Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/459

 9 th S. I. JUNE 4, '98.

NOTES AND QUERIES.

451

the second was in the Lord Steward's depart- ment, his annual pay 120^., probably aug- mented by fees.

The Groom Porter's position is defined in the list of 1677 (the earliest I have seen) thus : "His office is to see the king's lodgings fur- nished with tables, chairs, stools, and firing ; to furnish cards, dice, &c. ; to decide disputes arising at cards, dice, bowlings, <fec." This definition is quoted verbatim in Nares's 'Glos- sary ' (1822), and from that work has been transferred to all the great dictionaries. It is supported by an extract from Ben Jonson's 'Alchemist' (III. iv.*):

Here 's a young gentleman !

He will win you

By unresistible luck, within this fortnight. Enough to buy a baronv. They will set him Upmost at the Groom Jrorter's all the Christmas, And for the whole year through at every place, Where there is play.

As this drama was written c. 1610, we are shown the officer existing long before the earliest date of the Household lists. There are several other mentions of the Groom Porter. Evelyn, 8 Jan., 1668, " saw deep and prodigious gaming at the Groom Porter's ; vast heaps of gold squandered away in a vain and profuse manner." And Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in * Town Eclogues ' (1716), p. 26, wrote :

At the Groom Porter's battered bullies play ; Some Dukes at Marybon bowl time away.

Pope also, ' Dunciad,' i. 310, note, says : " The Groom Porter had a room appropriated to gaming." Kings George I. and II. coun- tenanced the gamblers, and played hazard in public on certain days, attended by the Groom Porter (Archceologia, xviii. 317). But the more virtuous George III. abolished the gaming-tables and their superintendent, and after 1782 the Groom Porter appears no more in the lists of the Royal Household.

The Master of the Revels, also an officer in the Lord Chamberlain's department, has been in some degree confounded with the Groom Porter. Their duties may have approximated at the festive Christmas time, but the Master's control of the revels stopped short of the gaming-tables. His special duty, according to the Household list of 1700, was "to order all things concerning Comedies and Masks at Court." Originally the service was connected with that of providing and attending to the tents and pavilions required by the king on his journeys or progresses. This duty is referred to in the Archceologia article aoove

[* Should be Act III. sc. ii. There are only two scenes in the act J

cited ; and in * Cal. State Papers, Dom.,' under 20 Jan., 1562, is indexed "Office of the Queen's Tent and Pavilions. Acct. of receipts and charges of the Revels." The office is discussed in the first volume of 'N. & Q.' (1849), and an announcement is quoted (p. 219) from the London Gazette of 7 Dec., 1685, commanding " all rope-dancers, prize players, strollers, and other persons showing motions and other sights, to have licences from Charles Killigrew, Esq., Master of the Revels." In 1743 the Household list comprises a Principal Master of the Revels, his Deputy, a Master of the Revels, his Deputy, and a Comptroller of the Revels, that is to say five persons : in 1756 the number had been reduced to three ; and in 1782. when the office was abolished (as also that of Groom Porter), there were only the Master and his Yeoman.

The Serjeant Porter had his duties in a sphere entirely separate from that of the Groom Porter. He was chief of "Porters at the Gate," and had under him four or five Yeoman Porters and four Under Porters. Fuller ('Worthies,' 127) appears to be incor- rect and misleading in connecting the Ser- jeant Porter, Thomas Keyes,* with the gaming-tables, thus, as in my own case, creating the impression that Serjeant Porter and Groom Porter were one. They were clearly, as the lists show, in different de- partments of the Household, the Groom Porter in the Lord Chamberlain's, the Ser- jeant Porter in the Lord Steward's ; and though our evidence does not reach back so far as 1565, we can scarcely think the arrange- ment then differed from that of 1610, when, according to Ben Jpnson, the Groom Porter presided at the gaming-tables, as Evelyn also noted in 1668. The Groom Porter and his office have been extinct 116 years, but the " State Porters " in the royal list yet include the Serjeant Porter, five Yeomen Porters, and four Under Porters. W. L. RUTTON.

27, Elgin Avenue, W.

[For duties of Master of the Revels see Halliwell- Phillipps's' Collection of Ancient Documents respect- ing the Office of Master of the Revels, &c.,' 1870.]

' Thomas Keyes is interesting in history through his clandestine marriage with poor little Lady Mary Grey, younger sister of Lady Jane Grey. Their consequent troubles were related in *N. & Q.' of 20 Oct., 1894. Probably Fuller, who wrote in 1662, nearly a century after Keyes's time, has misled Wright (' Q. Elizabeth and her Times,' i. 207) and Burke (' Extinct Peerage,' Grey), who both incor- rectly call him "Groom Porter." That he was Serjeant Porter is beyond doubt from several con- temporary mentions of him as such in the State Papers.