[106] Sp. P. ii. 606. The default was at the reception of Alençon's envoys in Aug. 1578. The Calendar makes Sussex 'Lord Steward', but the original (Documentos Inéditos, xci. 270) has 'gran Camarero'. In 1582, at the reception of a lord mayor, 'some young gentilman, being more bold than well mannered, did stand upon the carpett of the clothe of estate, and did allmost leane upon the queshions. Her Highnes found fault with my Lord Chamberlayn and Mʳ Vice-Chamberlayn, and with the Gentlemen Ushers, for suffering such disorders' (Fleetwood to Burghley in Wright, ii. 174).
[107] Cf. ch. vi, p. 205, on the misadventure of Jonson and Sir John Roe in 1603; also Jonson's Irish Mask (1613), 12, 'Ish it te fashion to beate te imbasheters here, and knoke 'hem o' te heads phit te phoit stick?', and Beaumont and Fletcher, Maid's Tragedy (c. 1611), 1. ii. 44, 'I cannot blame my lord Calianax for going away: would he were here! he would run raging amongst them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye'. John Chamberlain says of Comptroller Sir Thomas Edmondes in 1617 (Birch, i. 385), 'They say he doth somewhat too much flourish and fence with his staves, whereof he hath broken two already, not at tilt, but stickling at the plays this Christmas', and Osborne, James, 75, of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, that 'he was intolerable choleric and offensive, and did not refrain, whilst he was Chamberlain, to break many wiser heads than his own [vide supra]: Mʳ. May that translated Lucan having felt the weight of his staff: which had not his office and the place, being the Banqueting-house, protected, I question whether he would ever have struck again'. This was in Feb. 1634 (Strafford Papers, i. 207).
[108] Machyn, 183, of Mary's funeral, 'All the offesers whent to the grayffe, and after brake ther stayffes, and cast them into the grayffe'; Gawdy, Letters, 128, of Elizabeth's, 'I saw all the whit staves broken uppon ther heades'.
[109] Lord Chamberlains Books, 811, ff. 178, 206, 236, contains warrants to the Wardrobe for the liveries of Lord Sussex, Lord Howard, and George Lord Hunsdon. The fee of £16 appears in a memorandum of 1606-7 (Nichols, James, ii. 125).
[110] The ordinary books of reference give a very inaccurate list of Elizabethan Chamberlains. I have collected the evidence in M. S. C. i. 31.
[111] Goodman, i. 178, says that Hunsdon was 'ever reputed a very honest man, but a very passionate man, a great swearer, and of little eminency'. Naunton (ed. Arber, 46) gives a similar account.
[112] Stowe, Annals, 936; Birch, James, i. 336; Wotton, Letters, ii. 40, 41.
[113] V. P. xiv. 65; Camden, James, 14.
[114] Birch, James, i. 382; Camden, James, 15; V. P. xiv. 100. Philip Herbert himself became Earl of Pembroke at his brother's death on 10 Apr. 1630. He took the parliamentary side in politics, and surrendered his staff on 23 July 1641. Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, although also a parliamentarian, succeeded him from 24 July 1641 to 12 Apr. 1642 (L. Ch. Records, v. 96).
[115] M. S. C. i. 34, 40. Howard of Effingham is described in the Revels Accounts (Feuillerat, Eliz. 238) as 'my L. Chamberlayne the L. Haward' on 5 Dec. 1574, and more precisely in the Chamber Order Book of Worcester as 'Lord Chamberlayn in the absence of the E. of Sussex' in Aug. 1575 (Nichols, Eliz. i. 533).