Royal Service Research Articles

James Tyrrell, Whig Historian and Friend of John Locke

It has been said of James Tyrrell that his ‘main claim to distinction was perhaps his friendship with John Locke’, but his elaborate monument in Oakley church, near Brill in Buckinghamshire, although it records a number of his qualities and achievements, does not mention this. James was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Tyrrell, Knight, of Shotover House, near Oxford; his mother's father was James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh. Sir Timothy had been a Cavalier and in royal service, but his n son was to devote himself to writing books attacking the principles for which the royalists had stood. Born in London in May 1642, James Tyrrell was entered before he was fourteen as a student at Gray's Inn, but a year later he abandoned legal study and went up as a gentleman commoner to Queen's College, Oxford.

The Rewards of Office-holding in Tudor England

The compensation of royal officials has been the subject of increasing scrutiny in recent years as historians turn to the study of the court and royal office to discover the realities of power in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. H. R. Trevor-Roper, who sees the growth of the court as the hallmark of the Renaissance state, has declared that royal service was so lucrative that to many persons holding office spelled the difference between penury and financial success. More detailed studies do not completely bear out his contention. Although A. J. Slavin and others have shown how some highly placed officials were able to enhance their financial position dramatically, G. E. Aylmer and Lawrence Stone demonstrated that such cases of spectacular success were exceptional and that most royal servants received only modest compensation for their labors. Furthermore, Wallace MacCaffrey has pointed out that the crown had at its disposal astonishingly few offices whose salaries might justify calling the men who held them a financial elite. The weight of this evidence has not abated the controversy, however. Instead, the debate has shifted from the actual salary to the total amount the official could make his office yield in tips, fees, and other perquisites, both legal and illegal. Trevor-Roper maintains that these extra benefits made royal service very lucrative, while the others question the extent of such additional enrichment, claiming that few grew wealthy in the king's service.

Proctorial Representation in the House of Lords During Edward VI's Reign: A Reassessment

In his recent examination of licensed absenteeism and proctorial representation in the Edwardian house of lords, Professor Vernon F. Snow sustained and elaborated the thesis which he first postulated in an earlier article on the upper house in Henry VIII's reign. He claimed that these procedures benefited both the Crown and the individual member. They permitted the latter to secure leave of absence in the case of bona fide personal difficulties — sickness, age, poverty — yet to retain, in the person of his proctor, a voice in the affairs of the house. At the same time they satisfied the Crown. They committed the licensee to decisions taken in his absence. They could be used to authorize the royal servant to remain at his post. And above all they enabled the Crown, through the privy council, to control the House of Lords. The procurators “possessed latent power in proportion to the number of proxies they held.” As the great majority of proxies were concentrated in the hands of councillors, the Crown was able to control proceedings in the upper house through a large, perhaps majority, bloc of committed spokesmen and voters. The arithmetical essense of Snow's thesis is that parliamentary power in the Lords, whether it be of the individual or of the Crown, increased in direct proportion to the number of proxies held. The council's possession of most of them constituted a power additional to the traditional devices for influencing the composition of the upper house and the distribution of power within it: the ennoblement or promotion of faithful lords temporal, the translation or deprivation of obstinate lords spiritual, detention or the denial of writs from prominent opponents of the Crown.

Subir para no bajar. Adaptación política y representación social de la nobleza urbana castellana (Murcia, 1665-1724)

Este artículo analiza algunas de las respuestas que la nobleza urbana castellana ofreció ante procesos de movilidad social durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVII. El descenso relativo de capital simbólico fue compensado, especialmente durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVII y la Guerra de Sucesión, con una reactivación del servicio real. Esto conllevó, en algunas ocasiones, una adaptación política -integración en el aparato administrativo de la Corona- y un incremento de la dignidad social -concesión de títulos nobiliarios-. El ejemplo de los Fontes de Albornoz, un linaje que se había convertido en un poder influyente en el conjunto del reino de Murcia, nos servirá para observar las motivaciones que llevaron a una reconstrucción sociopolítica de algunas elites provinciales de la Corona de Castilla.

Richard of Ilchester, Royal Servant and Bishop

In his Ymagines Historiarum, Ralph de Diceto paused in his chronicle of Henry II's reign to reflect on the circumstances and significance of the appointment of three chief justices of the realm in 1179. Ever anxious for the efficient and impartial administration of the law, Henry had diligently sought out lovers of justice who would not be corrupted by high office; he tried, without success, many classes of men: abbots, earls, tenants-in-chief, members of his household, even his closest personal advisers. When at last all else had failed, he raised his eyes to heaven; and, passing over those who could be swayed by worldly influences, he resorted to the sanctuary of God, and appointed as archjusticiars of his realm the bishops of Winchester, Ely and Norwich. If his earlier choices had shown too little respect for him, an earthly king, these at least would act in careful fear of God, the King of kings. And if it should be argued that in assuming this task the bishops would act in despite of the strict letter of canon law, there could be urged in reply the constraint of the king and his good intentions, pleasing alike to God and men.

Statsporträttets idé hos G. G. Pilo

Summary C. G. Pilo, Painter to the King of Denmark, and the Tradition of the Stateportrait I In 1746 a young Swedish artist, Carl Gustaf Pilo was named court‐pairiter to the newly crowned King of Denmark, Frederick V. This was quite an achievement since Pilo had been comparatively unknown before he thus entered into royal service. During 20 years of appointment to the court, covering the reign of Frederic V, he executed 57 portraits of his patron, of which 12 half‐length, 25 three quarter‐length, 15 full‐length and 4 equestrian. A full‐length portrait showing the king in coronation robes was pronounced to be his best work by a later age rediscovering Pilo as a painter of great talent. His reputation cheifly came to rest on a highly imaginative colour scheme, particularly appealing to the senses as for instance in the last mentioned portrait. There is a question however, whether in fact Pilo qualified for his task as a court painter, something which his own age occasionally felt very much entitled to quest...

