many aspirants to the status and the protection which even a nominal membership of the royal household afforded. Survivals, such as the Sewerships for the Chamber, were well adapted to this purpose, but it was also possible to meet it by appointing supernumerary members to effective groups.[1] Elizabeth certainly made many 'extraordinary' as well as 'ordinary' appointments, especially of Esquires of the Body and Grooms of the Chamber, and a status midway between the ordinary and extraordinary Grooms seems to have been assigned to the players belonging to companies under the royal patronage.[2] It may be that the 'extraordinary' appointments were sometimes of the nature of grants in reversion, and that the holders looked forward to passing on to 'ordinary' posts in due course.[3]
Duties in the Outer Chamber were also fulfilled by the various bodies of royal guards. Of these there were three. The oldest was constituted by the Serjeants-at-Arms, who held the rank of Esquires, and were appointed by investment with the collar of SS at the hands of the Sovereign on the way to chapel.[4] They are little heard of under Elizabeth, and their posts were probably to a large extent honorific. The Yeomen of the Guard were a foot-guard established by Henry VII in 1485. The Yeomen Ushers of the Chamber were selected from amongst them, and on their establishment an older body of Yeomen of the Crown, itself in origin a guard of archers, seems to have been allowed to lapse.[5] The Yeomen were the working palace guard, and were under a Captain, a Standard Bearer, and a Clerk of the Cheque.[6] The Gentlemen Pensioners or 'Spears' were a horse-guard established by Henry VIII in 1509.[7] Both these Tudor guards seem to
- [Footnote: Esquires of the Body, and 6 Gentlemen Waiters (i. e. of the Privy Chamber)
'unplaced'; that for her funeral 16 Grooms of the Chamber 'in ordinarie' and 23 'extraordinary, but daily attendant', 5 Pages of the Chamber 'in ordinary' and 3 'extraordinary', and a number of Esquires of the Body and Sewers of the Chamber far in excess of anything contemplated by the fee lists.]
- ↑ Batiffol, 93, describes a similar practice in the French household.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xiii (Queen's, King's).
- ↑ Philip Henslowe (ch. xi) seems to have passed from the 'extraordinary' to the 'ordinary' status as Groom of the Chamber.
- ↑ Pegge, v. 49. There were 'xx servientes, unusquisque j^d in die' in the Domus of Henry I (Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii, i. 356).
- ↑ Pegge, iii; Tout, 304 (1318): 'Item xxiiij archers a pee, garde corps le roi, qirrount deuaunt le roi en cheminant par pays'; H. O. 38 (1478).
- ↑ Sir Christopher Hatton was Captain of the Guard 1572-87, Sir Walter Raleigh 1587-1603, Sir Thomas Erskine, afterwards Viscount Fenton (1605) and Earl of Kelly (1619), 1603-32.
- ↑ Halle, i. 14; ii. 294; Pegge, ii. An Elizabethan book of orders for the Pensioners (1601) is in H. O. 276.
