Chapter VI: Book I: The Court (3)

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 6_s._ 8_d._ 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 13_s._ 4_d._ 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 6_s._ 8_d._ (fifty marks), Gentlemen Ushers of the Privy Chamber £30, Grooms of the Privy Chamber £20, Grooms of the Chamber £2 13_s._ 4_d._ (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_.

During the reign of Edward II the power of the Wardrobe was broken up, partly by the direct action of baronial hostility, partly by a discreet process of reorganization within the household, in the face of baronial criticism. The responsibilities of the Treasurer and Comptroller were limited to the purely domestic expenditure of the Steward's department, much as we find them in Tudor times. The charge of the privy seal was dissociated from the Comptrollership; its use, like that of the great seal before it, was subjected to regulation in the baronial interest; and it soon became superfluous. Offices, such as the Great Wardrobe for the purveyance of cloth, furs, and other bulky commodities, which had recently come into existence as branches of the Wardrobe, were now placed on an independent footing, and began to account direct to the Exchequer. And now once more, after remaining in obscurity for the best part of a century, emerges into renewed activity the financial organization of the Chamber. To it appears to have been assigned, as part of the scheme of reform, such expenditure as could not with propriety be withdrawn from the personal supervision of the sovereign.[175] With this as a nucleus, it was not particularly difficult to convert the Chamber into just such a financial and administrative organ as the Wardrobe had been before it. The funds at its disposal were gradually increased, as opportunities offered themselves of adding to them the revenues of one escheated manor after another. Its clerks in turn became the _secretarii_, out of whom the royal Secretaries in the Tudor sense were in course of time developed. Even the lost privy seal proved capable of replacement by a series of other small seals, the 'secret' seal under Edward II, the 'griffin' seal under Edward III, and finally the 'signet', which remained to the end in the hands of the Secretaries. It was only up to a point that the trained bureaucrats, with the power of knowledge behind them, proved amenable to baronial control. It is probably only up to a point that they will prove amenable to democratic control.

The actual use made of the Chamber varied considerably in different reigns. It flourished at the end of the reign of Edward II, and again during the first half of that of Edward III. Soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, it lost much of its political status, owing to the separation from it of the Secretaries, who now had their own clerks in the Signet Office, and on the financial side it was for long little more than a privy purse in strict subordination to the Exchequer. It was still, however, capable at need of serving as a medium of war expenditure, and with the appointment of Thomas Vaughan by Edward IV in 1465 its financial importance began to revive.[176] Up to the end of the fourteenth century, its financial officers are generally called Receivers of the Chamber; during the next the double title of Treasurer of the Chamber and Keeper of the King's Jewels establishes itself.[177] They are sometimes, although perhaps not always, appointed by patent, and at any rate from the time of Henry IV are only accountable to the King in person.[178] On the execution of Vaughan in 1583 the posts of Treasurer of the Chamber and Keeper of the Jewels were divided; and it may serve as an illustration of the conservatism of courts that this was still a subject of grievance in the Jewel House two hundred years later.[179]

