand Master of the Household, but the new term had not permanently succeeded in establishing itself. Under Elizabeth the post was sometimes left vacant. But it was always filled during the session of a Parliament, for it was the ancient custom for the lords of Parliament to dine at the Lord Steward's table in the court.[91] In the absence of a Lord Steward, the department was managed, under some general supervision from the Lord Chamberlain, who then became first officer, by the Treasurer and Comptroller, who were important personages with seats on the Privy Council. The original dapiferi had had as colleagues the pincernae, but the Chief Butlership was now an hereditary sinecure, and the duties were divided between the subordinate office of the Cellar and the Cupbearer, who was an officer of the Chamber.

We come now to the Lord Chamberlain, incomparably the most important figure at court in all matters concerned with entertainments. The camerarii and cubicularii are discernible before the Conquest, and the corresponding Anglo-Saxon terms appear to be burþegn, bedþegn, and hræglþegn. Perhaps the hrægl or wardrobe was already becoming separated from the bur or bed-chamber.[92] In the days of William Rufus one Herbert was regis cubicularius et thesaurarius.[93] This was before the Exchequer under its Lord High Treasurer had branched off as a separate department of state, but the post of Chamberlain of the Exchequer continued for many centuries to testify to the original location of the treasure chest in the camera. About 1135 there was a magister camerarius, the equal in salary and allowances of the cancellarius, the dapiferi, the magister pincerna, the thesaurarius, and the constabularii. There were also other camerarii of lower degrees taking turns of duty, and a special camerarius candelae, ranking lower still.[94] Presumably the magister camerarius became the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain, whose coronation services, which are connected with the charge of the King's bed-chamber, the handing of a basin and towel at the banquet, and the preparation of the royal oblations, afford a sufficient indication of the duties of the court office.[95] And on the retirement of the hereditary officer from court, it seems probable that one of the other camerarii advanced to the position of acting magister. At any rate, when the treatise known as Fleta was compiled about 1290, there was a single camerarius with a sub-minister and other officers beneath him. Perhaps he was by this time barely the equal of the senescallus, to whom he sat as assessor in the court de placitis Aulae Regis, although he had also an independent jurisdiction over his own officers and those of the Wardrobe, who were exempt from the Steward's court.[96] On the other hand he was, as Robert of Westminster calls him, 'custos capitis regis', and the author of Fleta tells us in another connexion that 'in hospitio pro regula habetur, quod quanto propinquior sit quis Regi, tanto dignior'.[97] On the whole it seems probable that, whatever his traditional status may have been, the practical tendency of the extensive political use made by Edward I of the Steward and the clerical officers of the Wardrobe was to throw the Chamberlain into the background.[98] We also learn from Fleta that it was the business of the Chamberlain to look after the King's bed and chamber, and that as fees he had his keep in court, fines from ecclesiastic and lay homagers, the disused plenishings of the camera, and a share of all gifts and offerings of food made to the King.[99]

After the break-up of the power of the Wardrobe in the earlier part of the fourteenth century, the propinquity of the Chamberlain to the King gave him an increasing political importance, and attempts were made by the barons to secure his appointment in Parliament. Both in that assembly and in the Privy Council he frequently served as the royal mouthpiece, and he became the regular channel through which petitions for the exercise of the royal prerogative of pardon reached the King.[100] But he continued to discharge his domestic responsibilities, which are detailed both in the Liber Niger about 1478 and in early Tudor documents.[101] The Tudor change in the relation between the Crown and the nobility is well indicated by the fact that, while in the fourteenth century the Chamberlain had been a banneret or even a simple knight, in Elizabeth's time the office was an object of ambition for earls and barons. But the dual functions, political and domestic, remained unaltered. The 'Lord' Chamberlain, as he was now generally called, was in regular attendance at court, where his power and responsibility were alike considerable.