The usshere shalle bydde the wardropere
Make redy for alle, night before they fere.
Equally important as an attendant was the ‘Barbour.’ He especially was on familiar terms with his master—when was he not? I need scarcely say that among his other duties that of acting as surgeon in the household was none of the lightest. Still his tonsorial capacity was his first one. No one then thought of shaving himself, least of all the baron. Even so late as the sixteenth century a writer defending the use of the beard against Andrew Boorde employs this argument:—
But, syre, I praye you, if you tell can,
Declare to me, when God made man
(I meane by our forefather Adam),
Whether that he had a berde then;
And if he had, who did hym shave,
Since that a barber he could not have.
I have no doubt it is here we must set our ‘Simisters,’ relics, as they probably are, of such a name as ‘John Somayster,’ or ‘William Summister.’ The summaster seems from its orthography to have represented one who acted as a clerk or comptroller, something akin to the chamberlain or breviter, whom I shall mention almost immediately; one, in fact, who cast up and certified accounts. Holinshed used the word as if in his day it were of familiar import. Dwelling upon a certain event, he says—‘Over this, if the historian be long, he is accompted a trifler; if he be short, he is taken for a summister.’[[194]]