These Officers are expressed to be a Bishop Confessor; the Chancellor of England; the Great Chamberlain of England; the Chief Judge of the Common Pleas; the King's Chamberlain ; Bannerets; Knights; Secretaries; Chaplains; Esquires of the Body; Keepers of the Wardrobe; Gentlemen Ushers; Yeomen of the Crown; Grooms of the Chamber; Pages of the Chamber; Officers of the Jewel House; the Physician, Surgeon, Apothecary, and Barber of the King; the Henxmen; Esquires of the Household; Kings of Arms; Heralds and Pursuivants; Serjeants of Arms; Minstrels; Waiters and Messengers; the Dean of the Chapel, Chaplains, and Clerks; Yeomen and Children of the Chapel; Clerk of the Closet; Master of Grammar; Office of Vestiary; Clerk of the Crown; Clerk of the Market; and Clerks of the works.

Another division gives the duties and perquisites of the Officers of the Household; namely, the Steward; the Treasurer; the Comptroller; and the Cofferer; who are called the Sovereigns or Rulers of the Household. The Clerks of the Green Cloth, Clerks of the Comptrolment, and the Compting-house; the Bake-house; the Pantry; Wafery; Butlery; Purveyors of the Wine; of the Cellars; Butlery of Ale; Pitcher-house and Cup-house; Aletakers; of the Spicery, Confectionary, Chandlery, Ewery; of the Nappery or Linen Department; and the Laundry.

The same volume contains another highly curious article, in the Ordinances issued by Henry VII. for the regulation of his Household, which, besides defining the particular duties of the Gentlemen Ushers, and directing the order of sitting in state in the presence of their Sovereign, to be observed by the Nobles of the Realm, upon all public occasions, and at the Great Festivals, contains also a minute description of the manner of proceeding, not only at Coronations, but upon all occasions of State Ceremony.

The Ordinances made at Eltham by Henry VIII. who, at least in the beauty of his person, the extent of his accomplishments, and in love of magnificence, was " every inch a King," show the English

Monarch to have been not only the contemporary, but in fondness for state and pageantry, the rival of Charles V.

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Elizabeth, who inherited her father's love of splendour, was very. careful to maintain the dignity of her Household, by the choice of Officers qualified by birth and education to do justice to her selection, and to add by their personal appearance, to the dignity and elegance of her Court. Francis Osborne, whom Johnson pronounced " a conceited fellow," adding, were a man to write so now, the boys would throw stones at him," gives us a remarkable instance of the extent to which Elizabeth carried her attention upon this point. "This Princess," says he, " in imitation of her father Henry VIII, did admit none about her for Pensioners, Privy-Chamber-men, Squires of the Body, Carvers, Cupbearers, Sewers, &c. (which were not a few in number,) but persons of stature, strength, and birth, refusing to one her consent, (demanded before any could be admitted to the meanest place in her House,) because he wanted a tooth; yet was never known to desert any for age, or other infirmity, after once enrolled, but either continued them, or, upon their discharge, gave them considerable and well paid pensions. As for her Guard, Ushers, Porters, and all attending below stairs, they were of a no less extraordinary size than activity for shooting, throwing the bar, the weight, wrestling, &c."*

The well-known taste of the Sovereign exercised of course extraordinary influence over the conduct of the Nobles, and we cannot therefore be surprised at Bishop Goodman's telling us “that in the time of Queen Elizabeth, at the Feast of St. George, when many of the Lords were present, and every one had a multitude of servants, and all of them in their chains of gold, (and at that time of the year, very often some Ambassadors were wont to come to London, and the merchants to entertain those Ambassadors which

* "Historical Memoirs on Reign of Elizabeth and James," Works, p. 374.

came to treat for trading,) I do believe, that at sometimes I have

seen very near ten thousand chains of gold stirring.'

串

"Court of King James," vol. 1. p. 199. Having begun to quote the worthy Bishop, we must continue. The following observations on the influence which the introduction of gunpowder has exercised on Courts and Kings, are too closely connected with the present subject to be omitted. "And here I shall acquaint you, that since the invention of gunpowder, the use whereof first came into this kingdom in the time of Edward III. some three hundred years since, princes have been more imperious, and taken much more upon them than formerly they did. Then did they raise their prerogative, and live in a more magnificent fashion, answerable to their state and dignity; for gunpowder is in effect the whole strength of war; all other weapons and instruments, are little regarded in respect of it.

