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 To it appears to have been assigned, as part of the scheme of reform, such expenditure as could not with propriety be withdrawn from the personal supervision of the sovereign.[1] With this as a nucleus, it was not particularly difficult to convert the Chamber into just such a financial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 considerablyde doun le Roi par les mayns Harsik liuerant a eux les deniers xl^s', which adds an interesting early use of the term 'interlude' to those given in Mediaeval Stage, ii. 181, 256.]
- ↑ J. C. Davies, The First Journal of Edward II's Chamber (1915, E. H. R. xxx. 662), gives extracts from a Chamber account of 1322-3, including a payment of 7 Jan. 1323 'a iiij clers de Sneyth iuantz entreludies en la sale de Couwyk deuant le Roi et monsire Hugh [le Despenser
