Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (43 page)

The tenures of the royal cooks demonstrates that Henry’s children were loyal to their old servants. This loyalty may have been based upon their fondness for the food each prepared, but considering the gargantuan feasts, quantity would seem to have triumphed over quality. The same considerations must have weighed heavily in the Laundry. Both Mary and Elizabeth appointed their former laundresses to wash their personal and table linen.
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One thing is clear however: this generosity did not extend to the other cooks, laundresses, yeomen, and grooms, who continued as before.

IV

The accessions of Mary and Elizabeth brought one other personnel change, and the different ways they handled it is equally revealing. Below the Greencloth stood the particular departments, staffed with a complement of clerks, sergeants, yeomen, grooms, and other menials, as appropriate. The order of promotion for clerks was to start as the most junior clerk, then switch from department to department on their way to the Board of Greencloth and finally cofferer; sergeants, who came from somewhat lower social backgrounds, started as page or groom and advanced to yeoman and sergeant but seldom left their department.

Although the accession of Henry’s children brought no changes beyond natural attrition to most jobs, it did signal a change of sergeants.
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Edward was content to stick with the staff he inherited, but Mary brought in five new sergeants, presumably men who had served her as princess, although their relatively humble backgrounds make it difficult to tell. It is equally hard to tell what happened to the men who were displaced, but one fact is clear: alternate places at court were not found for them. And given the state of her finances, it is not surprising that there is no mention that they were given pensions.

Elizabeth followed Mary’s example by bringing in nine new men. But, as with the case of cofferer, she did not dismiss Mary’s appointees. Instead she had them serve jointly with the survivor continuing in sole possession.
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As with the joint coffership, it is impossible to tell how the work and fees were divided, but it must have been reasonably efficient, because the arrangements lasted for over twenty-five years in the Kitchen, and in the Poultry the joint sergeantship was continued after the original men had left the queen’s service.31

While it is important to examine the cases of servants who were replaced by the new queen, it is just as important to examine the cases of servants who retained their posts but who would have lost them if the rules had been followed. Take the most serious offense, treason, which should have cost a royal servant his job, if not his life. In January 1554, at the height of the Wyatt crisis, Robert Rowbotham, yeoman of the wardrobe of robes, someone who had daily access to the queen, was arrested for “lewde talke that the Kinges Majestie deceassed shuld be yet lyving.” However, after a brief stint in the Fleet, he was back at his post where he remained until his death.
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In 1556 William Cockes of the Pantry, in trouble for the same offense, was dismissed from office and ordered to report to the Council weekly, but he too was soon back in his old job.33

Under Elizabeth it was much the same story. Two of her closest attendants, Katherine Astley and Dorothy Bradbelt, were put under house arrest for meddling in her marital projects, but they were back in office a month later; and Elizabeth St. Loo spent six months in the Tower for her failure to pass on word of Catherine Grey’s treasonous marriage.
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But once released, she too resumed her post. The relatively brief incarceration of Elizabeth’s privy chamber attendants can be explained by Elizabeth’s momentary anger at being betrayed by her closest servants, but what about Rowbotham and the others? Why did they remain unscathed? The answer to this apparent conundrum is the increasing acceptance of the idea that court office, even for those surrounding the queen, was a form of property to which the holder had title.

V

A tantalizing glimpse of the reality of office-holding can be found in the complaints by and against Sir Francis Knollys and Sir James Croft, respectively treasurer and controller of Elizabeth’s household, who had the responsibility of making what can be called entry-level appointments. They were accused of appointing “unhable persons, both ould sickly and impotent.” Some, Croft admitted, were so unfit, “weke in brayne” and “smalle in person,” that they were incapable of performing their duties. Others were in such poor health that they were not fit “to come to the handeling of anie honest man’s meate.” But once appointed they were not easily removed or even disciplined by their immediate supervisors because, having appointed them, Croft and Knollys took their side in “their evil and false doings” against the complaints of the career officials.
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The career men, who seemed to be constantly at odds with their courtier supervisors, found ways to circumvent their authority, however, and in doing so revealed the general understanding of office as property: their strategy was to make an appointment before Croft or Knollys heard of the vacancy.

