Privy chamber

• 1. Introduction

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  Inside English royal palaces stood a room called the privy chamber, the king's private apartment set apart from the noisier rooms of the court. As one account of the Tudor court puts it, entry to the presence chamber outside it was strongly contested by many. Yet real influence depended on getting into the privy chamber itself. That inner room held the king's bedroom, his library, his study, and his lavatory, a cluster of spaces reserved for a chosen few. The men who served there were not simple household staff. They were gatekeepers and confidants who could make or break a career with nothing more than access. Over five reigns, from the first Tudor king to a monarch who arrived from Scotland, the people allowed through that door kept changing. So did what was asked of them once inside.

• 2. Rules Of The Room

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  The office of the privy chamber traced back to Henry VII, whose reign spanned 1485-1509. By the time his son Henry VIII took the throne, the department already had a regular staff of gentlemen, ushers, grooms, and pages. Reform kept reshaping it for decades, particularly across 1518-1536. In 1559, what had once been a single chamber split formally into two: a privy chamber, now distinguished from the king's bedchamber, and an outer chamber often styled the presence chamber.

  Beneath the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber in this hierarchy sat the Grooms of the Privy Chamber, a lower and less powerful rank. Six of the gentlemen carried a public duty beyond private service. Appointed by the Lord Chamberlain along with a peer and the Master of the Ceremonies, they formally attended to foreign ambassadors on the crown's behalf. No other servants at court held the privilege granted to these gentlemen, who could carry out the king's spoken command without any written order at all. Their own person and character, by this arrangement, counted as sufficient authority on its own. Reaching the king without going through these men was nearly impossible, since a private word to him passed through whoever stood in that room.

• 3. The King's Companions

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  As a young man early in his reign, Henry VIII had a 'desire to have friends around him', as one description puts it. Those friends shared his love of sport and jousting. In the earliest years of his reign, the title Gentleman of the Privy Chamber went to subordinates and court companions who spent their days with him, typically the sons of noblemen or the gentry. Over time these men effectively became the king's personal secretaries, handling administrative tasks inside his private rooms. The post was prized because it promised something rare: regular, guaranteed access to the king's attention. Once admitted, these companions often grew into remarkably distinguished figures, sometimes holding more sway over the king than his own wife.

  Their actual duties were summed up in an instruction requiring them to attend upon the king's person, in the phrase of the time, 'doeing humble, reverent, secrett and lowly service'. In practice this meant keeping him company, dressing and undressing him, and handling a range of smaller chores besides. Entertainment counted among those chores too. The gentlemen organised hunting expeditions for Henry, and later, games for the boy king Edward VI who succeeded him, giving each monarch a way to bond with the men closest to him.

• 4. Secrecy By Order

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  An extract from the Ordinances of Eltham, a manuscript dated 1526, ordered the men of the privy chamber to be 'loving together, and of good Unity and accord', keeping secret everything said or done inside the room. The same document forbade them from asking where the king was or where he had gone, and banned any 'grudgeing, mumbling, or talking of the King's Pastime'. Unless commanded to go with him, they were to stay in the chamber, going to bed early or late as his schedule required.

  A separate passage from the same Ordinances required six gentlemen to be ready in the chamber by seven o'clock, or whenever the king had determined the night before he would rise, so they could dress him. They alone were permitted to lay hands on the king's 'royall person', doing so in a 'reverent, discreet and sober manner' as they chose the garments he wished to wear. Grooms and ushers were barred from touching him unless specifically commanded, limited instead to warming clothes or handing items to the six gentlemen.

• 5. Proximity And Peril

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  As Henry's rule went on, the number of office-holders in the privy chamber kept growing. Part of this was to let in outsiders who saw the advantage of a post so close to the king, and part of it was to give existing staff some relief from constant duty. The gentlemen who dominated the room were servants of the Crown who, as one description puts it, usually 'shared two characteristics: the king's religion and the king's personal favour'. Their reach went well past company and dressing. They took on an 'increasingly important role in the handling of the crown's cash', and the household even served a military purpose, functioning as an 'army-within-an-army'. Many of these gentlemen were peers of Henry or figures of real importance in government, sharing their duties with the Groom of the Stool and the Chief Gentleman of the Chamber, who held overall responsibility for all the staff.

