Grooms of the Chamber, and the liveries not of Grooms but of Yeomen. When they died out, they were replaced by the Queen's men of 1583. Howes tells us that these 'were sworn the queen's servants and were allowed wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber'. Howes is not quite a contemporary authority, and makes at least a technical mistake when he adds that until 1583 'the queene had no players'. If by 'wages' he means such annual fees as the interlude players had received, his statement is not confirmed by the Chamber Accounts, and it is not very likely that such payments were put back upon the Exchequer. It is true that fee-lists, not only Elizabethan but Jacobean, continue to include eight players of interludes at £3 6s. 8d. each, but I doubt whether this can be safely taken as evidence that the vacancies were filled.[1] No doubt, however, Howes was accurate on the main point, for Tarlton is described in a document of 1587 as an 'ordenary grome off her majestes chamber', and both Tarlton and Johnson as 'groomes of her majesties chamber' in another of 1588. I may add that in a list of the sixteen ordinary grooms who received allowances at Elizabeth's funeral are to be found the names of George Brian and John Singer.[2] These had been respectively a Chamberlain's and an Admiral's man, but both seem to have left playing before the date of the list, and I suspect that they retired on taking up these active Household appointments. For the King's players there is fuller testimony, although most of it is Caroline rather than Jacobean. The players are not called Grooms of the Chamber in their patents of appointment; but this proves nothing, as most of the Household posts were conferred, not by patent, but by swearing-in before the Lord Chamberlain or other high officer. But they received payment as 'his Maiesties Groomes of the Chamber and Players', when they waited upon the Spanish ambassador in 1604, and are entered in the Chamber Accounts for this payment as a distinct group, apart from the seven ordinary and four extraordinary grooms who were also assigned to the ambassador's service. The Queen's men, who waited upon the Flemish commissioners, are similarly described as being 'Groomes of the Chamber and the Queenes Players'. A few months before the King's, Queen's, and Prince's players had all received 4-1/2 yards of red cloth each as a livery at the time of James's coronation procession.[3] Nearly a quarter of a century later we find very
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