[1] The great officers of state and the household whom we have particularly mentioned do not of course exhaust the catalogue of them. We have named those only whose representatives are still dignitaries of the court and functionaries of the palace. If the reader consults Hallam (Middle Ages, i. 181 seq.), Freeman (Norman Conquest, i. 91 seq., and v. 426 seq.) and Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 343, seq.), he will be able himself to fill in the details of the outline we have given above.
[2] The record in question is entitled Constitutio Domus Regis de Procurationibus, and is printed by Hearne (Liber Niger Scaccarii, i. 341 sq.). It is analysed by Stubbs (Const. Hist. vol. i. note 2, p. 345).
[3] A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household, made in Divers Reigns from King Edward III. to King William and Queen Mary, printed for the Society of Antiquaries, (London, 1790). See also Pegge’s Curialia, published partly before and partly after this volume; and Carlisle’s Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, published in 1829. Pegge and Carlisle, however, deal with small and insignificant portions of the royal establishment.
[4] Liber niger domus Regis Edward IV. and Ordinances for the Household made at Eltham in the seventeenth year of King Henry VIII., A.D. 1526, are the titles of these two documents. The earlier documents printed in the same collection are Household of King Edward III. in Peace and War from the eighteenth to the twenty-first year of his reign; Ordinances of the Household of King Henry IV. in the thirty-third year of his reign, A.D. 1455, and Articles ordained by King Henry VII. for the Regulation of his Household, A.D. 1494.
[5] The Book of the Household of Queen Elizabeth as it was ordained in the forty-third year of her Reign delivered to our Sovereign Lord King James, &c., is simply a list of officers’ names and allowances. It seems to have been drawn up under the curious circumstances referred to in Archaeologia (xii. 80-85). For the rest of these documents see Ordinances and Regulations, &c., pp. 299, 340, 347, 352, 368 and 380.
[6] Burke’s celebrated Act “for enabling His Majesty to discharge the debt contracted upon the civil list, and for preventing the same from being in arrear for the future, &c.,” 22 Geo. III. c. 82, was passed in 1782. But it was foreshadowed in his great speech on “Economical Reform” delivered two years before. Since the beginning of the 19th century select committees of the House of Commons have reported on the civil list and royal household in 1803, 1804, 1815, 1831 and 1901.
[7] Torrens’s Memoirs of William, second Viscount Melbourne, ii-303.
HOUSEL, the English name, until the time of the Reformation, for the Eucharist. The word in O. Eng. was húsel. Its proper meaning is “sacrifice,” and thus the word hunsl appears in Ulfilas’ Gothic version of Matt. ix. 13, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” The ultimate origin is doubtful. The New English Dictionary connects it with a Teutonic stem meaning “holy”; from which is derived the Lithuanian szweńtas, and Lettish swéts. Skeat refers it to a root meaning “to kill,” which may connect it with Gr. καίνειν.