Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
The origins of this inquiry lie in my work after the war as a Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Officer in Germany when, during a joint inspection of a large eighteenth-century palace under our care, a German colleague, struck perhaps by the realization of the ugly, indeed the insolent, contrast between its battered splendours and the surrounding desolation, said to me almost apologetically: ‘After all, it was built in imitation of Versailles!’
page 170 note 1 Horn, D. B., ‘Rank and Emoluments in the British Diplomatic Service 1689–1789’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., ix, 1959, 32Google Scholar.
page 170 note 2 ‘Wherein I have considered that, In my simple opinion, her Majesty's subjects may not with their duties allow in this realm of any more cloths of Estate tlian that which is due to her Highness. And therefore this chamber being applied to the use of the governor here, and so employed in all this time, I could not but resolve with myself here that the same was to be accounted as her Majesty's side, as they call it commonly in the Court, and therefore no cloth of Estate representing any foreign Prince to be allowed in the said chamber.’ Morris, John, S. J., The Letter-Books of Sir Amias Poulet, 1874, pp. 11–12Google Scholar.
page 170 note 3 Ibid. pp. 313–16.
page 170 note 4 Knowles, W., The Earl of Stafoordes Letters and Dispatches, 1739, i, 506–7Google Scholar. Reference kindly supplied by Mrs. M. P. G. Draper, F.S.A. Sir Lewis Lewkenor, accompanying the Spanish Ambassador, the Constable of Castille, to Oxford, thought it worth while to report to Lord Cecil that ‘He is lodged in Christ's Church, which he has already trimmed with his hangings and furniture. In 2 of his rooms he has hanged up cloths of estate, equal every way both in breadth and length, to those of the King which are usual in our court’, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Salisbury (Cecil) MSS. xv, 1930, 245.
page 170 note 5 Ernest Law, The History of Hampton Court Palace, 1891, iii, 65.
page 171 note 1 Abroad, Ushers were not gentlemen but yeomen and were not, as a consequence, able to control the staff of the rooms for which they were responsible to the same extent as they did in England, where they were gentlemen. The senior Gentleman Usher Daily Waiter not only controlled the Presence Chamber and the Great Chamber but, in the absence of the Lord Chamberlain of the Household and the Vice-Chamberlain, acted as their deputy. When many Household Appointments, particularly those of the Bedchamber, became political, the Gentlemen Ushers with the Equerries took over many of the functions exercised at foreign courts by Chamberlains or Gentlemen of the Bedchamber.
page 172 note 1 The Amzci (Augusti) were graded (by a practice which, in private families, dated from C. Gracchus and Livius Drusus (Sen. B. 6 34) as primae, secundae or tertiae admissionis’, Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1949, p. 43. ‘Amicus Augusti.’
page 172 note 2 Conyers Read, Mr Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth, 1955, p. 88.
page 172 note 3 Particularly in A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household, made in Divers Reigns from King Edward 111 to King William and Queen Mary, also Receipts in Ancient Cookery, 1790.
page 172 note 4 Pegge, S., Curialia, or an Historical Account of some Branches of the Royal Household, 1791, part iii, pp. 62–63Google Scholar.
page 172 note 5 ‘Estimat of Finishing part of Hampton Court April 28 1699’, Wren Society, iv, 1927, 58–59Google Scholar.
page 172 note 6 Ibid. iv, 61.
page 172 note 7 Ibid. vii, 1930, 17–19.
page 172 note 8 Ibid. iv, pl. x.
page 172 note 9 George Bickham, Deliciae Britannicae or the Curiosities of Kensington, Hampton Court and Windsor Castle Delineated, ?1756, pp. 135 seq. The Windsor Guide, containing a description of the Town and Castle … 1798.
page 173 note 1 Household Ordinances, pp. 110–11, ‘Articles Ordained by King Henry VII … 1494’.
page 173 note 2 The Embassy ‘entered the great hall on the ground floor, hung with very choice tapestries, with the canopy, throne and royal cushions’. Then ‘mounting the Stairs they went to … do reverence to the Queen, who received them, … going as far as … the Guard Chamber at the head of the Stairs, and being conducted to the presence chamber, they presented their credentials …’, LCC Survey of London, xiii, 1930, 2.
page 173 note 3 Ibid., pp. 25 and 50.
page 173 note 4 As in 1572, 1581, and 1613, ibid., p. 61.
page 173 note 5 ‘A deep sigh breathed through the lodgings at White-hall’, 1642, ibid., p. 30.
page 173 note 6 The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, 1955: Touching for the King's Evil, iii, 250; Creation of Peers, iii, 276; Reception of Ambassadors, iii, 256, 412, 506, 513.
page 173 note 7 1665. Survey of London, xiii, 47, 53.
page 173 note 8 Curialia III, p. 63.
page 173 note 9 Ibid., p. 62.
page 173 note 10 As in 1553, 1607, and 1620/121, Survey of London, xiii, 67.
