[166] Goodman, i. 389, says that the prime gentleman of the bed chamber and groom of the stole was 'a man of special trust' and had a table for guests 'employed in the king's most private occasions'. Viscount Fenton combined the post with that of Captain of the Guard under James. According to Newcastle, 213, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke laboured in vain to be of the Bed Chamber throughout the reign. Carey, Memoirs, 79, 91, describes the heart-burnings to which the office gave rise. Robert Carr, afterwards Earl of Somerset, began his career as a Page of the Bed Chamber (Nichols, James, i. 600).
[167] S. P. D. Jac. I (8 Nov. 1604). The French ambassador wrote in 1606 (Boderie, i. 56) that the king 'vit combattre les cocqs, qui est un plaisir qu'il prend deux fois la semaine'.
[168] Cf. D. N. B.. Anne also had a 'jester', Thomas Derry, in 1612 (Cunningham, xliii).
[169] Abstract, 46; Devon, 17, 72 and passim; Cott. MS. Vesp. C. xiv, f. 108; Addl. MS. 33378, f. 34ᵛ; V. P. x. 102; Sully, 443; Boderie, i. 39, 272, 362. Sir Lewis Lewknor received a formal appointment as Master of Ceremonies by patent, with a salary of £200, on 7 Nov. 1605, but had in fact been exercising the functions since 1603. Amongst his assistants were Sir William Button, who was employed by 1607 and obtained a reversion of the post on 10 Sept. 1612, and John Finett, who ultimately himself became Master, and published a record of his service from 1612 in his Philoxenis (1656).
[170] Worcester to Shrewsbury, 2 Feb. 1604 (Lodge, iii. 88); 'Now, having done with matters of state, I must a little touch the feminine commonwealth, that against your coming you be not altogether like an ignorant country fellow. First, you must know we have ladies of divers degrees of favour; some for the private chamber, some for the drawing chamber, some for the bed-chamber, and some for neither certain, and of this number is only my Lady Arabella and my wife. My Lady Bedford holdeth fast to the bed-chamber; my Lady Harford would fain, but her husband hath called her home. My Lady Derby the younger, the Lady Suffolk, Ritche, Nottingham, Susan, Walsingham, and, of late, the Lady Sothwell, for the drawing-chamber; all the rest for the private-chamber, when they are not shut out, for many times the doors are locked; but the plotting and malice amongst them is such, that I think envy hath tied an invisible snake about most of their necks to sting one another to death. For the present there are now five maids; Cary, Myddelmore, Woodhouse, Gargrave, Roper; the sixth is determined, but not come; God send them good fortune, for as yet they have no mother.'
[171] Madox, i. 262; Thomas, 24; Tout in E. H. R. xxiv. 496.
[172] Tout, 63.
[173] Madox, i. 267; P. R. O. Lists and Indexes, xi. 102; Tout in E. H. R. xxiv. 496. The following summary of the history of the wardrobe and chamber in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is largely based on Tout, The Place of Edward II in English History (1914). Additional material has since been published in J. C. Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward II (1918).
[174] Fleta, ii. 6, quoted on p. 37.
[175] J. C. Davies, The First Journal of Edward II's Chamber (1915, E. H. R. xxx. 662), gives extracts from a Chamber account of 1322-3, including a payment of 7 Jan. 1323 'a iiij clers de Sneyth iuantz entreludies en la sale de Couwyk deuant le Roi et monsire Hugh [le Despenser] de doun le Roi par les mayns Harsik liuerant a eux les deniers xlˢ', which adds an interesting early use of the term 'interlude' to those given in Mediaeval Stage, ii. 181, 256.