An example of their crafty maneuvering is revealed in a complaint by Knollys to Lord Burghley. Knollys wrote that as soon as he learned of the death of one of the queen’s herdsmen, he rushed to the Counting House to fill the post. But even though he got there by nine o’clock he found that his subordinates had already filled the post. Furious, he demanded to know whether the culprits understood that he, not they, had the right to make such an appointment. They admitted his claim but brazenly replied that they considered the job to be too important to be left vacant even for a few days and had done what they thought best. The treasurer was in the right, but no matter how much he berated his subordinates, the appointment stood. To make matters worse, the unrepentant officials had the effrontery to repeat the performance as soon as Sir Francis departed. Later the same day Knollys received word that a servant in the Larder had died, and not wanting to be thwarted twice, he returned to court and ordered the cofferer to swear one of his own servants, only to be informed that he was too late once again. Although this time the excuse was different, the cofferer claimed that the post had already been promised by Knolly’s predecessor, the effect was the same.
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Once appointments were made, their number stood. Jealous of his prerogative, Knollys retaliated by appointing purveyors “which is Mr. Cofferer’s office.”37

Why did the power to appoint not carry with it the power to dismiss? The answer to this dilemma can be found in an attempt to clean up the court in the next reign. James’s clerks realized that the household was plagued with a number of servants who had illegally bought their posts and who should have been dismissed, but nevertheless, they felt bound to retain them. Their explanation was that despite the fact that the men had illegally gained admittance to the king’s service, they had taken an oath to serve him and no other. If dismissed they were unemployable. The simple solution would have been to dispense with the oath, but they concluded that the oath was the only way to ensure that the men appointed by courtiers after money or gifts had been exchanged actually did their job.38

A tantalizing glimpse of the reality of office-holding can be observed in a series of appointments in the Pantry in the 1590s. In 1592 John Daniel was appointed sergeant with the curious admonition “that any dislike against him for former proceedings may cease.”
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Whatever Daniel’s past misdeeds may have been, the Pantry had been and continued to be riddled with pilfering by those who worked there. Therefore, after “sundry warnings,” the officers of the Greencloth made a surprise inspection of the Pantry’s shelves and discovered that the “chippers,” whose job it was to remove the crusts that were considered unwholesome, were chipping so generously that each loaf might be “thruste thoroughe with a ffinger.” The reason for this was that the chippers had the right to sell the crusts as their fee. In short, they were motivated not by any concern for the health of the court but by the size of their income. Clearly rules had been broken and the miscreants deserved to be punished, and they were: the supervisor was fined, four chippers dismissed on the spot, and the gatekeepers instructed not to let them enter again. Unfortunately for the queen’s purse, the culprits had such a strong claim to their posts that after a few days’ repentance, their humble suits, and promises to reform, each was reinstated with the loss of only a day’s fees and a shilling fine to be given to the poor.
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If lowly chippers had come to view the posts as property, it is not surprising that their supervisors did as well, a fact that is confirmed by those higher up. In 1602, for example, John Matthews, a “usuall and comon drunkard,” who has already been reprimanded many times and even suffered an unprecedented demotion, was discovered to be so intoxicated that he fell down on the job. This was the last straw; he was dismissed and his post given to William Edlyn. That should have been the end of it, but Matthews claim to the post was such that Edlyn was required to pay Matthews £25 yearly in consideration of his long service.
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The saga in the Pantry continued when Edlyn too was subsequently thought unfit to serve. His superior reported that Edlyn was infected with “
morbus gallicus
” and sought to have him removed. Not surprisingly, Edlyn resisted and demanded a medical opinion. Subsequent examination by two court surgeons proved to be inconclusive. The doctors declared that although they had found certain “tokens” of the disease, they were unable to commit to an “absolute opinion.” The end of the affair confirms the fact that household offices had become a form of property. Edlyn was dismissed, but Thomas Nelson, his successor, had to pay his salary for the rest of his life as well as continue to pay the pension to Matthews.
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With the drunkard Matthews and the pox-ridden Edlyn out of the way, the queen was probably better served, but the price must have been continued corruption, for Nelson would have had to exploit his legitimate fees and other perquisites to make up for paying out more than his salary to his two predecessors.