[102] He gave personal attention to the distribution of lodgings in the palace.[103] He made the arrangements for the progress.[104] He received the ambassadors and others entitled to a royal audience and conducted them into the presence.[105] He was liable to be rated by the Queen if there was not enough plate on the cupboard.[106] He not merely planned the revels but himself kept order in the banqueting-hall. And for this purpose the white staff, which was the symbol of his office, was a practical instrument ready to his hand.[107] The delivery of this white staff to him by the Sovereign constituted his appointment, which was during pleasure; and at its determination he delivered it up again. The Lord Steward and the Treasurer and Comptroller of the Household were similarly appointed, and it is a picturesque touch that at the funeral of the Sovereign the Household officers broke their white staves over the bier.[108] Elizabeth's Chamberlains had a fee of £133 6s. 8d. and a table and other allowances at court; also a livery from the Great Wardrobe of fourteen yards of tawny velvet, which had been converted by 1606 into an additional fee of £16.[109]

Elizabeth's first Lord Chamberlain was her great-uncle, Lord William Howard, a younger son of the second Duke of Norfolk, who had been created Lord Howard of Effingham in 1554.[110] He was appointed by 20 November 1558, and resigned on becoming Lord Privy Seal in July 1572. His successor was Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex, who appears to have held office continuously, in spite of occasional absence from his duties, until his death on 9 June 1583. Then came Charles, second Lord Howard of Effingham, for a short period from Christmas 1583 or earlier until his appointment as Lord Admiral about June 1585; and then on 4 July 1585 Elizabeth's first cousin, Henry Carey, first Lord Hunsdon, who established and handed down to his son the famous company of players which included William Shakespeare. Hunsdon was himself a soldier rather than a courtier.[111] He died on 22 July 1596, and the Chamberlainship passed to William Brooke, seventh Lord Cobham. But on 5 March 1597 Cobham himself died, and the office reverted to the house of Hunsdon in the person of George Carey, second lord, who retained it to the end of the reign. By this time he was in ill health, and although he was at first formally continued in his post with the rest of the household, he was replaced on 4 May 1603 by Thomas, Lord Howard of Walden, who on the following 21 July was created Earl of Suffolk. He died on 9 September 1603. Suffolk remained Lord Chamberlain during the palmy days of the Jacobean revels. But in 1614 he became Lord Treasurer, and on 10 July the Chamberlainship was conferred upon the then reigning royal favourite, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, much to the disappointment of Shakespeare's patron, William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, who had to content himself with a promise of the reversion.[112] This, however, fell in sooner than might have been hoped for. Somerset came to disaster for his share in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1615, and on 2 November, shortly before he was sent to the Tower, Lord Wotton, the Comptroller of the Household, came from the King to demand his seals and the white staff. He handed over the seals, says our informant, the Venetian ambassador, 'and as for the staff, which he pointed out to him in a corner of the room, he might take it'. Lord Wotton replied that the King did not order him to take it, but Somerset to give it, 'which he did'.[113] Pembroke was appointed on 23 December 1615 and remained Lord Chamberlain until 3 August 1626, when he was succeeded by his brother Philip Earl of Montgomery.[114]

The illness, or employment elsewhere, of a Lord Chamberlain sometimes rendered necessary the appointment of a deputy. Both Howard of Effingham and Hunsdon appear to have acted in this capacity during Sussex's tenure of office; Howard in 1574-5 and Hunsdon in 1582. Similarly Howard de Walden acted without having the white staff during the second Lord Hunsdon's illness in 1602, and again for a month before his own appointment in 1603.[115] There was indeed provision for the regular assistance of the Lord Chamberlain by a Vice-Chamberlain, an officer who had existed at least as far back as the fourteenth century, and is probably indeed the 'subminister' of the thirteenth.[116] Elizabeth's fee lists provide for a Vice-Chamberlain at a fee of £66 13s. 4d. and a table at court. But the post was not always filled up. Sir Edward Rogers held it from 1558 to 1559, Sir Francis Knollys from 1559 to 1570, Sir Christopher Hatton from 1577 to 1587, and Sir Thomas Heneage from 1589 to 1595. There seem to have been vacancies from 1570 to 1577 and from 1595 to 1601, although Sir William Pickering's appointment was under consideration in 1572 and Sir Henry Lee's in 1597. During Hunsdon's illness there was much speculation as to the probability of a Vice-Chamberlain being appointed. Sir Walter Raleigh hoped for the post, but in February 1601 it was given to Sir John Stanhope, afterwards Lord Stanhope of Harrington, who kept it until 1616.[117]

