In the first place, it is formed, in many respects, upon FEUDAL
PRINCIPLES. In the feudal times, it was not uncommon, even among
subjects, for the lowest offices to be held by considerable persons;
persons as unfit by their incapacity, as improper from their rank, to
occupy such employments. They were held by patent, sometimes for life,
and sometimes by inheritance. If my memory does not deceive me, a person
of no slight consideration held the office of patent hereditary cook to
an earl of Warwick. The earl of Warwick's soups, I fear, were not
the better for the dignity of his kitchen. I think it was an earl
of Gloucester, who officiated as steward of the household to the
archbishops of Canterbury. Instances of the same kind may in some degree
be found in the Northumberland house-book, and other family records.
There was some reason in ancient necessities, for these ancient customs.
Protection was wanted; and the domestic tie, thought not the highest,
was the closest. The king's household has not only several strong traces
of this FEUDALITY, but it is formed also upon the principles of a BODY
CORPORATE; it has its own magistrates, courts, and by-laws. This might
be necessary in the ancient times, in order to have a government within
itself, capable of regulating the vast and often unruly multitude which
composed and attended it. This was the origin of the ancient court
called the GREEN CLOTH--composed of the marshal, treasurer, and other
great officers of the household, with certain clerks. The rich subjects
of the kingdom who had formerly the same establishments (only on a
reduced scale) have since altered their economy; and turned the course
of their expense from the maintenance of vast establishments within
their walls, to the employment of a great variety of independent trades
abroad. Their influence is lessened; but a mode of accommodation, and
a style of splendour, suited to the manners of the times, has been
increased. Royalty itself has insensibly followed; and the royal
household has been carried away by the resistless tide of manners: but
with this very material difference;--private men have got rid of
the establishments along with the reasons of them; whereas the royal
household has lost all that was stately and venerable in the antique
manners, without retrenching anything of the cumbrous charge of a Gothic
establishment. It is shrunk into the polished littleness of modern
elegance and personal accommodation; it has evaporated from the gross
concrete into an essence and rectified spirit of expense, where you have
tuns of ancient pomp in a vial of modern luxury.