At the beginning of Henry VII's reign the functions of Treasurer of the Chamber were discharged by Thomas, afterwards Sir Thomas, Lovell.[180] On his appointment as Treasurer of the Household in August 1592, he was succeeded by John, afterwards Sir John, Heron, who had in fact acted as his assistant and kept his books from 1487.[181] Under the Tudors, with their general tendency to elaborate the personal control of government by the sovereign, the post remained one of first-class importance. It was regulated in 1511 by a statute, the recital of which sets out that it had been the practice for certain Receivers of royal lands to account before persons appointed by Henry VII 'for the more speedy payment of his revenues and the accounts of the same to be more speedily taken than could have been after the course of the Exchequer', and after accounting to pay sums to the use of the King in his chamber.[182] The record of these transactions, signed by the King or 'his trusty servant John Heron' had been no legal discharge to the accountants in the Exchequer. Henry VIII had set up by patent a body of General Surveyors and Approvers of the King's Lands to take the accounts, and the statute confirms this proceeding and appoints John Heron to be Treasurer of the Chamber, and to be answerable, with his successors, direct to the King, and not to the Exchequer.[183] John Heron continued in office until 1521.[184] His successor was John Miklowe, who had been Comptroller of the Household.[185] But Miklowe's tenure of office must have been short, for in 1523 a statute, passed in renewal of that of 1511, names as Treasurer Sir Henry Wyatt, who was the father of the poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt.[186] In 1526 Wyatt was placed on the Privy Council[187]; and on 13 April 1528 he was succeeded as Treasurer by Sir Brian Tuke, who held office until 1545.[188] In 1541 a new statute was passed which erected the Surveyors of the King's Lands into a court of record, appointed the Treasurer of the Chamber as Treasurer of the Court, and required him to account before the Court or such other persons as the King might appoint, both in this capacity and also for 'all and every the receytes issues profyttes dettes and thinges concernyng his office of Treasurership of the Kinges Chamber'.[189] Tuke was succeeded on 25 November 1545 by Sir Anthony Rous, to whom one John Dawes acted as deputy[190]; and Rous on 19 February 1546, by Sir William Cavendish, to the disappointment of Stephen Vaughan, Henry's financial agent at Antwerp, who had hoped for the post. Cavendish also had the assistance of a deputy, Robert Oliver.[191] During Cavendish's tenure of office, two further changes in the position of the Treasurership took place. A patent of 1547, subsequently confirmed by statute under Edward VI in 1553, dissolved alike the Court of Surveyors and the analogous Court of Augmentations, created to deal with the revenues of surrendered religious houses in 1535, and established in place of these a combined Court of Augmentation and Revenues of the King's Crown, of which the Treasurer of the Chamber was to continue to act as Treasurer.[192] Hardly, however, had this readjustment received legislative sanction, when it was upset again. A patent of 1554, under the authority of an Act of Mary's first Parliament, suppressed the Court of Augmentation, by annexing its business to the Exchequer, and directed the revenues to be paid into the Exchequer and accounts to be audited there, as before the Court was set up.[193] Cavendish did not find the Treasurership a bed of roses. On Tuke's death it was anticipated that his successor would receive a legacy of official debts.[194] A book containing copies of 'certificates' or reports made by Cavendish to the Privy Council show that he soon had occasion to be perturbed.[195] About Lady Day 1546 he represented that his receipts had been dislocated to the extent of about £14,000, and that in view of his liabilities, which he detailed, there was urgent need to consider the state of the office. In another paper he called attention to the enormous number of securities for old debts to the Crown, some of them dating from the time of Henry VII, with which he found from Tuke's books that he was charged; and, as 'a yonge officer not long exercised in the same', prayed that these might be reviewed, and a decision arrived at as to how much of the total nominal amount of £322,980 covered by them stood for 'sperat' and how much for 'desperat' debts. The book also contains summaries of his liabilities during 1547, at the end of 1548, when he declared that he had debts of £14,000 and no ready money in the office, and finally at Lady Day 1554. This last item does not disclose how far his revenue had in the interval been made sufficient for his needs. It is possible that it had been made more than sufficient, for on 17 August 1556 the Privy Council called upon him to appear before them with 'Cade his clerc', and on 9 October 1557 they returned his book of account, stating that he owed £5,237 5_s._ 0¾_d._ and must appear and answer particularities, either in person or, if ill, by his clerks.[196] It seems clear that the Tudor period had seen a very considerable increase in the scope of the financial transactions with which the Treasurer of the Chamber had to deal. In addition to privy purse expenditure in the narrower sense, such as the royal pocket-money, alms and oblations, largesse and rewards, and the like, he became responsible for many wages and annuities, some of which, including those of the royal players, had formerly been charged direct upon the Exchequer.[197] He purchased the jewels and costly stuffs in which much of the Tudor wealth was invested. He financed or helped to finance the Surveyor of Works, the Great Wardrobe, and even for a time the Cofferer of the Household. And beyond the limits of anything which could be called domestic expenditure, he undertook much that was concerned with 'the King's outward causes', the maintenance of posts and ambassadors, royal loans, secret service; even, it would appear, although perhaps out of a special account, the service of war. His income, originally derived from the Exchequer, was put on to an independent basis, by the direct assignment to him of numerous revenues, both ordinary and extraordinary, including most of the new sources of wealth on which the financial policy of Henry VII had firmly based the power of the Crown. Some of his payments were made in accordance with old established custom or under household ordinances or other standing instructions.[198] But the great majority depended upon the personal authority of the sovereign, communicated either by word of mouth or by warrant under the sign manual or the signet, or in course of time through the medium of a minister such as Wolsey or the Privy Council. Similarly he rendered his accounts at first to the King in person, and the early books bear the signatures of Henry VII and Henry VIII in token of audit on many pages.[199] The responsibility grew to be a very heavy one, with a turnover of some £100,000 in the course of a year, and we find Brian Tuke in 1534 writing of it as 'a charge that far surmounteth any in England', and pressing 'that for things ordinary I may have for payments an ordinary warrant, and that for things extraordinary I may always have special warrant or else some such way as I, dealing truly, may be truly discharged', lest if there were any misunderstanding, 'I might be undone in a day, lacking any warrant when I sue for it'. It would appear to have been the special difficulty of the Treasurer's position which led to the system of audit by means of a 'Declared Account', as a substitute at once for the cumbrous method of the earlier Exchequer, and the more recent practice of personal verification by the sovereign. When Sir Henry Wyatt left office he was directed to declare his account before a General Surveyor of the King's Lands, and this method was adopted when the Surveyors became a statutory court in 1541 and ultimately passed after the dissolution of the special courts into ordinary Exchequer practice.[200]