The Chamber was less divided up into semi-independent working sections than the Lord Steward's department, although three of these, the Jewel House under a Master, and the Wardrobe of Robes and the Removing Wardrobe of Beds, each under a Yeoman, looked after the Queen's plate and jewels, her clothes, and the furniture of the Chamber respectively.[118] But there was an elaborate hierarchy of individual officers and groups of officers, each with definite and recognized functions to perform under the general superintendence of the Lord Chamberlain. The main basis of grading goes back to the social organization of the Middle Ages. In the fourteenth century every lay household officer fell within one or other of five well-defined grades. He was a knight banneret, a knight bachelor, an esquire (scutifer, armiger) or serjeant (serviens), a yeoman (valettus), or a groom (garcio). Pages and boys were later additions.[119] Each grade had its uniform rates of salary and allowances, and there was regular promotion from one to another. And while some officers of each grade were definitely assigned to special duties (mestiers), others were more loosely attached either to the Household as a whole or to the camera in particular. The clerical officers were similarly arranged in grades distinct from, but parallel to, those of the laymen. But between the fourteenth century and the sixteenth a good many changes had come about. The most important of these were due to the early Tudors, who had not merely made a distinction within the Chamber itself between the Privy Chamber and the Outer or Presence Chamber and their respective staffs, but had also, perhaps following a French model, brought into existence two hybrid grades in the Gentlemen and Grooms of the Privy Chamber.[120] 'Gentleman' has the same significance as 'Esquire', but this particular group, whose members were intended to be the personal companions of the Sovereign, seems to have been an amalgamation of two groups belonging to the earlier establishment, one squirely, the Esquires of the Household, the other knightly, the Knights of the Body. And if the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber were more nearly knights than esquires, the Grooms of the Privy Chamber were in like manner more nearly esquires than grooms or even yeomen.[121] Probably, however, they replaced an earlier group of Yeomen of the Chamber. The duties of the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, in addition to those of companionship, seem to have consisted chiefly in dressing and undressing the Sovereign. The Grooms attended to the orderliness of the rooms, and were supervised, under the Chamberlain, by officers holding a very ancient post, the hostiarii camerae or Gentlemen Ushers.[122] Obviously the normal staffing of the Privy Chamber required some modification in the case of a virgin queen. Elizabeth appears usually to have had no more than two or three Gentlemen and from five to ten Grooms, in place of the eighteen Gentlemen and fourteen Grooms provided for in the fee lists, and to have supplemented these by making feminine appointments in corresponding grades. There were Ladies or Gentlewomen, some of the Bedchamber and some of the Privy Chamber, and beneath these Chamberers, who appear also to have been known as 'the Queen's Women'.[123] The First Lady of the Privy Chamber acted as Mistress of the Robes, and she or another of the Ladies took charge of the jewels actually in use by the Queen and accounted for them to the Jewel-house.[124] In addition there were the six Maids of Honour, who were not salaried officers, but girls of good birth, for whom the court served as a finishing school of manners, and who attended the Queen in public, sat and walked with her in the Privy Chamber and Privy Garden, and kept her entertained with the dancing which she delighted to witness. They were generally dressed in white, and were lodged in the Coffer Chamber under the care of a lady called the Mother of the Maids.[125] And they learnt other things at the court besides manners. Gossip is full of the troubles which Elizabeth underwent in the attempt to establish the cult of Cynthia amongst the maids of honour and the younger ladies of the Privy Chamber.[126] A few older ladies of rank, some of them relatives of the Queen, were also assigned lodgings in court, and were apparently known as Ladies of the Presence Chamber.[127]

