Up and Down Stairs (6 page)

This is so practical and obvious that some sections of this treatise could equally have been applied to the Edwardian valet: ‘When he rises make ready the foot-sheet, and forget not to place a chair or some other seat with a cushion on it before the fire, with another cushion for the feet. Over the cushion and chair spread this sheet so as to cover them, and see that you have a kerchief and a comb to comb your lord’s head before he is fully dressed.’
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It is no wonder that, given the scope of medieval heating, the chamberlain would position the lord by his fire before he is dressed:

Then pray your lord in humble words to come to a good fire and array him thereby, and there to stand or stand pleasantly; and wait with due manners to assist him. First hold out to him his tunic, then his doublet while he puts in his arms, and have his stomacher well aired to keep off harm, as also his vamps [short stockings] and socks, so he shall go warm all day.

Then draw on his socks and his hose by the fire, and lace or buckle his shoes, draw his hosen on well and truss them up to the height that suits him, lace his doublet in every hole, and put round his neck and on his shoulders a kerchief; and then gently comb his head with an ivory comb, and give him water where with to wash his hands and face.

After that the chamberlain was to kneel and ask which robe or gown he wants. ‘Before he goes out, brush busily about him, and whether he wear satin, sendal, velvet, scarlet or grain, see that all be clean and nice.’
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After the lord has left, the room must be set straight, the bed made ‘mannerly’ and the fire laid ready. The wardrobe must also be attended to, the clothes kept well, with instructions ‘to brush them cleanly’ and inspect furs regularly against moths. Later,

when he has supped and goes to his chamber, spread forth your foot-sheet, as I have already shown you, take off his gown or whatever garment by the license of his estate he wear, and lay it up in such place as ye best know . . .

Put a mantle on his back to keep his body from cold, set him on the foot-sheet made ready as I have directed, and pull of[f] his shoes, socks and hosen, and throw these last over your shoulder, or hold them on your arm. Comb his hair, but first kneel down and put on his kerchief and nightcap wound in seemly fashion.

The bed and candles must be prepared, and, in a very human detail, the dogs and cats chased out of the chamber: ‘take no leave of your lord, but bow low to him and retire.’
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Every comfort was considered, a theme that lies at the heart of the role of the body-servant down the ages.
The Book of Nurture
gives memorable recipes for a sweet-smelling ‘bath or stew so-called’ and there is also a medicinal version: ‘boil together hollyhock, mallow, wall pellitory and brown fennel, St. John’s wort, centuary, ribwort and camomile, hehove, heyriff, herb-benet, brese-wort, smallage, water speedewell, scabious, bugloss, and wild flax which is good for aches – boil with leaves and green oats together with them, and throw them hot into a vessel and put your lord over it.’
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This was the original herbal bath essence.

Among the other offices that Mr Russell detailed were his own, that of usher and marshal. Above all, the marshal must know the precedence of the nobility, an essential skill for upper servants well into the twentieth century, as well as ‘all the estates of the church’ and their status.

To show off his part-royal duties, he recites the hierarchy from the top, beginning with emperor, pope, and king, continuing down through the copious ranks of late medieval society. An usher or marshal must be able to seat them all appropriately: ‘a bishop, viscount,
marquis, goodly earl may sit at two messes [dishes to be shared between four] if they be agreeable thereunto’. The key issue is to ‘set all according to their birth, riches and dignity’.
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Mr Russell’s treatise takes us deep into the minutiae and the mindset of the senior medieval servant. Although these elaborate rituals might seem alien to a modern reader, many practices would have been recognisable in aristocratic households up until the nineteenth century, when technology first has an impact on the roles of body-servants. Some would be recognisable even today. It is perhaps not surprising that caring for a high-status and wealthy employer should require many services that stay basically the same, despite advances in technology and changes in social values.

Noble households regularly moved between the landholdings of the head of the household, although by the end of the sixteenth century there was a greater emphasis on attendance at court. The household on the move must have been one of the great spectacles of the Middle Ages. It was divided usually into three parties. One went ahead to announce the arrival of a lord and to prepare his apartments; another, the main one, comprised the lord and his immediate household, with appropriate attendants. Then came the baggage train, with the cooks, scullions and pack horses, carrying clothes, linen, furniture and provisions for the journey.
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Appreciating the scale of this operation helps us understand the rather formulaic layout of the medieval castle and manor house, which assisted the smooth transition from house to house of the mobile household, as well as being able to absorb a visiting lord, his family and attendants. A medieval householder could call on the attendance of knights and squires, who owed military service in return for their landholdings. They made up the ‘fighting’ household, but were not on permanent alert, and could swell the numbers for a special procession.
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Later in the medieval period, a smaller group of individuals, then known as the ‘secret household’, remained in attendance on the lord, his wife and children when it did not suit him to keep house formally; this often coincided with the annual audit, when all the complex expenditure of a household was closely reviewed.
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The most elaborate household of the day, which set the standards of visual magnificence and efficiency, was of course the royal household – or, strictly speaking, households, as queens and princes each had their own, not least to emphasise their individual dignity. There is perhaps no modern equivalent of this, other than perhaps great state occasions. The households of the upper nobility naturally largely followed the pattern set by the monarchy, although on differing scales; indeed, they were mirrored in turn by the households of the gentry. Those of leading bishops and abbots played a role in setting high standards of ritual and devotion that would have been imitated by other great households.

