Officers and Office-Holding at the English Court: A Study of the Chapel Royal, 1485–1547

Abstract

There is an established literature on office-holding in the English royal household, which has focused on those members of the court involved in the royal body service and ceremonial; those associated with the domestic needs of the monarch, the royal family and wider domus and those involved in its administration. Yet this mainly deals with the late seventeenth century and beyond; comparable detailed and comprehensive information on this particular aspect of court history for earlier periods has yet to appear in print. The courts of the Tudors have, for example, suffered in this respect. This is surprising, for recent historical scholarship has shown that far from ossifying into a purely domestic establishment as an older generation of scholars thought, the Tudor Court was rather of central importance in the political, administrative, religious and cultural history of sixteenth-century England. By that time the royal domus was the centre of politics, patronage and power and access to the sovereign—the sole font of that power—and the ability to catch ‘either… [his/her] ear or… eye’ headed, to a large extent, the agenda of any ambitious courtier. A published investigation of the patterns and procedures of office-holding within this important institution is, therefore, long overdue.