The Outer Chamber was also supervised by Gentlemen Ushers, some in daily, others in quarterly waiting, with Grooms of the Chamber, headed by a Groom Porter, and Pages of the Chamber under them to maintain the apartments in order, Yeomen Ushers to keep the doors, and a body of Messengers of the Chamber, ranking with the Yeomen, who besides their domestic uses were at the disposal of the Privy Council and the Secretaries for political purposes, and become very numerous by the end of the reign.[128] The Gentlemen Ushers also took part in the arrangements for lodging the court during progresses, in co-operation with a Knight Harbinger and four subordinate Harbingers who went in advance as billeting officers.[129] To the Outer Chamber, moreover, belonged the Esquires of the Body, who slept in the Presence Chamber, and took charge of the whole Chamber after the ceremony known as the All Night at nine o'clock, and a group of officers 'for the mouth', including Carvers, Cupbearers, Sewers for the Queen, and Surveyors of the Dresser.[130] These had anciently been of importance, all ranking as esquires, and the Carvers and Cupbearers from the fifteenth century as knights.[131] But their functions had dwindled, like those of the Hall officers at an earlier date, when the Tudor sovereigns ceased as a rule to dine even in the Presence Chamber, and by the end of the reign the posts of Carver and Cupbearer were claimed by great nobles as dignified sinecures.[132] The actual service of Elizabeth's meals was done by her ladies.[133] Similarly the Sewers for the Chamber, who apparently represent those of the Esquires of the Household who did not become Gentlemen of the Chamber, had probably neither duties nor salaries under Elizabeth.[134] It had long proved convenient to the Crown to entertain a number of nominal servants, who without giving actual attendance in the household upon ordinary occasions, could be called upon for the great ceremonies of state or for the household array in times of battle, and at other times helped to increase the royal prestige and to strengthen the royal hold upon the localities in which they lived.[135] And naturally there were many aspirants to the status and the protection which even a nominal membership of the royal household afforded. Survivals, such as the Sewerships for the Chamber, were well adapted to this purpose, but it was also possible to meet it by appointing supernumerary members to effective groups.[136] Elizabeth certainly made many 'extraordinary' as well as 'ordinary' appointments, especially of Esquires of the Body and Grooms of the Chamber, and a status midway between the ordinary and extraordinary Grooms seems to have been assigned to the players belonging to companies under the royal patronage.[137] It may be that the 'extraordinary' appointments were sometimes of the nature of grants in reversion, and that the holders looked forward to passing on to 'ordinary' posts in due course.[138]

Duties in the Outer Chamber were also fulfilled by the various bodies of royal guards. Of these there were three. The oldest was constituted by the Serjeants-at-Arms, who held the rank of Esquires, and were appointed by investment with the collar of SS at the hands of the Sovereign on the way to chapel.[139] They are little heard of under Elizabeth, and their posts were probably to a large extent honorific. The Yeomen of the Guard were a foot-guard established by Henry VII in 1485. The Yeomen Ushers of the Chamber were selected from amongst them, and on their establishment an older body of Yeomen of the Crown, itself in origin a guard of archers, seems to have been allowed to lapse.[140] The Yeomen were the working palace guard, and were under a Captain, a Standard Bearer, and a Clerk of the Cheque.[141] The Gentlemen Pensioners or 'Spears' were a horse-guard established by Henry VIII in 1509.[142] Both these Tudor guards seem to have been modelled on analogous French establishments. The Pensioners had a Captain, a Lieutenant, a Standard Bearer, and a Clerk of the Cheque. They were gentlemen of good birth, and to them the Court looked for its supply of accomplished tilters. They attended the Queen, bearing gilded battle-axes, on her way to chapel, and in public processions.[143] By the sixteenth century the control of the guards clearly fell within the sphere of the Lord Chamberlain. Both the Hunsdons themselves acted as Captains of the Pensioners, and the Captaincy of the Yeomen was sometimes, although not always, attached to the Vice-Chamberlainship.

