Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/79

 II

THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD

[Bibliographical Note.—There is no systematic history of the household, but the growing tendency, notable in such recent works as those of Professor Baldwin and Professor Tout, to dwell on the administrative, as distinct from the 'constitutional', aspect of politics suggests that the gap may some day be filled. A useful short study is R. H. Gretton, The King's Government (1913). Of the numerous books bearing more or less directly on the subject, I give here mainly those which I have found of practical value in writing this chapter. Professor Tout's ''Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England'', of which the first two volumes have subsequently (1920) appeared, is of course of fundamental importance. The best worked section is that of mediaeval origins. The general surveys of W. Stubbs, ''The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development (1880), and W. R. Anson, The Law and Custom of the Constitution'' (1886-92), may be supplemented for the earliest period by L. M. Larson, The King's Household in England before the Norman Conquest (1904); for the eleventh to thirteenth centuries by H. W. C. Davis, ''Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, i (1913), T. Madox, History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (1769), R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century'' (1912), J. H. Round, The King's Serjeants and Officers of State (1911), and L. W. Vernon Harcourt, His Grace the Steward and the Trial of Peers (1907); for the fourteenth century by T. F. Tout, ''The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History (1914), J. C. Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward II (1918), F. J. Furnivall and R. E. G. Kirk, Life Records of Chaucer (1875-1900), and J. R. Hulbert, Chaucer's Official Life'' (1912); for the fifteenth century by C. Plummer, ''Sir John Fortescue's Governance of England'' (1885), and by the 'courtesy books' or treatises on domestic service and etiquette in F. J. Furnivall, The Babees Book, &c. (1868, E. E. T. S.), Queen Elizabeth's Achademy, &c. (1869, E. E. T. S.), and R. W. Chambers, A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book (1914, E. E. T. S.); for the Privy Council by N. H. Nicolas, Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council (1834-7), J. R. Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council (1890-1907), A. V. Dicey, The Privy Council (1887), J. F. Baldwin, The King's Council in England during the Middle Ages (1913), T. F. T. Plucknett, The Place of the Council in the Fifteenth Century (1918, 4 R. Hist. Soc. Trans. i. 157), E. Percy, The Privy Council under the Tudors (1907), and C. Hornemann, ''Das Privy Council von England zur Zeit der Königin Elisabeth (1912); and for the Star Chamber, W. P. Baildon's edition of John Hawarde's Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata'' (1894), and C. Scofield, The Court of Star Chamber (1900). Some of the above extend to the sixteenth century; but in the main the Tudor-Stuart period has received less attention than it deserves. Even the lists of the great officers, as given in the ordinary books of reference, are generally incorrect. The most valuable summary is the quite recent one of E. P. Cheyney, ''History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth'', i (1914). Samuel Pegge set out to write an account of the Hospitium Regis and published four sections, on the Esquires of the Body, the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, the Gentlemen Pensioners, and the Yeomen of the Guard