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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]
At the beginning of Henry VII's reign the functions of Treasurer of the Chamber were discharged by Thomas, afterwards Sir Thomas, Lovell.[5] On his appointment as Treasurer*
- ↑ Newton, 351; Ramsay, Lancaster and York, i. 317; ii. 466. Henry VIII's Treasurers of the Chamber sometimes kept separate war accounts (Brewer, iv. 1. 82), and there is a similar example as late as 1599 (R. O. Audit Office, Various, 3, 108).
- ↑ P. R. O. Lists and Indexes, xxxv. 220, and Cal. Patent Rolls, both passim.
- ↑ C. P. R., 1 Hen. VI, p. 3, m. 5 (3 May 1423), 5 Edw. IV, p. 2, m. 28 (29 June 1465), 1 Rich. III, p. 5, m. 21 (26 Apr. 1484). I think Newton is wrong in regarding Vaughan's appointment by patent as exceptional. The Liber Niger, c. 1478 (H. O. 42), fully describes the Jewel House, with its 'architectour, called clerk of the King's, or keeper of the King's jewelles, or tresorer of the chambyr', and says 'all thinges of this office inward or outward, commyth and goyth by the knowledge of the Kyng, and his chamberlaynes recorde'.
- ↑ Sir Gilbert Talbot, Master of the Jewel House in 1680, represented (Archaeologia, xxii. 118) that anciently the Master was Treasurer of the Chamber, 'till that branch was taken out and made an office apart; and is now five times more beneficiall than the Jewell-House; all the regulation of expence being apply'd to the remaining parts of the perquisites of the Jewell-House, the fees of the Treasurer of the Chamber and Master of the Ceremonys being left entire'.
- ↑ Campbell, i. 228, 316; ii. 105, 296, 320, 445. Newton, 351, 353, thinks the exact dates of Edmund Chaderton's and Lovell's appointments uncertain, and supposes the keepership of the jewels to have been detached on the latter occasion. But it was clearly on the former, the date of