The Secretaries, with the Clerks of the Signet and Privy Council, the Master of the Posts, and the Masters of Requests, although they had grown out of the Chamber, and were still, like the Lords Treasurer, Chancellor, Admiral, and Privy Seal, lodged in the Household, cannot at this period be regarded as under the Lord Chamberlain.[144] But he had some responsibility for the royal Chaplains, the Chapel, the Vestry, and the Clerks of the Closet, whence the Queen heard prayers, especially after Elizabeth suppressed the Deanship of the Chapel.[145] And he controlled the physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, the astronomer, the serjeant-painter, the surveyor of ways, the various hunting equipages, the rat-taker and mole-taker, and a number of artificers ministering to the diverse needs of the Queen and the palace. Probably he controlled the royal fools and other survivals of that characteristic mediaeval interest in mental and physical abnormality.[146] And, what is more to our purpose, he certainly controlled the players, and the extensive establishment of musicians. Amongst these the old royal ministralli or histriones of the Middle Ages, with their marescallus, were still represented by a body of trumpeters under a serjeant.[147] But the personal taste of Henry VIII for music had brought a stream of new performers to court, and this had continued under Elizabeth. Many of them were of foreign extraction, and certain families, such as the Laniers, the Ferrabosci, the Bassani of Venice, or rather, as their name denotes, of Bassano in the Veneto, the Lupi of Milan, formed little dynasties of their own at court, father, son, and grandson succeeding each other, in the royal service through the best part of a century. At the end of her reign Elizabeth was entertaining at least seven distinct bodies of musicians, whose members numbered in all between sixty and seventy. For wind instruments there were, besides the trumpeters, the recorders, the flutes, and the hautboys and sackbuts; for string instruments the viols or violins and the lutes. There were also an organist attached to the chapel and possibly players on the virginals.[148] The most important of these were the lutenists, who sang as well as played, and often composed their own songs, and appear to have been of higher standing than the mere instrumentalists. One of them was specially designated as the Lute of the Privy Chamber.[149] It seems probable that some of the superfluous Sewerships for the Chamber were conferred on them, and Alfonso Ferrabosco may have been about 1575 a Groom of the Chamber.[150]

Finally, there were a number of offices, called in Elizabethan parlance 'standing offices', each under a Master or other head of its own, which can only be regarded as on the borderline of the Household. These were the Great Wardrobe, the Revels, the Tents, the Toils, the Works, the Armoury, the Ordnance, and the Mint. They were financed separately from the Household, and had their various head-quarters in London away from the palace. But their officers were regarded as members of the Household, and although largely independent, they were in many or all cases subject to some kind of supervision by the Lord Chamberlain.[151] Probably the explanation of their origin is given by a phrase used about 1478 by the writer of the Liber Niger. Here the Wardrobe is spoken of as 'an office of chaumbre outward'.[152] In these standing offices, and also in the Secretariat, we seem to have examples of that budding off from the main administrative organization by which those great departments of state, the Exchequer and the Chancery, had already come into existence. Doubtless the process was facilitated, when considerations of practical convenience and a desire to reduce the number of mouths to be provided for in the palace led to the location of particular branches of work in permanent and independent premises. The history of the Revels Office, which will form the subject of another chapter, well serves to illustrate the kind of development involved.[153]

