Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 1).pdf/86

 in the Household were officers of the Hall. Similarly the oversight of the guard seems to have passed to the Chamberlain. Nor had the Marshal any longer the responsibility for the stable which the etymology of his name suggests. The Stable was, indeed, still a distinct department, but its head was the Master of the Horse, who, although he ranked as one of the three chief officers of the Household, was of comparatively recent origin.

By a somewhat troublesome variation in the use of terms, the Lord Steward's department is sometimes called the 'Household' in a very narrow sense, which excludes the Chamber and the Stable. The author of the Liber Niger distinguishes it as the domus providentiae from the Chamber as the domus magnificentiae. Roughly speaking, it concerned itself with the material necessities, the food and drink, the lighting and the fuel, of the Sovereign and his court, while all else that ministered to his personal life and the dignity of his state, his lodging and his apparel, his entertainments, his study and his recreations, fell within the sphere of the Chamber. Its original nucleus was still represented under Elizabeth by the officers of the Hall, Marshals, Sewers, and Surveyors; but the Hall had shrunk in importance since the Sovereign had ceased to dine in it, and some of these posts had long been duplicated within the Chamber itself, and even there were tending to become honorific rather than effective. The real functions of the department were now