Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (42 page)

CHAPTER 14

TO SERVE THE QUEEN

Robert C. Braddock

I

Many scholars have stressed that Mary and Elizabeth faced similar problems at their accessions: empty treasuries, hostile neighbors, religious conflict at home and abroad, not to mention a disputed claim to the throne itself. This essay adds one more topic to this list: court establishments inherited from their predecessors, whose members had loyalties and beliefs different from their own. It addresses the important but frequently overlooked aspect of the transition from the reign of each of Henry VIII’s children to the next. It shows that Mary and Elizabeth were driven by different motives when making appointments to their household establishments. For Mary past loyalty and religion were paramount, while for Elizabeth bureaucratic routine took precedence, so much so that by the end of her reign, her servants came to view their posts as a kind of property that if they could not legally sell, they could not be deprived of it without compensation.

There have been several important studies of the establishments of Mary and Elizabeth as princess and queen.
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These have clearly shown that both queens took care in making appointments because, having used their personal affinities to support them in opposition, they realized the strategic and political importance of their personal servants once they gained the throne. These studies have rightly focused on those immediately around them as princess and queen, for in personal monarchy, everyone around the monarch was important regardless of the post they held. This essay expands the field of study to include those below stairs to measure how far Mary and Elizabeth’s interest in appointments went. In doing so it attempts to respond to Sir Geoffrey Elton’s call for “painful studies of [the] Acatry and Pantry, rather than more pretty pictures of gallants and galliards.”
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The death of a monarch meant that all appointments in the royal household ceased, a fact symbolized by the ceremonial breaking of their staffs of office by the senior officials who then threw them into the grave of their deceased masters. And what was true at the top, was true for all, because each member had sworn an oath to serve the king or queen personally. Although most who served in non-sensitive positions could expect to be retained, it was not guaranteed because the new monarchs brought with them their own servants whose claims would have to be considered alongside those of the previous incumbents. While we do not know the precise procedures that were used to balance the competing claims, by comparing establishment lists, we can identify the newcomers and thus gain a better understanding of Mary’s and Elizabeth’s attitudes toward those who served them.
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There can be little doubt that the newly crowned queens gave serious consideration to the claims of those seeking reappointment but that they did not automatically grant them. Understandably the soldiers who had obeyed the duke of Northumberland’s order to take up arms to support Mary’s coup were the most vulnerable. They had to undergo two special inquiries before they were reappointed. The fact that most were reappointed should not obscure how uncertain it was.
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At a lower level a senior official attempted to block the reappointment of the self-described “hot-gospeller” Edward Underhill as gentleman-at-arms. Fortunately for Underhill, the man had neither the power to do so nor the determination to pursue the matter with those who did, and by keeping an uncharacteristically low profile Underhill stayed on.
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Unfortunately there are no records of similar examinations, but there can be little doubt that they took place and that the results reflect Mary’s and Elizabeth’s wishes.

II

The Counting House, or Board of Greencloth, ruled over the sprawling bureaucracy of cooks, caterers, and provisioners in the household below stairs. Since the reforms of Thomas Cromwell, the entire household had been ruled by the lord great master. Given the fact that Northumberland had used the post to consolidate his power, Mary, understandably, chose to demote it to its former title of lord steward and reduce its scope to supervising below stairs only. The steward was joined by a treasurer and controller (or comptroller) who, like him, carried a white staff of office and below them the officers of the Board of Greencloth, who supervised the daily workings and expenditures of the particular departments. The “white staves” had long been political appointees, so there was no surprise when Mary appointed Sir Robert Rochester as controller in 1553 and Elizabeth, Sir Thomas Cornwallis in 1558 along with Sir Thomas Parry as treasurer. These men had long served the princesses and although they took certain aspects of their jobs to heart, especially the perquisites and patronage opportunities, they probably took little part in day-to-day operations. Below them was another matter, however. The business of the household was supervised by the cofferer, the highest position open to promotion from the ranks, but curiously it was a position that shared the fate of politicians: each was replaced by the new regime.