Members of the standing offices were generally appointed for life, those of the regular Household during the royal pleasure. The former received letters patent; the latter were only sworn in before one or other of the chief officers, and as most of the early records of the Lord Chamberlain's department have perished, no complete list of them is upon record. The uniform rates of pay and allowances for each grade of officer which prevailed in the fourteenth century had undergone many complications by the middle of the sixteenth. Each officer had, of course, his fee or wages, payable either at the Exchequer or by the Treasurer of the Chamber, whose functions will shortly be described, or, as in the case of most of the regular officers of Household and Chamber, by the Cofferer of the Household. The rates had gradually increased, perhaps with a decrease in the purchasing power of money. Those for the recently established Tudor posts were reckoned in pounds; the older ones in marks. Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and Pensioners got £50, Esquires of the Body £33 6s. 8d. (fifty marks), Gentlemen Ushers of the Privy Chamber £30, Grooms of the Privy Chamber £20, Grooms of the Chamber £2 13s. 4d. (four marks). These may serve for examples. Obsolete mediaeval rates of so many pence a day still survived here and there.[154] The Grooms and Pages of the Chamber had also a traditional 'great reward' of £100 among them at Christmas, while the fees payable to the officers of the Chamber by lay and ecclesiastic homagers were not—and are not yet—extinct.[155] Exceptional 'rewards', from foreign visitors of rank and so forth, were naturally forthcoming from time to time, and, as naturally, largesse often became indistinguishable from bribe. The allowances, other than salary, were of several kinds. Firstly, there was diet, that is to say, dinner and supper at the appointed tables in hall or chamber. Most of the officers of the regular Household enjoyed this; a few, whose attendance was not required daily or at all times in the day, received instead a money allowance from the Cofferer known as 'board wages'.[156] Secondly, there was, 'bouche of court', a commons of bread and ale, candles and fuel, served only to those of sufficient rank to be lodged in the palace itself.[157] It is probably an evidence, not of economy, but of change of social habits, that in the sixteenth century ale had replaced the wine of the fourteenth. Originally the 'bouche of court' had to suffice for breakfast, but under Elizabeth the Maids of Honour and a few other favoured groups were allowed to share the queen's breakfast of beef.[158] Thirdly, there was 'livery' in the narrow sense, clothes or the material for clothes from the Great Wardrobe, or a money payment in lieu thereof. Even in the fourteenth century there was already much commutation of livery, which in the case of yeomen and grooms also included an allowance for shoes, known as calciatura. By the end of the fifteenth century it was definitely thought derogatory for men of rank to wear even the sovereign's livery, except in some quite symbolical form.[159] Under Elizabeth some of the salaries seem to have had livery allowances added on to them. The process of commutation can still be traced. But liveries were issued in kind to the yeomen, messengers, grooms, pages, and stable footmen. These seem to have been of two kinds; 'watching' liveries issued from the Wardrobe in the winter, and 'summer' liveries, for which payment was made direct from the Exchequer.[160] The latter were gorgeous and costly, of scarlet cloth, with spangles and embroidery of Venice gold, taking the shape of a rose and crown and the letters 'E. R.', with some distinction between yeomen and grooms. The present costume of the Yeomen of the Guard, or 'beef-eaters', is a later modification of this livery.[161] In their capacity as Grooms of the Chamber the royal players were entitled to wear the Queen's 'coat'.[162] The officers of the standing offices had livery or livery allowance, if it was appropriate to their rank. They did not have diet or 'bouche of court'. But they were in some cases entitled to supplement their fees by charging 'wages' for actual days of service in the accounts which their Masters annually rendered to the Exchequer.[163] 'Extraordinary' officers probably got no salaries or allowances of any kind, unless they were called up for special duty. But it must be added that all royal servants, whatever their office, and whether 'ordinary' or 'extraordinary', received a customary allowance of red cloth at the coronation and of black cloth at a royal funeral, and that the schedules of recipients on these occasions form the most complete establishment lists available.

