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The Royal Households of the United Kingdom are the collective departments that support members of the British royal family. Many members of the royal family who undertake public duties have separate households. They vary considerably in size, from the large household that supports the sovereign to the household of the Prince and ...
- Overview
- The medieval household
Royal Household of the United Kingdom, organization that provides support to the royal family of the United Kingdom. Its chief duties include assisting the monarch in carrying out the responsibilities of the head of state, organizing public ceremonies involving the royal family or royal residences, and maintaining and presenting the Royal Collection.
In all the medieval monarchies of western Europe the general system of government sprang from and centred in the royal household. The sovereign’s chief domestics, bearing titles suggestive of purely personal service, gradually became the great administrators of the realm. Thus, in England the lord chancellor was originally merely the head of the king’s writing office. Over time he became, as keeper of the great seal, responsible for the authentication of all major state documents and was, during the later Middle Ages, the principal officer of state. In France this primacy of position was achieved at about the same time by the constable, who, originally the master of the stables, became in due course commander in chief of the army. In modern times members of the Royal Household no longer hold government office but are concerned only with the organization of the various royal establishments and with personal and ceremonial attendance on the sovereign.
The early English poems which recall conditions of the migration age of the Anglo-Saxon tribes describe feasts in the king’s hall, where his praises were sung to the harp. As the migration age passed into the time of settled kingdoms, the king’s household appears as the centre of government and his hall its focus. Following their conversion to Christianity in the 7th century, Anglo-Saxon kings began to acquire a staff of learned clerks who could record their gifts to churches or to great men, the decisions of the king and his advisers, and the laws of the land. Very early in English history the royal household can be seen falling into three main divisions: the chapel with its staff of clerks, the hall where the daily life of the household was passed, and the chamber where the king could retire for sleeping and privacy and where his clothes, jewels, and muniments were stored. A similar threefold division can be seen in all the royal households of Europe and in the households of great magnates in every land.
In England no one officer stood out as head of the king’s household staff in the way that the mayor of the palace dominated the Frankish Merovingian court. King Eadred (946–955) regarded his seneschals, chamberlains, and butlers as his chief servants, and upon his death he bequeathed them 80 golden coins. No constable or marshal is mentioned in his will by name or office. From his time until the end of the Anglo-Saxon period a considerable anonymity among officeholders can be seen. From the reign of Canute (d. 1035) the Norse loan word staller was used to describe a man who had a permanent office in the king’s hall without indicating his relative status or exact duties. The indefiniteness of this title in no way indicates any lack of organization in the households of the last Saxon kings. The king’s writing office, which can be traced back to the reign of Athelstan (d. 939), was, indeed, the most efficient in Europe. It attracted foreign clerks to the king’s service and the Anglo-Saxon writ or royal letter had become an instrument of government. A successful royal clerk could hope to rise to a bishopric, but there is no adequate evidence that before the Norman Conquest the writing office was ever styled the chancery or its head the chancellor. The appearance of the chancellor at the head of an office called the chancery (from the cancella, or screen, which shut off the clerks from the main body of the king’s hall) is a development of the immediate post-Conquest generation, resulting from the immense pressure of work caused by the changes in land ownership after the Battle of Hastings.
No account of the household staff of the Norman kings was written down before the early years of Stephen’s reign (1135–54) when the Constitutio domus regis was compiled. Like the household ordinances of the later Middle Ages, it is primarily concerned with the daily wage in money and the allowance of bread, wine, and candles due to each household officer and ignores the fact that the less important royal servants generally held land of the king in sergeanty. The Constitutio begins with the royal chapel under the chancellor, who received the highest daily wage of all the king’s officers—5 shillings—whether he ate at the king’s expense or his own. His second-in-command, the master of the writing office, had received tenpence, but Henry I increased his wage to 2 shillings and gave him appropriate additions to his allowance of bread, wine, and candle ends.
The king’s hall was under the care of two officers of equal rank, the seneschal (steward) and the master butler, who each received a standing wage of 5 shillings a day. When they actually served in court and were fed at the king’s expense, their daily wage was 3 shillings 6 pennies. Their two parallel departments provided food and drink through a series of officers carefully graded as to pay and allowances down to the man who counted the loaves and the slaughterers who had no pay but “customary food” only.
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- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The history of the Royal Household in the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century has been mainly one of reorganization in order to achieve increased efficiency. Formerly there was much overlapping and confusion in the duties of the various departments.
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British royal residences are palaces, castles and houses which are occupied by members of the British royal family in the United Kingdom. The current residences are owned by the Crown, the Duchy of Cornwall, and privately by members of the royal family; all the official residences are owned by the Crown. [1] [2] Some official ...