  Thomas Wolsey discovered that access cut both ways: a foothold in the privy chamber could contribute to a fall from power just as easily as to a rise. Proximity to the king offered no permanent protection, only an opportunity that could turn against whoever held it.

• 6. The Groom Of The Stool

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  One post grew in importance precisely because it was so intimate: the Groom of the Stool, a male servant tasked with what the record calls the 'royal excretion', cleaning the king's body after he used the toilet. Rather than a mark of shame, the job carried real honour and a high standing at court, and it grew more influential still as Henry aged and needed more physical assistance.

  Five men held the post in succession under Henry VIII, and their fates varied widely. Sir William Compton served 1509-1528 and died that year during the sweating sickness. Sir Henry Norris, in the role 1526-1536, was beheaded in 1536 for high treason. Sir Thomas Heneage followed, 1536-1546, and Sir Anthony Denny held the post 1546-1547. Sir Michael Stanhope, groom 1547-1551, was beheaded in 1552, also for high treason. The office would not end with Henry. Decades later, a king from Scotland would bring his own version of this same intimate service into the English court.

• 7. A Boy King's Circle

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  Between 1549-53, Edward VI's privy chamber counted six 'principal gentlemen': John Cheke, Henry Sidney, Nicholas Throckmorton, Thomas Wroth, Henry Nevill, and a man known only as Barnaby, alongside twenty-six 'ordinary gentlemen'. Every one of them except Barnaby was 10-15 years older than the king. Normally these six would have been the monarch's closest intimates, but Edward was young and inexperienced, leaving room for some of them to push their way into his confidence rather than earn it. Philip Hoby, a diplomatist and intriguer, may have been one gentleman who was not genuinely friendly toward the boy king. Henry Stanley, Lord Strange, and William Stanley reportedly confessed to having been employed as a spy for Somerset.

  A gentleman in Edward's privy chamber earned £50 a year, a gentleman usher £30, and a groom £20. These men belonged to what was called the 'Ordinary of the King's Honorable House', distinct from a separate group established under Henry VIII: six gentlemen, two gentlemen ushers, four grooms, one barber, and one page.

  Whoever stood closest to the king, whether the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Protector, or the Lord President of the Council, tended to fill the privy chamber with his own allies. Sir John Gates rose this way, becoming a political figure who controlled access to the young king on behalf of his patron, the Duke of Northumberland. John Fowler worked the same angle more quietly, taking bribes that gave Thomas Seymour repeated contact with and influence over Edward. Within a few years the king's household would look nothing like this, first shrinking under two queens, then reopening its doors to men from north of the border.

• 8. The Household Reshaped

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  By the time Queen Mary died, her privy chamber establishment counted seven Ladies and thirteen Gentlewomen, next to only about half a dozen Gentlemen and Grooms combined. Under Elizabeth I, the number of men in the household shrank further still, down to just two: one Gentleman and one Groom.

  James VI of Scotland became king of England in 1603, and he brought a household built on entirely different foundations. Scotland's royal court, its household structure, and even the architecture of its palaces had developed along their own lines, separate from England's. James' personal attendants, known in Scotland as varlets of the 'chalmer', were now recast as grooms of the bedchamber. Some English courtiers lost out entirely: John Fortescue was pushed from his place for resisting the appointment of Scottish courtiers in the new arrangement.

  The new Privy Chamber, formed in May 1603, numbered 48 gentlemen, with twelve on duty at any given time. Its new grooms appear to have come from lower-ranking families than Elizabeth's had, though the ushers still enjoyed a degree of superiority. Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, held the title of Chamberlain, while Sir Thomas Erskine actually ran the department. John Murray of the Bedchamber became a particularly influential courtier and a conduit for royal patronage, a role that later arrivals in the reshaped household would try to copy.