"Now if Princes can make themselves the sole masters of gunpowder, which is easily done by their commissions, that none shall make powder but whom they shall appoint, and being made, that they shall have the pre-emption or sole emption, certainly they leave their subjects naked and weaponless, and no way able to resist their power, and then they may insult and do what they please; then they began to lay impositions, to increase their revenues, and to live in a more magnificent manner. Before the conquest, my founder, King Edward the Confessor, did but live like a private man; he kept the money which he had in a chest in his own bed-chamber, and Hugolin his servant had the key of it; there was no Lord High Treasurer with his mace, and his white staff, and all his Officers attending him; his Queen Editha would sometimes pose young scholars in their grammar rules, and then sometimes give them a piece or two of silver out of her own purse, and send them to the buttery to break their fast. This Edward the Confessor died in the Painted Chamber, where the two Houses of Parliament did meet ; and there upon his deathbed did he foresee great troubles that would befall this kingdom. After this time, when the Conqueror came in, who never fought but one battle, and was very lovingly received by the Bishops, and the Nobles, and many others in the kingdom, (for Harold had no colour of right, and his father, Earl Goodwin, had left a very ill report behind him,) yet William of Normandy would needs hold the kingdom by conquest, and his

The memory of Elizabeth's days, as still preserved to us, not only in the Memoirs of the times, but in that history which all who

successors did even hold it by that title, and gave it in their own style as Henricus Tertius post conquestum, Henricus Octavus post conquestum. They might have remembered that if Normandy in the time of William the Father did conquer England, then England, in the time of Henry I. his son, did conquer Normandy, and there was a requital. But truly the conquest was with his laws, and his successors' laws, and not with his sword! or suppose there had been an absolute conquest, yet certainly he did not conquer his own soldiers. Now the greatest part of the English are descended from Normans, and in that right they might claim a liberty, that the conquest is expired, and now they are to be governed by just laws.

"Of all the Kings in England, Henry II. was the greatest and the most powerful, and he did much enlarge his prerogative, and did much increase the state and magnificence of his court. He held great territories, and all in quiet possession; he was made Lord of Ireland, by Adrian IV. Pope, an Englishman, whose name was Nicholas Breakspeare, and whose father was a monk of St. Alban's, and he himself from within four miles of the place. For those our other Kings which were conquerors, as Edward III. and Henry V, you must consider that what thay held, holding it by the sword, and being never there peaceably settled, their gain by their conquests did little more than quit cost. But the state and magnificence of the English court, did especially appear in the time of King Henry VIII: the order and allowance of his house was contrived by Cardinal Wolsey in as magnificent a manner as any Prince hath in the world; here was no putting to board wages: the meanest yeoman had three good dishes of meat; every gentleman's table had five dishes; the Clerk Comptroller had eight dishes, very substantial meat, more than would have served forty or fifty people, and his table cost the King, buying the meat at the King's price, very near 1000l. per annum. The Lord Chamberlain had sixteen dishes: two joints of meat went for a dish. "I will not here speak of the very great excess of the Lord Steward's table, in the time of the Parliament, for the entertainment of the Lords and the Members of Parliament.

run may read, the portraits of the great men who guided her councils and led her hosts to the battle, is so associated with ideas of external magnificence as well as of internal worth, that we can readily imagine how fashions ran riot, and were pushed to such extremes as to call for the enactment of a species of sumptuary laws.*

It would take both more time and more space than can here be allotted to it, to trace how far the example of Charles V. had influenced the etiquette and ceremonial forms which prevailed at the Court of Elizabeth, when the homage paid to the sex, as well as to the rank of the Sovereign, savoured strongly not only of the gallantry of the times, but of that high notion of female infallibility implied in the Spanish Proverb, "Blancos manos no offendete, White hands never offend." The insular position of England, and the nature of its political institutions, were not favourable to the growth of so stately a plant as the Spanish etiquette of Charles' days might claim to be regarded: it is probable, therefore, that it exercised no direct and immediate influence in this country. The marriage of Philip with Queen Mary might have introduced a more rigid observance of Etiquette and Ceremonial than had heretofore prevailed, but the condition of the Court and nation generally,

Rapiers succeeded, in the reign of Elizabeth, the heavy two-edged swords, but were worn of such an extraordinary length, that government limited the length of these weapons to three feet; a proclamation was made to this effect, as also for the curtailment of ruffs; and steady, serious citizens were placed at each gate, to cut the ruffs, and break the rapiers' points, of all passengers who exceeded the allowed measure. "He (says Stowe) was accounted the greatest gallant that had the deepest ruff, and the longest rapier." Lord Talbot, in a letter to Lord Shrewsbury, relates "that in 1580, M. Malvoiser, the French Ambassador, riding to take the ayer, inne hys returne came thorowe Smithfield, and there at the barrs was stayed by thos officers that setteth to cut swordes, by reason his rapier was longer than the statute. He was in a great fewrie and drewe hys rapier. In the meane season, my Lord Henry Seamore cam, and so stayed the matter. Her majestie is greatly offended with the officers, in that they wanted judgment."