Sir William Cavendish, who was ill when the Privy Council asked for details of his account on 9 October, died on 25 October 1557. An account for 1 April to 31 December 1557 is in the name of Edmund Felton, perhaps only an _interim_ administrator.[201] The Treasurership of the Chamber, together with the Mastership of the Posts, was granted by patent on 29 October 1558 to Sir John Mason, with a fee of £240 and 1_s._ a day.[202] Mason was continued in office by Elizabeth, and on 23 December 1558 the Lord Chamberlain, the Comptroller of the Household, the Secretary, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were appointed as a committee of the Privy Council 'to survey the office of the Treasurer of the Chamber and to assigne order of paymente'.[203] As a result, considerable changes seem to have been made, which reversed the policy of the last half-century and much reduced the Treasurer's responsibilities. On the one hand, the funds assigned to the Cofferer of the Household, the Surveyor of Works, the Master of Posts, and the Ambassadors no longer passed through his account; on the other, a separate account was established for the more personal expenditure of the Queen, which was put into the charge of a Groom of the Privy Chamber, acting as keeper of the Privy Purse. Both accounts seem to have become subject to audit and declaration at the Exchequer; but while that of the Treasurer of the Chamber was declared annually, the only extant Privy Purse account of the reign is one for the ten years 1559-69 declared after the death of the first keeper, John Tamworth.[204] This was a small account, mainly fed by New Year and other gifts to the Queen. The expenditure out of it only averaged about £2,500 a year. Most of it was upon gifts and rewards, which were detailed in a book of particulars under the sign manual, unfortunately not preserved. A payment of £5,000 to the Earl of Moray suggests that it proved a convenient channel for secret service funds. It also includes items for the keep of the royal fool, for the purchase of jewels, and for certain annuities, wages, riding charges, and expenses of the stable and hunt. The Treasurer of the Chamber, under the new arrangement, spent about £12,000 a year.[205] Out of this he defrayed the royal alms, certain rewards, wages, annuities, and riding charges, the maintenance of prisoners, and the expenses of 'apparelling' the Queen's houses and keeping her gardens. Obviously the two accounts come very near overlapping at several points. One may suppose that in the main the Treasurer of the Chamber was responsible for customary payments and such as could be made on the authority of officers of state or household; the Keeper of the Privy Purse with those which depended on the personal pleasure of the sovereign. The officers borne on the Treasurer of the Chamber's wage list were those who belonged neither to the household proper nor to the 'standing' offices; the Yeomen of the Guard, the Watermen, the Apothecaries, the Musicians and Players, the Hunt, the Footmen and Boys of the Stable, the Artificers, the Rat and Mole Takers, the Keepers of Paris Garden, the Surveyor of Gates and Bridges, the Chester Post. That they should also have included the officers of the Jewel House is explicable from the original connexion between these and the Treasurer. The Treasurer's own salary and his office expenses also appear in his account.

The distinction now drawn between the Treasury of the Chamber and the Privy Purse must have had the effect of putting the Treasurer in a position analogous to that of the Secretaries. He was on the way to becoming an officer of state rather than an officer of the household.