In the larger households, the upper servants, overseen by figures such as John Russell, had the principal duties of looking after the family rooms and the great hall. They were expected to be well trained and well dressed, usually in a designated livery, whose colours were chosen by the head of the household and were usually based on the main pigments in the family’s coat of arms. In all other respects, they followed the fashion of the day, unlike liveries from the late seventeenth century that tended to deliberate old-fashionedness.
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These upper servants were responsible for carrying out the extraordinarily elaborate ritual already described by Mr Russell, which governed their master’s every waking moment – from first light to the ending of the day. Their duties usually began early, as in the household of the Prince of Wales, the young Prince Edward, in the 1470s. The main gates would be opened from five in summer and six in winter. As was usual in great households then, the daily round would start with a chapel service, followed by breakfast for the lord and his family. Dinner for the household was served between nine and eleven in the morning. The evening was demarcated by evensong, supper, and the ceremony of ‘all night’ or seeing the lord to bed. The main gates were closed by nine or ten.
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As Mr Russell’s treatise shows, the entertainment of great visitors was central to the life of the noble household. Another late-fifteenth-century treatise sets out the protocol for receiving a guest who has arrived during a mealtime, describing how he should be taken to his chamber, through the great hall, to be greeted courteously by the
marshal and ushers. An usher should take his servants to drink at the bar of the buttery and show them their master’s sleeping quarters; he should also ensure that bread, beer and wine were taken to his chamber.
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All this was not just for protection, but for dignity’s sake. Remember the argument in Act II, scene IV, between King Lear and his daughters about his need for retainers, when he is asked to reduce his retinue, eventually to one. When Regan says, ‘What need one?’ he replies in agony: ‘O! reason not the need: our basest beggars/Are in the poorest thing superfluous.’ The actual physical presence of even a few retainers was quite simply the
sine qua non
of aristocratic life at any level. This ‘need’ is hinted at by Elizabeth Stonor, of Stonor in Oxfordshire, who strikes a plaintive note in a letter to her husband, written in March 1478: ‘And I pray you that you will send me some of your servants and mine to wait upon me, for now I am right bare of servants.’
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It was difficult to emphasise your noble or gentry status without the proper attendants.

The nature of such a household, recounted in detail only fifty years after John Russell’s treatise but with many of the practices there described still in vogue, is to be found in the remarkable document known as the Northumberland Household Book. The household regulations of Henry Algernon Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland, were drawn up in 1511/12 as a process of audit and good management, supplying a rare example of a non-royal list of household members and its arrangements. These regulations relate principally to his two houses, Leaconfield Castle and Wressil Castle, providing an extraordinarily vivid portrait of the great household at its fullest, at the beginning of the century when it started to become unfashionable to retain one on a permanent basis. The list of those in the household is worth inspecting here in some detail.
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Leaconfield, or Leconfield, Castle was near Beverley in Yorkshire. It no longer survives but was described by the antiquary John Leland thus: ‘Leckinfield is a large house, and stands within a great moat, in one very spacious court; 3 parts of the house, saving the main gate that is made of bricke, [are] all of timber. The 4[th] parte is fair, made of stone, and some brick . . . the Park thereby is very fair and large.’
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In 1541, the earl hosted a visit from Henry VIII there. Wressil Castle, now known as Wressle, also in Yorkshire, was a similarly extensive complex and survives only as a ruin.

The original manuscript is preserved in the archives of the present Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle. It is a remarkable leather-bound document, as heavy as an old bible, and carefully indexed with little sealing-wax knobs on strings, suggesting that it was very much for practical reference, covering every aspect of the finances, feeding, heating and transporting of a large noble household. The text was transcribed, edited and reprinted in the eighteenth century by the bishop and antiquary Thomas Percy, who was struck then by how like a royal household it was. It includes a list of ‘those abiding in his household’ at Michaelmas in the third year of the reign of Henry VIII.

First comes the earl’s blood family and their immediate personal attendants: ‘My Lord, My Lady, My Young Lord and his two brothers, and their servants, each having a yeoman and a groom’. There were three servants for the nursery alone, ‘viz. 2, rockers and a child to attend in nursery’; the rockers were literally people, presumably women, hired to rock the cradle. Then there were ‘three Gentlewomen for my Lady and two Chamberers for my Lady’, and ‘My Lord’s Brothers every [one] of them with their servants’.

Next come the four upper servants (and their servants): ‘My Lord’s head officers of household’, namely the chamberlain (and his servants: a chaplain, a clerk, two yeomen, a child of his chamber and his horse-keeper), and the steward (whose list of servants matched that of the chamberlain). Then the Treasurer and his servants (including his clerk and his horsekeeper); and the controller (and his servants, a clerk and his horsekeeper). In the household of a major landowner these were all powerful men with considerable economic influence and patronage of their own.

Then, as with most noble households until the Reformation, came the numerous clergy who organised the daily services and said masses for the souls of the dead. In the earl’s household there was ‘the Dean of the Chapel and his servant, the Survisor [a supervisory chaplain] and his servant, two of My Lord’s Council each with their
servants; the Secretary and his servant; my Lord’s Chaplains in household’ of whom there were six. They included the almoner who would distribute alms, the ‘master of grammar’ or schoolmaster to the young in the household, ‘a Chaplain to ride with my lord’ and three more clergy.

All households had regular services, whilst some held as many as six or seven masses throughout the day. In larger noble households, the clerics, being well educated, might also have served as secretaries, to maintain estate records and accounts.
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The Reformation of the 1530s brought an end to the huge numbers of priests attached to a single household. Although retained chaplains and daily prayers remained common, this must have changed the atmosphere and habits of many of the great households.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1535 also caused the breakup of the households of great abbots, which until then had set the standard of devotion and ritual practice, and were certainly highly regarded for the education of the young. The closing of such establishments must have had an impact on English culture, even in terms of the numbers of highly trained household servants who must have lost their jobs.
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