in the Household were officers of the Hall. Similarly the oversight of the guard seems to have passed to the Chamberlain. Nor had the Marshal any longer the responsibility for the stable which the etymology of his name suggests.[1] The Stable was, indeed, still a distinct department, but its head was the Master of the Horse, who, although he ranked as one of the three chief officers of the Household, was of comparatively recent origin.[2]
By a somewhat troublesome variation in the use of terms, the Lord Steward's department is sometimes called the 'Household' in a very narrow sense, which excludes the Chamber and the Stable. The author of the Liber Niger distinguishes it as the domus providentiae from the Chamber as the domus magnificentiae.[3] Roughly speaking, it concerned itself with the material necessities, the food and drink, the lighting and the fuel, of the Sovereign and his court, while all else that ministered to his personal life and the dignity of his state, his lodging and his apparel, his entertainments, his study and his recreations, fell within the sphere of the Chamber. Its original nucleus was still represented under Elizabeth by the officers of the Hall, Marshals, Sewers, and Surveyors; but the Hall had shrunk in importance since the Sovereign had ceased to dine in it, and some of these posts had long been duplicated within the Chamber itself, and even there were tending to become honorific rather than effective.[4] The real functions of the department were now
- ↑ The derivation is through the French from O. H. G. marascalh (marah, horse; scalh, servant). Round, 84, traces an early connexion of the marshal with the stable.
- ↑ A Squire of the Body held the office of Master of the Horse in 1480 (Nicolas, Wardrobe Accts. of Ed. IV). The term 'Master', generally applied to heads of offices in the outer ring of the Household, does not seem to be of very early origin. It probably replaces the fourteenth-century 'Serjeant'. Sir Thomas Cawarden got a 'Mastership' of the Revels in 1544, as he 'did mislyke to be tearmed a Seriaunt because of his better countenaunce of roome and place beinge of the kinges maiesties privye Chamber' (Tudor Revels, 2). The Mastership of the Horse was held by Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester (11 Jan. 1559-87), Robert Earl of Essex (23 Dec. 1587-25 Feb. 1601), Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester (deputy Dec. 1597; Master 21 Apr. 1601-2 Jan. 1616), Sir George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham (3 Jan. 1616). The appointment, like that of other 'Masters', but unlike that of the Chamberlain and Steward, was by patent and carried a fee of 1,000 marks (£666 13s. 4d.). Amongst the lesser Stable officers were the royal Footmen, whom we might expect to find in the Chamber.
- ↑ H. O. 19, 55.
- ↑ For the functions of Hall officers, as understood in the fifteenth century, cf. the 'courtesy' books, especially J. Russell's Boke of Nurture, the anonymous Boke of Kervynge and Boke of Curtesye (Furnivall, Babee's Book), and R. W. Chambers, A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book.