José del Valle's Unfinished “Diario de mi Viaje de Guatemala a México en 1822 ”

José del Valle (1776-1834) distinguished himself as a royal servant, as a scholar, and as a leader of the Federation of Central America. Loyal to the crown until the last minute, he gracefully accepted independence (September 15, 1821), and his political agility put him in a position that allowed him to help write the declaration that made the Kingdom of Guatemala free. He immediately became a member of the provisional government and then provided leadership until Mexico annexed Central America (January 5, 1822). After the annexation, the town council of Tegucigalpa elected him to the constituent congress of the Mexican Empire.

MARIN MARAIS'S PIECES DE VIOLES

MARIN MARAIS was the central figure in the French school of bass-viol composers and performers that flourished during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He spent his entire life in Paris, and the greater part of it in royal service. First appointed as Ordinaire de la Musique de la Chambre du Roi in 1685, he retained that post throughout the reign of Louis XIV and from 1715 to 1725 served under the Regency and Louis XV. His contemporaries recognized him as an outstanding performer and a composer of stature whose works for viols and the operatic stage were known beyond the boundaries of France.

The Procurement of Oarsmen for French Galleys, 1660-1748

THE architects of French naval expansion in the seventeenth century were deeply impressed with the importance of the oar-driven vessel. The galley was widely considered indispensable an instrument of war; it had played a central role in the naval history of the Mediterranean. Power and prestige were associated with the possession of galleys, and Mediterranean traditions of maritime pageantry and glory were inseparable from the oar. T'he French had only to look about them to see that every Mediterranean power of any consequence possessed at least a squadron of galleys. Spanish galleys in particular merited their attention, because Spain was the most formidable galley power on the Mediterranean littoral and a dangerous neighbor for France. Cardinal Richelieu's apprehensions about Spain led him to urge the construction of no less than thirty galleys.' Jean-Baptiste Colbert actually built such a fleet. His son the Marquis de Seignelay, succeeding him in the ministry, increased that fleet to over forty, for he was convinced, he said in I689, that the construction of galleys was as important for the Royal service that of vessels.2 Given the esteem in which the galley was held, the procurement of men to serve galley oars was important, and a naval problem probably reached its climax for the F'rench while Colbert and his son were at the helm in the Ministry of Marine. The evolution of this manpower procurement problem can be traced and reasonably well illustrated with the data drawn from archival sources in France. The story has two distinct facets, reflecting the fact that French galley oarsmen were ordinarily of two types, slaves and forgats. The slaves were purchased in the markets of Mediterranean Europe, hence there is a wealth of information about them and about their procurement in the correspondence of the French consuls who served commission buyers of slaves for the Corps des Galeres. On the other hand, the decisions and correspondence of French ministers and judicial officials can be used to throw light on the

Tudor Artists: a Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry Fill to the Death of Elizabeth I. By Erna Auerbach. 9¾ × 7¼. Pp. xvi + 222 + pls. 52. University of London: The Athlone Press, 1954. 70s.

Tudor Artists: a Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry Fill to the Death of Elizabeth I. By Erna Auerbach. 9¾ × 7¼. Pp. xvi + 222 + pls. 52. University of London: The Athlone Press, 1954. 70s. - Volume 35 Issue 1-2

Jundhi Shapur

AT a meeting of the Section of the History of Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine on November 2, Dr. Cyril Elgood gave an interesting account of Jundhi Shapur, which was famous as the site of a university in south-west Persia, probably founded about A.D. 340. The Arab invasion of Persia took place when Jundhi Shapur was at the height of its fame. The city surrendered in A.D. 636, but was left undisturbed, and the University remained the greatest centre of medical learning in the Islamic world until the foundation of the school of medicine in Bagdad. The system of medicine taught at Jundhi Shapur was predominantly Greek, but indigenous medicine, Indian medicine, and possibly Chinese medicine were also studied there. The teachers of Hippocratic medicine were reinforced by the exodus of the Nestorian professors from Edessa in 489 and of the Neo-Platonists from Athens in 529. There was also a constant flow of individual Greek physicians to the Persian royal service. The importance of Jundhi Shapur lay in its being a store-house of Greek tradition when Rome was no longer the capital of the Empire and when Constantinople was more interested in theology than in science. It was the cradle of the great Arabian school of medicine and provided most of the translators who rescued Greek texts from oblivion, thus forming the source of the renaissance of medicine in Europe. Owing, however, to the constant transfer of physicians to Bagdad, the school of Jundhi Shapur declined, and by the twelfth century ceased to function.

Book Review: In Royal Service: The Mission Work of Southern Baptist Women

Book Review: In Royal Service: The Mission Work of Southern Baptist Women

Recent Literature Surface Anatomy . By T. Gillman Moorhead, M.D. (Univ. Dub.), M.R.C.P.I., Physician Royal City of Dublin Hospital; Late Chief Demonstrator of Anatomy and Joint-Lecturer in Applied Anatomy, T.C.D.; Lecturer in Medicine Royal Services School, T.C.D. Illustrated. New York: William Wood & Co. 1905.

Recent Literature Surface Anatomy . By T. Gillman Moorhead, M.D. (Univ. Dub.), M.R.C.P.I., Physician Royal City of Dublin Hospital; Late Chief Demonstrator of Anatomy and Joint-Lecturer in Applied Anatomy, T.C.D.; Lecturer in Medicine Royal Services School, T.C.D. Illustrated. New York: William Wood & Co. 1905.

The royal army medical corps and service in India

The royal army medical corps and service in India