The accession of James did not materially alter the general structure of the Household. The chief changes were in the Privy Chamber. The Wardrobe of Robes was placed under a Gentleman, afterwards called a Master. The Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber were increased in number, reduced to quarterly terms of waiting, and deprived of salary.[164] The salaries of the Lord Chamberlain, Gentlemen Ushers, and Grooms were raised. And what was practically a new department was brought into existence in the Bedchamber, which had a staff of Gentlemen, Grooms, and Pages, independent of the Lord Chamberlain and controlled by their own First Gentleman, who was also known as Groom of the Stole.[165] The Bed Chamber, chiefly composed of Scots, furnished James with his most confidential servants.[166] As might be expected, James enlarged his hunting establishment, and one of his new appointments was a Cockmaster.[167] He had a conspicuous Fool in Archie Armstrong.[168] And he instituted in the Lord Chamberlain's department an officer known as the Master of the Ceremonies, whose function was to look after the lodgings and the general well-being of ambassadors, and to grapple with the knotty problems entailed by their inveterate stickling for precedence and etiquette.[169] A separate household was formed for the Queen, to which the various grades of ladies found at Elizabeth's court were transferred.[170] There were minor households for the royal children. That of Henry was much enlarged when he was created Prince of Wales in 1610, and in many respects, especially on the literary and artistic side, came to rival his father's.

One other officer, whose name has already been mentioned, must now, in virtue of his special relation to the playing companies, be fully considered. This is the Treasurer of the Chamber. His history affords an admirable example of that capacity of duplicating the functions of the departments of state, which was inherent in the Household as the successor in a direct line of the undifferentiated curia regis. After the development of the Exchequer was completed in the course of the twelfth century, the great bulk of the royal revenue was dealt with by that organization, and payments into and out of the royal account were made through the clerks of the branch known as the Receipt of the Exchequer. The posts of camerarius and thesaurarius were now distinct. But the change was never quite exhaustively carried out. Presumably the sovereign found it convenient to retain a certain residue of his funds under his personal control. Side by side with the Exchequer and its great officer it is still possible to trace into the thirteenth century a thesaurus camerae regis and a thesaurarius camerae; and the Pipe Rolls continue to refer to payments made in camera curiae, or ipsi regi in camera curiae, and to receipts taken by debtors de camera curiae, both of which were certified to the Exchequer per breve regis and put on final record there.[171] There were also clerici camerae, who probably wrote these brevia, and it is conjectured that the privy seal, as distinct from the great seal of Chancery, came into existence as a means of authenticating the brevia as impressed with royal authority. Thus the camera was able to duplicate the functions of the Chancery as well as those of the Exchequer.[172] About the middle of the thirteenth century the Pipe Rolls take to referring to the exceptional financial transactions as taking place not in the camera but in the garderoba. There are clerici garderobae and a chief officer called indifferently the custos and the thesaurarius garderobae.[173] Presumably the garderoba or 'wardrobe' was at first merely that apartment of the camera in which the financial work was done, and there are still indications of some such early relationship in the position of the Wardrobe when we first get a clear view of the operations at the very end of the century.[174] But by this time its scope had greatly increased, owing to the policy of Henry III and Edward I, who found in it a financial and administrative instrument, both more ready to hand and less subject to baronial control and criticism than either the Exchequer or the Chancery. Much of the revenue had come to pass through its hands, under a system of tallies, which were issued to it in block by the Exchequer on the authority of a royal warrant dormant, exchanged for incomings with accountants, and ultimately presented as vouchers at the Exchequer of Account. As part of the same process, the clerical head of the Wardrobe had acquired an importance almost equal to that of the Chamberlain. Indeed, so far as he was controlled by any lay officer, it was less the Chamberlain than the Steward, under whom he sat at the daily review of household expenditure which formed a feature of the Wardrobe system, and was continued into Tudor times by the Board of Green Cloth. Here also sat a consocius of the Treasurer, the contrarotulator, who kept duplicates of his accounts as a check upon him, and had the charge of the privy seal. The Wardrobe held not only the money and jewels of the King, but also his 'secrets'. Its officers were his secretarii in the earlier unspecialized sense, his confidential agents, both in finance and in diplomacy and other affairs of state. The extant account-books show that it not merely defrayed the expenses of his household, his alms, and his amusements, but also those entailed by the fortification and victualling of his castles, and the wages and equipment of his army and navy and his ambassadors and other nuntii.