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.[1] 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.
- [Footnote: executor to John Tamworth for 1559-69 from the audited copy in Harleian
Rolls, A. A. 23. Copies are also in the Pipe Office Declared Accounts, 2791, and the Audit Office Declared Accounts, 2021, 1. No later Elizabethan Privy Purse Accounts are known, but it appears from the lists of New Year gifts for 1561, 1578, 1579, 1589, and 1600 (Nichols, Eliz. i. 108; ii. 65, 249; iii. 1, 445) that Henry Sackford succeeded John Tamworth as custodian of gifts given in cash, and he is described as Keeper at Elizabeth's death (S. P. D. Jac. I, vi. 2). His successor was Sir George Home, afterwards (1605) Earl of Dunbar (S. P. D. Docquet of 17 May 1603). Jacobean accounts for 1603-5 are in Pipe Office Declared Accounts, 2792, and in Audit Office Declared Accounts, 2021. Some extracts are in Cunningham, xviii. In 1617 (Abstract, 6) the Privy Purse disposed of £5,000 and an additional £1,100 from New Year gifts.]
- ↑ This estimate is based on the account for 1594-5; doubtless there was some variation from year to year. A memorandum of c. 1596 (Hatfield MSS. vi. 571) gives the annual assignment to the office by warrant dormant as £13,800.
