Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/122

 admitted to the honour of sitting at dinner with the King or Queen of England.

It is somewhat difficult to place before the mind manners and customs differing very much from those we have been used to; and it may seem strange to persons living in the nineteenth century as it might seem strange to Hume in the eighteenth century, that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the person who had the charge of seeing that the royal dinner was not served up half roasted held an office which made him the most powerful man in the kingdom after the King. He was not only at the head of the King's palace, but of all the departments of the State, civil and military, chief administrator of justice, and leader of the armies in war. Madox is in error when he says ("Hist. Excheq.," p. 28), that in the reign of William I., William Fitz-Osberne was the King's Constable, because he is called Magister Militum; whereas in the very same passage (of "Orclericus Vitalis") he is called Normaniæ Dapifer, in virtue of which office he would be magister militum as well as capitalis justitiarius. The constable was not originally magister militum, but was an officer subordinate to the senescallus or dapifer.

Some English lawyers have assumed that the