Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

36
princes or chieftain. In England before the Conquest
the comitatus had developed or degenerated into the
thegnhood, and among the most eminent and powerful of
the kings thegns, were his dishthegn, his bowerthegn, and
his horsethegn or staller. In Normandy at the time of
the Conquest a similar arrangement, imitated from the
Irench court, had long been established, and the Norman
dukes like their overlords the kings of France, had their
seneschal or steward, their chamberlain, and their con¬
stable. After the Conquest the ducal household of
Normandy was. reproduced in the royal household of
England; and since, in obedience to the spirit of feudalism
the great offices of the first had been made hereditary the
great offices of the second were made hereditary also,’ and
were thenceforth held by the grantees and their descend¬
ants as grand-serjeanties of the crown. The consequence
was that they passed out of immediate relation to the
practical conduct of affairs either in both state and court
or in the one or the other of them. The steward and
chamberlain of England were superseded in their political
functions by the justiciar and treasurer of England and
in their domestic functions by the steward and chamber-
lain of the household. The marshal of England took the
place of the constable of England in the royal palace, and
was. associated with him in the command of the royal
armies. In due course, however, the marshalship as well
as the constableship became hereditary, and, although the
constable and. marshal of England retained their military
authority until a. comparatively late period, the duties
they had successively performed about the palace had
been long before transferred to the master of the horse
Under these circumstances the holders of the original
great offices of state and the household ceased to attend
the court except on occasions of extraordinary ceremony
and their representatives, either by inheritance or by special
appointment have ever since continued to appear at corona¬
tions and some other public solemnities, such as the open¬
ing of the parliament or trials by the House of Lords.1
i ij materials available for a history of the royal house¬
hold are somewhat scanty and obscure. The earliest
record relating to it is of the reign of Henry II., and is
contained in the Black Book of the Exchequer. It enumer¬
ates the various inmates of the king’s palace and the
daily allowances made to them' at the period at which
it was compiled. Hence it affords valuable evidence of
the antiquity and relative importance of the court offices
to which it refers notwithstanding that it is silent as to
mi0 i fUCtl°2S aTnd f°rnm^ subordination of the persons who
ed them. In addition to this record we have a series
far later, but for the most part equally meagre, docu¬
ments bearing more or less directly on the constitution of
the royal household, and extending, with long intervals,
of Edward III. to the reign of William and
Mary. Among them, however, are what are known as the
ROYAL HOUSEHOLD
™ rThf Pat omcei's of state an(l the household whom we have
paitieuiarly mentioned do not of course exhaust the catalogue of
dStaril ofThe^oTr? iV"1? Wh°Se rePr^entatives are still
dignitaries ot the court and functionaries of the palace Tf the
reader consults Hallam {Middle Ages, vol. i. p. isf i ) Freeman
V0L i- P- 91 and vol. v. p 426 an
f»ISIS Ahe’„S *' P' f43' >“ "M be ablehiLlAo”
tne details ot the outline we have given above.
P™/ VreC°,rd m question is entitled Constitutio Domus Reais de
i p sTl Tf Ttnd 18 Pirint?vby Hearne (Liber Niger Scaccarii, vol
P. 345). ^ anaIySed by Stubbs (ConsL vob i. note 2,
P / Cation of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of
the Royal Household, made in Divers Reigns frod King EZardllT 1
smalT?nd?UbliSTd \ ^
small and insignificant portions of the royal establishment.
Black Book of the Household and the Statutes of Eltham
compiled the first in the reign of Edward IV. and the second
m the reign of Henry VIII., from which a good deal of
detailed information may be gathered concerning the
arrangements of the court in the 15th and 16th centuries,
ilie statutes of Eltham were meant for the practical guid¬
ance merely of those who were responsible for the good
on er and the sufficient supply of the sovereign’s household
at the time they were issued. But the Black Book of the
Household, besides being a sort of treatise on princely mag-
mficence generally, professes to be based on the regulations
established for the governance of the court by Edward III
S°dla urmn’ WaS “the first Setter of certeynties among
lb domestical! meyne, upon a grounded rule ” and whose
palace it describes as “ the house of very policie and flowre
Englamd; and it may therefore possibly, and even
probably take us back to a period much more remote than
that at which it was actually put together.4 Various orders
returns, and accounts of the reigns of Elizabeth, James I ’
Gharies I Charles II., and William and Mary throw com
siderable light on the organization of particular sections
or the royal household in times nearer to our own.5
Moreover, there were several parliamentary inquiries into
the expenses of the royal household in connexion with the
settlement or reform of the civil list during the reigns of
George III. George IV, and William IV.5 But they add
little or nothing to our knowledge of the subject in what
was then its historical as distinguished from its contem¬
porary aspects. So much, indeed, is this the case that, on
the accession of Queen Victoria, Chamberlayne’s Present
State of England which contains a catalogue of the officials
at the court of Queen Anne, was described by Lord
Melbourne the prime minister as the “ only authority ”
which the. advisers, of the crown could find for their
assistance in determining the appropriate constitution and
dimensions of the domestic establishment of a queen
regnant.7 1
In its mam outlines the existing organization of the
royal household is essentially the same as it was under
the. Tudors or the Plantagenets. It is now, as it was then,
divided into three principal departments, at the head of
which are severally the lord steward, the lord chamber-
lain, and the master of the horse, and the respective pro-
V,m.ces„ 0l which may be generally described as “ below
stairs, above stairs,” and “out of doors.” But at
present, the sovereign being a queen, the royal household
is in some other respects rather differently arranged from
what it would be if there were a king and a queen consort.
When there is a king and a queen consort there is a
d Dortus Regis Edward IV. and Ordinances for the
oi/seAoW mag Eltham m the seventeenth year of King Henry
a d. 1526, are the titles of these two documents. The earlier
documents printed m the same collection are Household of King
Edward III. m Peace and War from the eighteenth to the twenty-frit
year of his reign-, Ordinances of the Household of King Henri IV.
by KildHVrdviTf °fA'D- ^ and Articles ordained
n 7 LV' ' 'I Regulatl°n of his Household, a.d. 1A9A
■ ,?he: Eookff the Household of queen Elizabeth as it was ordained
in the forty-third year of her Reign delivered to our Sovereign Lord
King James, d:c., is simply a list of officers’ names and allowances It
,h”? ‘n drn "p under «* *mm£2ZL2
to m Archwologia (vol. xu. pp, 80-85), For the rest of these docu
^ R^^ons’ d'c-> PP- 299> 340, 347, 352,
® Burkes celebrated Act “ for enabling His Majesty to discharge the
debt contracted upon the civil list, and for preventing the samefemi
in mr Butit wL f ?U/e’ &d’”,22 Ge°' IIL c 82’ was passed
r !■ >> foreshadowed m his great speech on “Economical
Reform delivered two years before. Since the beginning of the
current century select committees of the House of Commoms have
and°l^Sl0n t le Cml bSt aUd r°yal household in 1803, 1804, 1815,
ii p^O?118'8 Mem0irS °f William> s^ond Viscount Melbourne, vol.