some of which are noted to our advantage by a clerk of literary tastes, who about 1478 bethought him to compile in the so-called Liber Niger a systematic account or rationale of the establishment in which doubtless he played a part. And the beginnings of the same structure can be traced back farther still, through ordinances of Edward I in 1279 to the Constitutio Domus Regis as it stood at the end of Henry I's reign in 1135, and even perhaps, so far as the principal officers are concerned, to the Normanized Anglo-Saxon Court of pre-Conquest days. And after Elizabeth's reign the structure lasted, again with modifications of detail, for nearly two centuries more, until it was somewhat severely overhauled, in a moment of reforming zeal, by what is known as Burke's Act of 1782.[1] This conservatism of structure may perhaps justify us in finding an explanation of the tripartite character which the organization of the Household at every stage displays, as arising naturally out of the local arrangement of a primitive royal habitation. The palace stood in a court-yard, and it consisted essentially of a hall where the King feasted and took counsel with his comitatus, and of a chamber where he retired to sleep and to be private, and where he probably kept his treasure-chest. The duties of his personal servants fell either in the court-yard or in the hall or in the chamber. In the court-yard the constabularii drilled the royal body-guard and the marescalli looked after the horses; in the hall the dapiferi and the pincernae ministered food and drink; in the chamber the camerarii or cubicularii, aided as time went on by the clerici, watched the King's treasure and his bed, and stood ready to receive and transmit his personal mandates. Originally, it would seem, there were several officers of each class. Afterwards they were reduced to one, or one was chosen as magister over the rest; whatever the process, a single chief officer, with a group of subordinates beneath him, emerges as representative of each of the three departments. Perhaps the change was assisted by the demand of the barons, jealous of the rise in their absence of new men at Court, to have Household posts conferred upon them as part of their hereditaments. By the middle of the twelfth century there were already a hereditary Great Chamberlain, a High Steward, a High Constable, a Chief Butler, and an Earl Marshal.[2] But,
- ↑ 22 George III, c. 82.
- ↑ Stubbs, i. 382; Round, 68, 76, 82, 112, 140; Tout, 67. By Elizabeth's accession the High Stewardship and High Constableship had reverted to the Crown, and the offices were only temporarily conferred for occasions of state. The Great Chamberlainship was de iure in the same position, but was accepted under a misunderstanding as hereditary in the house