page 173 note 11 For the identification of the Great Chamber with the Guard Chamber see, Curialia III, pp. 61–64 and Survey of London, xiii, 64–66.
page 173 note 12 The Windsor Guide, p. 37.
page 173 note 13 Household Ordinances, p. 354.
page 174 note 1 Curialia III, p. 90.
page 174 note 2 Household Ordinances, pp. 355, 371, 379.
page 174 note 3 Curialia II, p. 69; Household Ordinances, p. 357.
page 174 note 4 Household Ordinances, pp. 338, 341, 347; the last two for the Queen's Side.
page 174 note 5 Ibid., p. 370.
page 174 note 6 The Venetian Ambassador for instance in 1610, Survey of London, xiii, 68.
page 174 note 7 Memoirs of Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, ed. G. H. Powell, 1905, p. 35.
page 174 note 8 Household Ordinances, pp. 154–7. On 20 July 1550 King Edward VI noted that the special French Ambassador had been present while he was being dressed and had been shown the Bedchamber, making it clear that this was unusual. The object was probably to allow the ambassador to report on the king's health and appearance to his prospective father-in-law. The Journal of King Edward's Reign, Written in his Own Hand, Clarendon Historical Society, 1884, p. 41.
page 174 note 9 Curzalia I, p. 67; ‘Orders for the Bedchamber by James II’, Oxfordshire County Record Ofice (Dil. xx/a/2).
page 174 note 10 Household Ordinances, pp. 360–2.
page 175 note 1 Ibid., p. 348.
page 175 note 2 Ibid., p. 361.
page 175 note 3 Malagotti, L., Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, through England, 1821, p. 171Google Scholar.
page 175 note 4 Ibid., pp. 177–9.
page 175 note 5 Survey of London XIII, pl. 8.
page 175 note 6 The Diary of John Evelyn, iii, 406, 430, 465, 562. Evelyn was also received in her Bedchamber by the Princess Henrietta in 1660, iii, 261, and in his by the Duke of York in 1664, iii, 389. In modern terms, however, Evelyn had the status of a junior Minister.
page 175 note 7 Hatton Correspondence (Camden Society, n.s. xxiii), 1878, p. 21.
page 175 note 8 Oxfordshire County Record Office (Dil. xx/a/2).
page 175 note 9 British Museum, Stowe MSS. 563.
page 175 note 10 Letters illustrative of the Reign of William III addressed to the Duke of Shrewsbury by James Vernon, ed. G. P. R. James, 1841, i. 380.
page 175 note 11 Household Ordinances, p. 158.
page 176 note 1 For the arrogance of Queen Elizabeth's public manner, see A. Hurault de Maisse, Journal of all that was accomplished by Monsieur de Maisse, Ambassador of Henri IV to Queen Elizabeth, ed. G. B. Harrison and R. A. Jones, 1931, p. 83.
page 176 note 2 Strong, S. A., A Catalogue of Letters and other Historical Documents, exhibited in the Library at Welbeck, 1903, p. 213Google Scholar.
page 176 note 3 Ibid., p. 262.
page 176 note 4 e.g. Historical Manuscripts Commission: Downshire MSS. vol. i, pt. i, 1924, 79: Dr. O. Wynne to Sir W. Trumbull, 21 Dec. 1685. See also Sir John Finet, Philoxenis, 1656, for the general ceremonial of ambassadors presenting their credentials.
page 177 note 1 ‘The gentlemen ushers … shall have a care to see the said (Presence) chamber well furnished with gentlemen that strangers and men of quality that shall resort unto his Highness's court may not finde it emptie’, Household Ordinances, p. 338.
page 177 note 2 Public Record Office, Ministry of Public Building and Works G.A/S.J: Gen/3.
page 177 note 3 César de Saussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and George II, ed. and transl. Mme Van Muyden, 1902, p. 41.
page 177 note 4 Wren Society, vii, pl. xxxi.
page 177 note 5 George III received the Quakers under the canopy in the Privy Chamber. Hughson, D., London, being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis, iv, 1807, 321Google Scholar.
page 178 note 1 Saussure, pp. 41–42.
page 178 note 2 ‘This apartment [i.e. the Council Chamber] is the Grand Drawing Room … the nearer room being a kind of anti-chamber in which the nobility are allowed to sit down while their Majesties are present in the further room …’, Hughson, iv, 321.
page 178 note 3 Household Ordinances, pp. 352 seq.
page 178 note 4 See p. 173, n. 6, above.
page 178 note 5 ‘Now did his Majestie again dine in the Presence in antient State with Music and all the Court ceremonies which had been interrupted since the late Warr’, 7th Aug. 1667, The Diary of John Evelyn, iii, 490. This took place in the Queen's Presence Chamber and was to do so three days a week. See Historical Manuscripts Commission: Le Fleming MSS. 1891, 52. In England and France, when the king dined alone in public it was on his side; when the queen dined in public with him, they ate on her Side, Cf. the position of the Music Room or Public Dining Room at Hampton Court, which is on the Queen's Side.