When Henry VIII died the post was held by Sir Edmund Peckham, who had held the job for twenty years. Peckham’s years of service did not ensure his retention, however, for at Henry’s death he was removed in favor of John Ryther. Since Sir Edmund also held the post of treasurer of the mint and was given an annuity worth one-third more than his cofferer’s salary as a sweetener,
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he could hardly have felt deprived. Moreover, Ryther’s appointment may have brought administrative efficiency. Although there were no recorded rules specifying the seniority procedures to be observed, there were strict precedents, and Ryther was technically a newcomer to the royal household. He did have a claim to the new king’s largesse, however: he had served Prince Edward. Like his father before him, Ryther had been brought up in the service of the earls of Oxford, but he had been pressed into royal service in the 1540s to straighten out Prince Edward’s finances.
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Despite his experience, however, Ryther must surely have faced the professional jealousy of career officials who found the choicest plum beyond their reach. When Ryther died in 1552, the seniority system of promotion from below was reinstated, and Thomas Weldon, member of a dynasty of royal clerks, got the job.
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His tenure was short lived, however, for when Mary succeeded her brother she replaced him with Richard Freston. Weldon’s replacement by Freston marks a noteworthy change in royal policy, for Freston had no discernible previous administrative experience. Indeed his only prior connection with the court was a brief stint as one of the gentlemen pensioners, a post he had surrendered fifteen years previously.
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But if Freston lacked the requisite administrative skills for the job, he had the essentials for appointment in Mary’s eyes: loyalty and orthodoxy. David Loades has identified him as having served in Princess Mary’s establishment, although it is difficult to ascertain exactly what his responsibilities had been.
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Whatever they were, he was certainly part of the affinity of East Anglian supporters that Jeri McIntosh, Anna Whitelock, and Diarmaid MacCulloch have identified as being crucial in Mary’s surprisingly easy path to the throne.
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His appointment marked another shift for he was also given a seat on the privy council and a knighthood. For the first time the post of cofferer was given to one who might be called a politician rather than a civil servant.

Mary’s chief motive for appointing Freston was undoubtedly to surround herself with loyal supporters, but she had an equally valid reason for dismissing Weldon: he had been appointed by Northumberland, a reason that made him immediately suspect in her eyes; but the key factor was his strong Protestant opinions. In 1543 he had spent time in the Fleet for having sheltered one Anthony Person, an offender against the Six Articles, although later on he was described as a “furtherer” of religion.
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Whitelock and MacCulloch have shown that although Mary did not stress the religious theme during her coup, she had already demonstrated that she desired to have “an unmistakably Catholic household,” concluding that “to be in Mary’s service was to live as a Catholic.”
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Edward Underhill’s claim that he survived at court because it was the best place to “shift the Easter time” (avoid taking communion) may have applied to those behind the scenes, but it did not apply to the most senior post in the catering departments.
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Weldon clearly had to go. However, if Mary had merely wanted to be rid of Weldon and replace him with a Catholic she could have promoted James Gage, one of her senior clerks, a man of impeccable orthodoxy as well as experience, whose father, Sir John Gage, was her vice chamberlain and captain of the guard.

Freston’s death during the influenza epidemic of 1557 presented another opportunity for appointment. This time Mary returned to the traditional order by selecting Michael Wentworth, the senior clerk. But when Wentworth died after less than a year in his new post, she broke tradition and appointed Richard Warde.
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Unlike Freston, Warde was one of the clerks, but he was a comparative newcomer and his appointment signifies another change to customary procedure.