Understandably the “disorder” so often complained of continued. When the sergeant of the Bakehouse who supervised the servants in the Pantry was later reprimanded for not clamping down on the continued pilfering, he “forgot himself” and used “intemperate speaches” to his superiors, causing them to order his confinement in the Porter’s Lodge as a common thief, but once again nothing was done. After admitting his fault, he promised to do better and he kept his post.
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The case of Lewis Joane completes the story. In 1617 his fellow servants took the unusual step of complaining to the Board of Greencloth that he was too “diseased in his bodye” to perform his duties and that his lunacy made it difficult for them to do theirs. The board concurred in their diagnosis and ordered Joane to quit his post, but he too did not leave empty-handed. It was agreed that he should continue to draw his salary of £11 “or thereabouts” and his colleagues agreed to compensate him for his loss of the normal fees.
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VI

Lord Burghley’s papers contain periodic proposals for reform, but these are mostly concerned with reducing costs rather than issues of appointment and tenure, and this absence indicates that he understood little could be done. On one occasion he perused a list of clerks being considered for promotion. The writer suggested that two senior clerks should be passed over for certain unspecified offenses. However, once again the prerogative of office overrode their transgressions and the would-be reformer concluded, “neverthelesse, consideracion to be hadde by discression.”
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It is worth noting that one of the clerks, Andrew Smith, was subsequently marked “unfytt for preferment,” having been accused of “offenses” in “several offices.” Smith lost neither his post nor chance of promotion.
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If the relatively lowly officers of the Pantry looked upon their offices as their property, what of those in the Acatry, the other department Sir Geoffrey called attention to? Here was the opportunity for corruption on a much greater scale than crusts of bread, for the officers of the Acatry were responsible for purchasing the provisions. Once again the historian is hampered by the absence of daily records, but the marginal notation in Burghley’s papers suggests that the Acatry was where real exploitation of one’s post was possible. When considering promotion of household clerks Burghley noted, “It is to be remembrade that Mr. Waterhouse, being clerke of the Catrie [Acatry] (an office to his lykynge) will not willinglle be drawen from the same.”
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Waterhouse’s wish to remain at the Acatry merely confirms what had been going on for some time. The prescribed order of promotion for clerks was as follows: Pastry, Larder, Scullery, Woodyard, Bakehouse, Poultry, and Acatry, and then to next vacancy of Stable, Spicery, or Kitchen, and finally the Board of Greencloth. This pattern was seldom observed, however. In 1558, for example, Edward Darrell, a clerk of the Kitchen, sought to be demoted to the lesser post, clerk of the Acatry, held by his uncle, Stephen Darrell, who was dying. The younger Darrell “made sute to be joyned in reverccion with...his uncle, and so did presently leave the clerkshipp of the kitchin.”
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In so doing he was following the example of his two predecessors. Obviously they had realized that the lesser post was the more profitable despite its having a salary substantially lower. The only remedy the would-be reformers could come up with was to propose the requirement that each clerk take his place successively, “and not by any synister sute or other meanes to refuse the same.”49

With senior officers flouting the rules to line their pockets, it is no wonder that lowly chippers got away with their excessive chipping, and diseased and incapable servants were tolerated. The most creative solution to the problem was proposed by Sir James Croft, a man with first-hand knowledge of such abuses, if his accusers can be believed. Croft proposed that the queen’s servants be permitted to sell their posts. This measure, he argued, would serve as an incentive for the unfit to retire with a comfortable pension at no cost to the Crown. Since offices were already being sold, it would not be much of an innovation, but it would give the Crown a veto of future appointments.50