Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/530

 622 EMOLUMENTS OF SECRETARIES OF October only equal to that allowed to the cooks, sergeants, grooms of the privy chamber, &c., and was presumably for the secretaries' clerks, while the ' double messe ' for the principal secretaries is like that allowed to the lord privy seal, lord chamberlain, the treasurer and controller of the household, &c. The ' bouche ' of court allowed (i.e. the allowances of bread and wine and for heating and lighting) amounts to £22 75. d. per annum to each.^ In a list of the expenses of Queen Elizabeth's table, the term ' double messe ' is not used presumably because one secretary only is being provided for. The value of the first mess is given as £494 25. 2d. a year rising to £585 145. 9d. and of the second mess as from £246 195. b^d. to £339 II5. l^d. Breakfast allowance is £29 55. 4<Z. and Secretary Smith's bouche of court is £29 65. d} The one discrepancy between these figures and those of the Eltham ordinance is, of course, in the value of the second mess. An explanation may lie in the increasing importance of the secretarial staff, illustrated by the regular appointment of secretaries for the French and Latin tongues, and the increased number of the clerks of council. The latter certainly, and probably the former also, had their * diet with the secretaries '.^ At the beginning of his reign, James I ordered that bouche of court should cease when the official concerned was absent from court.'' One of the many results of this king's dislike of London was that one, at least, of the principal secretaries, who was at Whitehall, was generally absent from court, and thus no doubt the custom arose of commuting the actual allowances for board wages.* In 1628 these amounted to £1 II5. ld. per diem.® A new development arose in Charles I's reign. It is clear that up to now both secretaries had received the diet,' but when^ after the dissolution of his second parliament in 1626, Charles appointed commissioners to reform his expenditure, we are told that the first thing they attacked was the system of free tables, and that upon the wholesale reduction which followed the principal secretaries were allowed one table each instead of two.* • Household OrdiTianccs, p. ItJl. The secretary's ' bouche ' equals those of the vice-chamberlains. • J. Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. Expense of Queen Elizabeth's Table : date 1570-80. • State Papers, Dom., Eliz., vol. 236, no. 9; Household Ordinances, p. 260; Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia, ii. 11. * Household Ordinatices, p. 303. ■ Naunton refers to his board wages in 1622 when the arrears are still behindhand for ten months (Goodman, Court of King James, ii. 243). Chamberlayne states that the secretaries have ' a very liberal diet at the King's charge or board wages in lieu of it ' (ii. 9-10). The latter system was established by 1689 (below, p. 524). • Cowper MS8., i. 373. ' From the references in the Eltham ordinances already quoted, and the lists of oflScers and fees temp. Eliz. and Jac. I also quoted above. • Letter of Amerigo Salvetti, resident in London to Grand Duke of Tuscany, 24 July 1626, Hist. MSS. Comm., Skrine MSS., p. 80.