Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [20]
Even the grooms might have their underlings, including ten children for the offices of the household: one for the wardrobe, one for the kitchen, one for the scullery, one for the stable, one for the carriage, one for the bakehouse, one for the arrasmender (who took care of valuable tapestries), one for the butchery, one for the catery (catering department) and one for the armoury. There was also one man whose job it was to ‘serve the grooms of the Chamber with Wood’ – for the open fires.72
Most large medieval and Tudor households employed musicians, who came rather low in the pecking order. Additional entertainers were presumably employed on an ad hoc basis. The Earl of Northumberland’s household included three minstrels, playing a tabouret, a lute and a rebec or early form of fiddle. Some households, like that of Sir Thomas More, also kept a fool, a practice that was especially popular at court.73
The Northumberland household list records one footman, two falconers, a painter and a joiner (the latter to assemble, or repair, household furniture). There was also a huntsman in charge of deer hunting, including the preservation of game against vermin and poaching. There was a ‘Gardener of the place where my lord Lyeth for the time to have meat and drink within’, presumably a hunting lodge. (This is believed to be the hunting tower described by Leland where he is thought to have kept his ‘secret household’ during audits.)
There were ten in the accounts office, including two clerks of the foreign expenses, one clerk of the works, one clerk of the wearing book, and two clerks to write under the clerks of the foreign expenses. The whole number, at the time of this survey in 1511/12, ‘of all the said persons in Household is 166’.74 There is some evidence that the full number was not permanently in attendance, but served in rotation.
Every particular of the house’s activity is accounted for in this book, showing how scrupulously a large household had to be run to avoid chaos, or, more importantly perhaps, embezzlement and theft, problems still current today in any large establishment. Considerable economic management was required, so the book sets out in meticulous detail the provision of all meats, fish and hops for brewing. It also covered liveries, which we will look at later in this chapter. There was also stipulation that all bread should be baked on the premises and not bought in, and that beer likewise be brewed by the household itself. To give just one example, the breakfasts allowed for each level in the household were specified down to the exact quantities of bread, fish and beer each was to receive. Beer would be brewed on site and was regarded as a kind of healthy liquid bread rather than an intoxicant.75
To modern eyes, these households seem more like tribes or villages than a single entity. They were a complex organism of interrelated activities and duties.76 In principle, servants were often employed for a year at a time, although even in the greater households many carried on working for the same masters for decades. There are even recorded cases of contracts being dissolved between masters and servants by virtue of the unacceptable behaviour of a master.
However, there were also numerous examples of generous bequests reflecting long and harmonious relationships based on great loyalty and mutual trust and, no doubt, the need to give long-serving retainers some security in their old age. Many great landowners had special relationships with particular hospitals (that is, almshouses), such as the Bishops of Winchester with St Cross, and the Duke of Suffolk with God’s House at Ewelme.77
Sir Geoffrey Luttrell of Irnham, who