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110 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January The history of the wardrobe as a separate department in the household probably begins with the reign of John. Here we find one isolated reference, in a letter close of 24 January 1215, to the rolls of the wardrobe ; the king orders that they are to be inspected to discover what Flemings are still waiting for their fees to be restored to them (Chapters, i. 167 n.). Before the date of this document we only hear of the wardrobe as a place of safe deposit for the king's clothes, his valuables, and his private archives. But our document evidently refers to enrolments of contracts between John and his foreign mercenaries ; and it suggests that the remuneration of mercenary troops was becoming the concern of the wardrobe. This is clearly the case in the next reign. The wardrobe account for the years 1224-7, which Mr. Tout has printed for the first time (Chapters, i. 233-8), refers to the wages and the annual fees and the allowances of knights and Serjeants as a considerable and regular item of wardrobe expenditure. John's letter also illustrates the overlapping of wardrobe and exchequer chancery which is so conspicuous in the reigns of his successors ; the information which he desires is to be searched for not only in the rolls of the wardrobe but also in those of the exchequer for the time of the ex-chancellor, Walter de Grey. If we go back behind the reign of John, we find that the wardrobe is merely a branch of the king's chamber ; and this last is the only depart- ment of the king's household, apart from the chancery, which seems to be of any political consequence in the reigns of Henry I and Henry II. The chamber was the parent stock from which the treasury and the exchequer had sprung ; and down to the time of the Constitutio Domus Regis (1135) the treasurer seems to be still regarded as an official of the chamber. The Pipe Rolls of Henry II show us the king's chamber as a solidly organized institution, with a staff of chamberlains and inferior officials, which controls the receipts and issues of the privy purse. Already it was a good opening for ambitious clerks in orders. In the second half of the reign of Henry II we find, on the chamber's staff, a future bishop of London (William of Sainte-Mere-figlise) and a future archbishop of Rouen (Walter of Coutances). In the early years of John the chamber appears to be still important ; and by 1208 we find that the small or privy seal of the king is specially appropriated to chamber business (Chapters, i. 153-4), so that the chamber officials need no longer go to the chancery to obtain writs under the Great Seal. But the evidence of the Mise and Praestita Rolls shows that, under John, the wardrobe is fast becoming an independent organization to which, as to the chamber, payments can be made from the exchequer, and that it is already dis- charging functions which seem to have been previously monopolized by the chamber. Early in the next reign the wardrobe ceases to be dependent on the chamber, and the latter relapses into obscurity until it is revived, for his own purposes, by Edward II. Mr. Tout does not offer an explana- tion of the eclipse of the chamber between 1218 and 1307. But it seems probable that the motive of those responsible for this palace revolution was a desire to emancipate the clerical experts of the wardrobe from the control of chamberlains who were always laymen and often, if not invariably, held the office by hereditary right (Chapters, i. 114-16).