Warde’s educational qualifications made him stand out from all the other clerks; he had been educated at Eton, King’s College Cambridge, and Middle Temple, but it was his family’s connections with other household officials that secured his appointment.
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Warde’s tenure was short-lived, however. Mary’s death brought further changes, and, as in so many aspects of her rule, Elizabeth’s answer was different from Mary’s. Like Mary, she replaced the politicians, the steward, treasurer, and controller, but instead of replacing Warde with her own man, she reinstated Thomas Weldon. She made another change from Mary’s practice, for rather than dismiss Warde, she allowed hi m to share the office with Weldon.
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The records suggest that Weldon actually performed the cofferer’s duties, but it was clear that Warde too had a claim to the post. The unprecedented dual coffership continued for eight years until Weldon died and Warde was once again appointed the sole cofferer; by this time Warde had outlived those he had previously leapfrogged and was now the senior clerk.
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It might seem that bureaucratic routine had finally triumphed over Mary’s attempt to inject politics below stairs. However, at the end of her reign Elizabeth reverted to Mary’s example when she reached outside the ranks of household clerks to appoint Sir Henry Cocke, a man with no court office or ascertainable administrative experience but who had been a political ally of his neighbor Lord Burghley in Elizabeth’s later parliaments. An astute politician, Cocke entertained King James lavishly as he made his way South to receive his crown and was rewarded by being the first cofferer to retain his post with the change of monarch in over one hundred years.
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With politicians in charge of the finances rather than accountants, it is not surprising that there were increased cries against corruption.

Of course, Cocke can hardly be the only one blamed for the increased theft and waste so often complained of in Elizabeth’s final years. His superiors—the treasurer, Sir Francis Knollys, and controller, Sir James Croft— were certainly guilty of petty graft and lax oversight, to say the least, but the nature of the office had certainly changed.
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The coffership had become a political plum to be exploited like the others. That change was revealed in 1615 when the young wife of Sir Robert Vernon, the aged cofferer, attempted to sell the office to Sir Arthur Ingram to insure a comfortable retirement. By this arrangement Ingram agreed to pay £2,000 outright to Vernon plus an additional £110 to Lady Vernon for negotiating the deal and to pay the couple £500 a year thereafter, a sum that dropped to £200 if Vernon predeceased his wife.21

Although Ingram was not unqualified for the post, having been a very successful businessman and holder of other crown appointments, the disappointed senior household clerks raised a fuss, claiming that King James had promised to appoint by seniority as they claimed Elizabeth had always done. In consequence the crown was forced to rescind Ingram’s appointment claiming that the Ingram-Vernon deal had violated a statute of the reign of Edward VI prohibiting the sale of offices. That should have ended the matter, but the new cofferer, Sir Marmaduke Darrell, the man who had rallied his colleagues to protest Ingram’s incursion, was so unsure of his ground that he raised over £3,000 to ease Vernon’s disappointment in losing his forbidden pension, in effect stopping the sale by buying out the illegal transaction.22 Darrell’s promotion meant that appointment to a major post, traditionally the prerogative of the crown, had been surrendered to bureaucratic routine.

III

The chance survival of a memorandum drawn up shortly after Henry VIII’s death shows that a serious effort was made to find places for all those who had served Edward as prince, either integrating them into the establishment he inherited, or in the service of someone of suitably high rank.
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Undoubtedly this was also the case for Mary and Elizabeth, but unfortunately no such memoranda exist for them. The example of the chief cooks, “the cooks for the mouth,” illustrates how this must have worked.

When Edward succeeded his father, he pensioned off John Brickett, who had been Henry’s cook for many years, and replaced him with Richard Curry who had prepared his meals as prince.
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When Curry died he appointed George Webster, a man who had cooked for the duke of Richmond and was subsequently transferred to Prince Edward’s kitchens at Richmond’s death.
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Mary and Elizabeth followed their brother’s example. Mary dismissed Webster and appointed Thomas Burrage, a man who had served in their father’s kitchen since the 1530s but who had been transferred to her service in 1547 to make room for Edward’s man.26

Elizabeth’s accession brought a new royal cook, but one equally experienced, for Francis Piggott had literally been raised in the royal kitchens. His father, Hugh, was a yeoman cook to Princess Mary in the 1520s, rising to master cook by 1534. When Prince Edward was given his own household, Piggott was able to arrange a transfer and to obtain a groom’s position for his son. Henry’s death brought a change in their fortunes for there was no room for either father or son in King Edward’s kitchen. Past services did not go unrewarded, however. Hugh was given a pension and Edward a place in Princess Elizabeth’s service. Fittingly Elizabeth appointed him her master cook when she took the throne.27