The order of payment determined upon by the Privy Council appears to have been that salaries chargeable to the Treasurer of the Chamber should be payable upon 'warrants dormant', 'riding charges' for messengers upon warrants from the Secretary, and miscellaneous payments, such as rewards for plays at court, upon warrants from the Privy Council itself.[206] Sir Francis Knollys became Treasurer of the Chamber when Mason died upon 21 April 1566[207]; and Thomas, afterwards Sir Thomas, Heneage, when Knollys was appointed Treasurer of the Household, on 15 February 1570.[208] Knollys, throughout his period of office, and Heneage, from 1589, combined the Treasurership with the duties of Vice-Chamberlain of the Household. Heneage died in October 1595, and there was some delay before a successor was appointed.[209] A trial of strength seems to have taken place between Essex and Burghley, who regarded the filling of the vacancy, together with the much more important vacancy in the Secretaryship, as critical to his chances of prolonging his dynasty. Burghley's candidate was John Stanhope; Essex's Sir Henry Unton, to whom he wrote about his prospects on 24 October 1595, telling him that Robert Cecil was troubled at the competition, and thought that neither would carry it.[210] I am not sure that Cecil had been quite straightforward with Essex. Another aspirant was Sir Edward Wotton.[211] There is gossip about the matter in Rowland Whyte's letters to Sir Robert Sidney.[212] On 29 October he wrote, 'Probi is comanded to wayt at court; hath spoken with her Majestie, and is sayd he shall haue the Disbursing of the Treasory of the Chamber, till her Majestie be pleased to bestow yt. Sir H. Umpton and Mr. John Stanhope, stands for yt.' On 5 November, 'Peter Proby paies the money till a Treasorer of the Chamber be chosen, which will not be in hast'. Peter Proby was a useful hanger-on of Burghley's, and had been his barber. On 20 November 'Sir Thomas Heneges Funerals were solemnised, his Offices all vnbestowed'. By 7 December Whyte ventures a prophecy:

'I heare that Mr. Killigrew shall receve and pay the Treasure
of the Chamber, till the Queen find one fitt for it; but if
this continew true, Mr. Killigrew will haue it in the End
himself.'

Whyte was wrong, however. William Killigrew was a mere stop-gap.[213] On 20 December, Whyte has an inkling of what is going on, and commits his new information to cipher.

'The Queen hath promised him [Sir H. Unton] the Thresureship of
the Chamber, and stands constant in it, and at his return to
haue it. But if 900 [Burghley] and 200 [Cecil], that would 40
[Stanhope] had it, can hinder it, the other shall goe without
it.'

It was not until 5 July that, according to an amused letter from Anthony Bacon, 'Elephas peperit' with the swearing in of Sir Robert Cecil as Secretary and John Stanhope as Treasurer of the Chamber, 'so that now the old man may say with the rich man in the gospel _requiescat anima mea_'.

Burghley himself notes the appointment without comment in his diary.[214] John Stanhope, who was knighted on his appointment and created Lord Stanhope of Harrington on 4 May 1605, did not get the Vice-Chamberlainship until 1601. He remained Treasurer until his death in 1617. There was some characteristic Stuart traffic in the reversion. Sir Thomas Overbury held it at his death in 1613. Lord Rochester then bought it from Stanhope for £2,000, and offered it to Sir Henry Neville, who declined to take it from a subject. Finally it passed to Sir William Uvedale, who in fact became Treasurer in succession to Stanhope.[215]

During Stanhope's tenure of office, some changes in the 'order of payment' took place. The account for 1607-8 recites a privy seal of 27 January 1608 as authority for the transfer from the Privy Purse to the Treasurer of the Chamber of certain payments made on warrants from the Lord Chamberlain. Similar payments thereafter form a regular section of the account from year to year. By a later privy seal of 11 October 1614, still extant, an additional sum of £1,500 a year is put at the disposal of the Treasurer to enable him to meet them.[216] His total assignment was thus increased to about £20,000 or rather more than half as much again as the office had cost under Elizabeth. That of the Privy Purse was now about £6,000.[217] We have seen that there had been possibilities of overlapping between the two accounts, but it is rather odd that amongst the items transferred should be specified allowances for plays, bear-baitings and other sports, since such allowances had regularly been paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber for something more than a century past. It is, however, the case that from 1614-15 onwards, the payments were made on warrants from the Lord Chamberlain instead of the Privy Council.