Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [33]
The group comprising the stables and coach staff includes various grooms, plus a chief footman with six junior footmen under him. Clearly many more footmen were employed, in contrast to the single individual footman listed in the household of the Earl of Northumberland in 1511. Also footmen were evidently regarded as part of the coaching establishment and ranked separately from those of the chamber and the kitchen, although by the end of the seventeenth century the footmen had become the principal serving attendants in the dining room. Coach travel was more and more important in the seventeenth century, as carriage design improved and they increasingly became an object of display, leading John Evelyn to regret the speed at which everyone travelled and yearn for the more stately progress of former years.31
Among the lowest-ranking servants at Knole were the servants of the servants: the steward’s man, a multitude of every type of groom, the under farrier or blacksmith, the chaplain’s man, two huntsmen including George Vigeon, the bird-catcher, a postilion (who rode on the forward pair of horses to help keep them heading in the right direction), the armourer’s man and his servant, and two men to carry wood for fires.
At the Laundrymaids’ Table, which may not have been in the hall, sat a number of women, including Lady Margaret’s maid, ‘a Blackamoor’, and a porter. Confined to the Kitchen and Scullery were another group, also including ‘a Blackamoor’.32 The two black servants were presumably slaves, and one of the named men or boys may have turned the spit in the kitchen.
Lady Anne Clifford kept a detailed diary, which provides further insight into the challenges posed by her life, as well as the closeness of mistress and household. Her marriage to the Earl of Dorset was notoriously difficult, and the servants played a sensitive role when unwelcome news had to be passed from one spouse to the other. Their relationship was evidently problematic, not least as a result of the complications surrounding her inheritance. She writes in May 1616:
Upon the 2nd came Mr Legg [the earl’s steward] & told divers of the Servants that my Lord would come down & see me once more, which would be the last time that I should see him again.
Lady Anne was then separated from her own child and household servants had to arrange everything.
Upon the 3rd came Baskett [the earl’s gentleman of the horse] down from London & brought me a Letter from my Lord by which I might see it was his pleasure that the Child should go the next day to London, which at first was somewhat grievous to me, but when I considered it would both make my Lord angry with me & be worse for the Child, I resolved to let her go. After I had sent for Mr Legg and talked with him about that and other matters and [I] wept bitterly.
The steward presumably was the only person in whom she could openly confide at the time. It could be risky for servants to take sides in such fallings-out, given their dependent situation.33
Upon the 4th being Saturday, between 10 & 11 the Child went into the Litter to go to London, Mrs Bathurst & her two maids with Mr Legge & a good Company of the Servants going with her . . . [on the 10th] came the Stewards from London whom I expected would have given warning to many of the Servants to go away because the Audits was newly come up. Upon the 11th being Sunday, before Mr Legge went away I talked with him an hour or two about all this Business & matters between me & my Lord, so as I gave him better satisfaction & made him conceive a better opinion of me than ever he did.34
In November 1619, she also records losing at gambling to two of the household’s senior servants: ‘Upon the 2nd I had such ill luck with playing at Glecko [a card game] with Legge & Basket that I said I would not play again in six months.’35 Evidently Lady Anne would often spend private social time with senior servants,