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Rh obviously, if the King was in the habit of appointing two chamberlains or two stewards, he could make one of each pair hereditary, and still have another at his own appointment. And he could call on the hereditary officer to officiate on state occasions and the appointed officer to officiate in daily life. The hereditary man would have the greater dignity and the appointed man the greater power. This, rather than deputation by the hereditary officers, seems to be the explanation of the existence of a Chamberlain of the Household side by side with the Lord Great Chamberlain and of a Steward of the Household side by side with the Lord High Steward. It is really only another example of the duplication of functions, through officers of state on the one hand, and Household officers on the other, to which attention has already been called; with the added feature that in this case the officers of state seem to have had sinecures from the beginning.

The tripartite organization is traceable clearly enough in the Household of Elizabeth, as in that of her predecessors. There was, of course, a close co-operation at many points between the different departments; and, indeed, the simplicity of the original scheme had inevitably been interfered with, as the sovereigns began more and more to retire from their hall and to subdivide their chamber in order to adapt it to the complicated needs of an increasingly luxurious private life. The department of the court-yard, moreover, would appear, long before Elizabeth's time, to have shed many of what must be supposed to have been its original functions. The hereditary Lord High Constable had left no constabularius behind him at court, and although the Earl Marshal, also hereditary, continued to exercise certain functions, such as an oversight over the heralds, he was in no sense the head of a Household department. The Knight Marshal, who exercised a jurisdiction over breaches of peace within the verge (virgata) of twelve leagues round the court, was nominally at least his deputy, but the only other marshals