Royal Household
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The royal household in all the early medieval monarchies of Western Europe formed the basis for the general government of the country.
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[edit] The Royal Household in England and Great Britain
The sovereign's domestics were his officers of state, and the leading dignitaries of the palace were the principal administrators of the kingdom. The royal household itself had, in its turn, grown out of an earlier and more primitive thegnhood, and among the most eminent and powerful of the king's 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 French 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 constable. 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 descendants as holder of tenure in grand serjeanty 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 The steward and Lord High Chamberlain of England were superseded in their political functions by the Justiciar and Treasurer of England, and in their domestic functions by the Lord Steward and Lord Chamberlain of the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 Earl 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. In 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 coronations and some other public solemnities, such as the State Opening of Parliament or trials by the House of Lords.
The materials available for a history of the English royal household 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 enumerates 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 the functions and formal subordination of the persons who filled them. In addition to this record we have series of far later, but for the most part equally meagre, documents bearing more or less directly on the constitution of the royal household, and extending, with long intervals, from the reign of Edward III to the reign of William and Mary. Among them, however, are what are known as the Black Book of the Household and the Statutes of Eltham, the first compiled in the reign of Edward IV and the second in 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.
The Statutes of Eltham were meant for the practical guidance merely of those who were responsible for the good order and the sufficient supply of the sovereign's household at the time they were issued. The great officers of state and the household whom we have particularly mentioned do not of course exhaust the catalogue of them. We have named those only whose representatives are still dignitaries of the court and functionaries of the palace. If the reader consults Hallam (Middle Ages, i. 181 seq.), Freeman (Norman Conquest, i. 91 seq., and v. 426 seq.) and Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 343, seq.), he will be able himself to fill in the details of the outline we have given above.
But the Black Book of the Household, besides being a sort of treatise on princely magnificence generally, professes to be based on the regulations established for the governance of the court by Edward III, who, it affirms, was "the first setter of certeynties among his domesticall meyne, upon a grounded rule" and whose palace it describes as "the house of very policie and flowre of England"; 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.
Various orders, returns and accounts of the reigns of Elizabeth, James I, Charles I, Charles II, and William and Mary throw considerable light on the organization of particular sections of the royal household in times nearer to our own. 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. But they add little or nothing to our knowledge of the subject in what was then its historical as distinguished from its contemporary 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.
In its main 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 chamberlain and the master of the horse, and the respective provinces of which may be generally described as "below stairs," "above stairs" and "out of doors." The duties of these officials, and the various officers under their charge are dealt with in the articles under those headings. When the reigning sovereign is a queen, the royal household is in some other respects rather differently arranged from that of a king and a queen consort.
When there is a king and a queen consort there is a separate establishment "above stairs" and "out of doors" for the queen consort. She has a Lord Chamberlain's department of her own, and all the ladies of the court from the Mistress of the Robes to the Maids of Honour are in her service. At the commencement of the reign of Queen Victoria the two establishments were combined, and on the whole considerably reduced. On the accession of Edward VII the civil list was again reconstituted; and while the household of the king and his consort became larger than during the previous reign, there was a tendency towards increased efficiency by abolishing certain offices which were either redundant or unnecessary.
[edit] The Royal Household in Scotland
The Great Officers of the Royal Household are:
- Lord High Constable of Scotland
- The Master of the Household
- The Keeper of Holyroodhouse
- The Armour-Bearer
- The Bearer of the Royal Banner
- The Bearer of the National Flag of Scotland
- Lord Justice General
- Great Steward of Scotland
The Royal Household in Scotland also includes a number of other hereditary and non-hereditary offices, now including The Master Carver, Hereditary Keepers of Palaces and Castles, the Lord Lyon King of Arms and his heralds and pursuivants, the Governor of Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Company of Archers, the Dean of the Thistle, the Dean of the Chapel Royal, chaplains, physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, the Historiographer Royal, the Botanist, the Painter and Limner, the Sculptor and the Astronomer Royal for Scotland.
[edit] The Royal Household of the United Kingdom today
As presently arranged, the Royal Household is coordinated by the part-time Lord Chamberlain, and organised into a number of functionally separate units.
[edit] Heads of Departments of the Royal Household
- Private Secretary to the Sovereign
- Master of the Household
- Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the Queen
- Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's Office
- Director of the Royal Collection
Each of these Heads of Department reports to the Lord Chamberlain, and is a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Committee.
[edit] Other units
The Private Secretary has direct control of the Press Office, the Queen's Archives, and the office of the Defence Services Secretary. The Crown Equerry has day to day operation of the Royal Mews, but is part of the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood is also under the Lord Chamberlain's Office, as is the office of the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps.
The Royal Almonry, Ecclesiastical Household, and Medical Household are functionally separate but for accounting purposes are the responsibility of the Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the Queen.
The Lord Steward is notionally responsible for the Department of Master of the Household, but only has a ceremonial role. The Master of the Horse is in a similar position, being nominally in charge of the Royal Mews
Certain independent, and normally honoric, posts include Master of the Queen's Music, Poet Laureate, and Astronomer Royal. The Queen's Bargemaster, Warden of the Swans, and Marker of the Swans, perform more prosaic and less celebrated functions.
Technically members of the Household, the offices of Treasurer of the Household, Comptroller of the Household and Vice-Chamberlain of the Household are held by senior government whips in the House of Commons. In the House of Lords, the Government Chief Whip is usually appointed Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms and the Deputy Chief Whip as Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, with junior whips appointed as Lords-in-Waiting or Baronesses-in-Waiting. Occasionally these officers are called upon to undertake Household duties, especially the Vice-Chamberlain, who is responsible for writing regular parliamentary reports for the Queen.
The separate Royal Household in Scotland, noted above, continues to exist.
The royal residences (see List of British Royal Residences) in current use are cared for and maintained by the Royal Household Property Section directly from the grant-in-aid provided by Parliament. Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House are privately owned and maintained. The unoccupied royal residences (including the Tower of London) are run by the Historic Royal Palaces Agency, which is self-funding.
Members of the Royal Family who undertake public duties have their own separate Households, which vary considerably in size, from a part-time secretary, to the Household of the Prince of Wales, which is traditionally the largest Household. See also the Household of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Household of the Princess Royal, the Household of the Duke of York, and the Household of the Earl of Wessex.
[edit] The Royal Household of France
[edit] The Royal Households of Europe
The royal households of such of the continental monarchies of Europe as have had a continuous history from medieval times resemble in general outlines that described above. There are, common to many, certain great offices, which have become, in course of time, merely titular and sometimes hereditary. In most cases, as the name of the office would suggest, they were held by those who discharged personal functions about the sovereign. Gradually, in ways or for reasons which might vary in each individual case, the office alone survived, the duties either ceasing to be necessary, or being transferred to officers of less exalted station and permanently attached to the sovereign's household. For example, in Prussia, there were certain great titular officers, such as the Oberstmarschall (great chamberlain); the Oberstjagermeister (grand master of the hunt); the Oberstschenk (grand cup-bearer) and the Obersttruchsess (grand carver), while, at the same time, there are also departments which correspond, to a great extent--both as to offices and their duties--to those of the household of the English sovereigns. This is a feature which must necessarily be reproduced in any monarchical country, whatever the date of its foundation, to a more or less limited extent, and varying in its constitution with the needs or customs of the particular countries.
See also the Prefecture for the Pontifical Household.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
