1 - The Structure of the Household: Definitions, Sub-divisions and Hierarchies

Summary

This chapter examines definitions, sub-divisions and hierarchies of the household and explains how they shaped the wider court. The household as a structure is most readily found in surviving records detailing the allowance of rewards and perquisites to those within it. A letter under the Privy Seal from James V's reign appointing a household servant outlines the three main types of reward attached to household service. The letter to Harry Stewart, ‘makand the said Hary maister carvour to the king for all the dais of his lif ‘ in 1524, stipulated that ‘For exercing and using of the quihilk office the king gevis’ to ‘him the soum of xl lib., with meit and drink daily to himself and his four servandis, and meit to his v hors[…]To be payit be the comptroller […]of the reddiest of the kingis propirte, with liveray claithis of silk, that is to say, ane dowblat of crammisy satin, ane pair of hois of scarlot, tua breidis of blak buge’. The gift or allowance of these rewards and privileges during the reign of James IV is documented in three main sources: the bill of household from 1508 concerned with the privilege known as bouche of court; the lists of ordinary fees paid to individuals in the comptroller's accounts; and the accounts of cloth or clothing distributed to members of the household and others in the treasurer's accounts. It is in the records of these rewards that we find definitions of the household as well as the suggestion that it was, in large part, these rewards themselves that defined it.

In attempting to seek a definition of the household that was recognised by contemporaries, it is important to avoid falsely imposing a rigid definition where they did not. Jenny Wormald has noted that ‘medieval Scotsmen were, certainly by English standards and probably also by European ones, remarkably poor at definition generally’, because the decentralised politics of Scotland did not encourage enough awareness of and involvement in the political centre ‘to produce an interest in establishing rights, privileges and precedents’. However, records of the rights and privileges connected to the household reveal that it was defined as those who provided domestic service and those who benefited from that service, which included the domestic servants themselves as well as people who served the king in a variety of other ways.