Introduction

INTRODUCTION In the absence of extensive records of noble household finance and organization in the early Tudor period and of systematic studies of the material which survives for the Elizabethan age, the regulations familiarly known as the Northumberland Household Book, compiled for the fifth Earl of Northumberland (1478-1527), have long been the keystone round which historians have built their conception of life in noble households of the sixteenth century. Although Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632), devoted one of his three Advices to his Son to a dis- cussion of the management of officers and servants, no household manual, if it ever existed, has survived for the Percy household of his time, as has ' A Booke of Orders and Rules . for the better direction and governmente of my householde and family, together with the severall dutyes and charges apperteynninge to myne officers and other servantts ' for the household of his Sussex neighbour, Anthony Browne, second Viscount Montague of Cowdray (1574-1629). Such manuals, together with general compilations like the anonymous ' Breviate touching the Order and Governmente of a Nobleman's House ' and Richard Brathwait's Some Rules and Orders for the Government of the House of an Earl written in the early seventeenth century, provide valuable guidance in the theory of noble household management. There is every reason to believe that the composition of noble households in the Elizabethan period was broadly similar. The nobility, a small and compact section of society—there were no more than sixty peers in 1603—, whether old-established families like the Percies or newly-risen from the gentry and yeomanry like the Rus- sells, whether their income was derived, as the Percies' was, primarily from landed revenue or, like the Cecils', largely from perquisites of offices of State, were governed by the same concept of the state becoming their rank and had comparable problems of household management. The model for their households was the Sovereign's establishment, ' requisite to be the mirror of others ' as Henry VIII's regulations of 1526 specifically state *. Tradition undoubtedly played a large part in household affairs; as the ninth Earl of Northumberland warned his son, ' it is strange that in a household where men are gathered together from all the corners of the world . how strongly they will plead custom, if it be but a loaf of bread or a can of beer, which, when they have, they will give it to dogs rather than lose it'2. Custom and similarity of circumstance alike tended to produce uniformity of organization, and the American scholar, P. Van B. Jones, has argued that ' the only important dif- ference between a small household . and the very large establishments . lay largely in the number of servants employed, rather than in the general character and purpose of the help '3. Probably, however, in household management as in so much else of Elizabethan life, practice was in advance of theory; one suspects that the rigidity of organization envisaged in the household manuals never prevailed. Economic historians are gradually appreciating, from such detailed studies as Miss Mary Finch's The Wealth 1 Antiquaries, 146. 2 Harrison, 84. 3 Jones, 16-17. B xvii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.8, on 01 Oct 2021 at 22:20:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000000741 xviii INTRODUCTION of Five Northamptonshire Families, 1340-1640, the complexity of the forces which determined the varying fortunes of the landed families in the Elizabethan period 1. Personal character as well as contemporary conditions governed the economic stability or lack of it among the estates of the aristocracy and must equally have affected the efficiency of their households. A more cogent spur than convention led the writers of the fashionable ' advices ' of the day to urge upon their successors, as Sir Walter Raleigh did his son, ' know what thou hast; what everything is worth that thou hast; and . see that thou art not wasted by thy servants and officers '2. The ninth Earl of Northumberland devoted a chapter of his Advice on ' economical government ' to an explanation of the means by which he had reformed his household and estate management, after an initial period of abandon, by looking into his own affairs ' partly constrained by an imperfection that God laid upon me to call me back, partly out of necessity, so as in time I redeemed myself out of the disquieted thoughts, endeavouring to hug in mine arms faithful servants, jewels too precious, and to discard such as my knowledge told me were corrupt instruments to me . my understanding mine own affairs, although but in a mean degree, and their understanding that honesty is best where dishonesty is in hazard to be discovered, were somewhat reciprocal in this act'3. The Elizabethan age saw a far-reaching social and economic change and any interpretation which views noble household management as remaining wholly static in the face of that change is clearly suspect. The Northumberland Household Book not only does not represent the normal practice of the Elizabethan aristocracy, as general surveys have tended to suggest that it does, but it is a poor guide to the conduct of the Percy household itself at the end of the sixteenth century. Circum- stances had changed and at that radically; the Percies had seen as many changes as any. The principal residences of the fifth Earl of Northumberland had been in the north of England—Leconfield and Wressell in Yorkshire and Alnwick in Northumber- land. Of these, only Wressell remained in good repair in the time of the ninth Earl 4. For in the interval the Percy family had suffered two attainders, both arising from rebellions in the North,—those of Sir Thomas Percy, brother and heir to the sixth Earl, in 1537, and of his son, the seventh Earl, in 1572. When the ninth Earl's father succeeded to the family honours and lands by the provisions of the restoration of the title in 1557 5, he was required to live in the South and the Percies became absentee landlords in place of exercising that feudal sway in the North which had led to the saying, ' The North knows no prince but a Percy '. Though born at Tynemouth Castle, where his father was Governor, the ninth Earl never visited the North after the execution of his uncle, the seventh Earl 6. The principal residence of the Percy family in his time was Petworth in Sussex, the manor house at the 1 M. E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540-1640 (Northamptonshire Rec. Soc. Publications, xix, Oxford, 1956), especially xi-xix, 1-3. 2 Practical Wisdom, 21. 3 Harrison, 83-84. 4 SeeE. J. Fisher, 'Some Yorkshire estates of the Percys, 1442-1615 ', unpubd. Leeds Ph.D. thesis, 1956. 6 Calendar of the] P[atent] R[olls], P. and M., iv. 179. 6 See G. R. Batho, ' The Percies and Alnwick Castle, 1557-1632 ', Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th Series, xxxv (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1957), 48-63; and James, xi-xxiv. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.8, on 01 Oct 2021 at 22:20:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000000741 INTRODUCTION xix centre of that great Honour which had been the gift of Henry I's Queen Adeliza to her brother Josceline of Louvain at his marriage to the Percy heiress, Agnes, as long before as 1150. Between 1615 and his death in 1632, the ninth Earl considerably extended Petworth, which had already been restored by his father, and added the great stables there of which Fuller wrote 1. By his marriage in 1594 to Dorothy, the sister of Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, and widow of Sir Thomas Perrot, the ninth Earl acquired the lease of Syon House, Middlesex, the house on the north bank of the Thames opposite Kew which the Protector Somerset had built out of the ruins of the suppressed Abbey of the Bridgettines. The Earl heavily reconstructed Syon after James I made a gift of it to him in 1604 as a mark of gratitude for his part in securing the King's quiet accession to the English throne 2. The Earl inherited two Northumberland houses in London—a house in St Anne's, Aldersgate, held by his mother as part of her dower until her death in 1596, which he sold for £1,000 in 1607, and another, much decayed, at Katherine Hill, Aldgate, which he retained. Rather than use either of these houses to any extent, the Earl hired a succession of London houses, including Essex House after the execution of his brother-in-law in 1601. Not until 1603, when he had become a Privy Councillor and could hope to enjoy royal favour under the new regime, did he purchase a London house—Walsingham House, Sidon Lane, for £2,200. In the event, he was imprisoned from 1605 to 1621 in the Tower of London as a result of charges preferred against him in Star Chamber arising out of the Gunpowder Plot. Walsingham House was sold for £1,800 within a few weeks of his sentence in 1606, but the Earl continued to rent Essex House and also hired a house on Tower Hill for the accommodation of such of his servants as he could not have with him in his extensive suite in the Tower 3.

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