page 178 note 6 Household Ordinances, p. 370. As these instructions are issued to the Gentleman Usher Daily Waiter and not to the Gentlemen Ushers of the Privy Chamber, it is clear that this ceremony took place in the Presence Chamber.
page 178 note 7 Ibid., p. 367.
page 178 note 8 Ibid., p. 356.
page 178 note 9 Ibid., p. 360.
page 179 note 1 Philoxenis, pp. 181–5.
page 179 note 2 Ibid., pp. 187–9.
page 179 note 3 Ibid., p. 187.
page 179 note 4 15th Dec. 1597, Hurault de Maisse, p. 36.
page 179 note 5 Wren Society, iv, pl. x.
page 179 note 6 In the possession of Mrs. J. Keen, London, in 1953; photostat in the author's possession.
page 179 note 7 The Connoisseur, xiv, no. 55, March 1906, E. F. Strange, ‘The Furnishing of Hampton Court in 1699’.
page 179 note 8 The Connoisseur, ciii, no. 453, May, 1939, G. F. Wingfield Digby, ‘Damasks and Velvets at Hampton Court’.
page 180 note 1 D. Lysons, An Historical Account of those Parishes in the County of Middlesex … not described in the Environs of London, 1800, pl. 4.
page 180 note 2 J. S. Richardson and Margaret Root, Stirling Castle, H.M.S.O. 1948, and J. S.Richardson and James Beveridge, Linlithgow Palace, H.M.S.O. 1948.
page 180 note 3 I am indebted to Mrs. R. Coope, F.S.A., for drawing my attention to two plans for a Regia or Royal Palace, probably drawn for the French Court, by Sebastiano Serlio. [Sesto Libro delle Abitazioni di tutti gli gradi di Nomini, di Mario Rosci, presentazione di Anna Mario Brizio, Milan I.T.E.C. 1966.] Although great attention is paid, possibly for the first time, to the requirements of a court, in housing guards, horses and kitchens as well as in furnishing places of assembly, the apartment consists simply of an ante-camera, camera, and retro-camera.
page 180 note 4 Dimier, Louis, Fontainebleau, Paris, 1925, pp. 18–23Google Scholar.
page 182 note 1 Gualteri Mapes, De Nugis Curialium, ed. Thomas Wright (Camden Society 1.), 1850, p. 216.
page 182 note 1 At the Court of the Borgia, being an Account of the Reign of Pope Alexander VI … by … Johann Burchard, ed. Parker, Geoffrey, London, 1963, p. 116Google Scholar.
page 183 note 1 ‘Il y a des nations où la majesté des rois consiste à ne point se laisser voir et cela peut avoir ses raisons parmi les esprits qu'on ne gouverne que par la crainte et la terreur; mais ce n'est pas le génie de nos Français et s'il y a quelque caractère singulier dans cette monarchic, c'est l'accès libre et facile des sujets au prince.’ Benoist, Luc, Versailles et la Monarchie, Paris, 1947, p. 29Google Scholar.
page 183 note 2 ‘In viewing the King's apartment, which he had left not a quarter of an hour, with those slight traits of disorder that shewed that he lived in it, it was amusing to see the blackguard figures that were walking uncontrolled about the palace and even in his bedchamber; men whose rags betrayed them to be in the last stage of poverty, and I was the only person that stared and wondered how the devil they got there.’ Young, Arthur, Travels in France, ed. M. Betham-Edwards, 1889, p. 102Google Scholar.
page 183 note 3 ‘Pendant le dîner du roi de France, presque tout le monde s'approche de lui et lui parle comme s'il le ferait à un simple particulier.’ Jeronimo Lippomano in 1577, Relations des Ambassadeurs Vénitiens, transl. and ed. Tommaseo, 1838, ii, 567.
page 183 note 4 Hautecceur, Louis, Le Louvre et les Tuileries sous Louis XIV, Paris, 1930, p. 77Google Scholar.
page 183 note 5 ‘The English do not consider their King to be so much above them that they dare not salute him, as in France.’ Saussure, p. 41.
page 184 note 1 Batifol, Louis, Le Louvre sous Henri IV et Louis XIII, Paris, 1930, p. 93Google Scholar.
page 184 note 2 For the dispatches of the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors and the Memoirs of J. A. de Thou describing these changes, see Champion, P., Henri III, roi de Pologne, Paris, 1951, ii, 173Google Scholar.
page 184 note 3 ‘The King begineth to reform marvellously the order of his house and maketh three chambers afore they come to his inner bedchamber; in the first, gentlemen to be modestly apparelled; in the next, men of great quality; in the last, Princes and Knights of the Holy Ghost, with himself when he cometh abroad. Into his private bed-chamber nobody to be allowed, unless called in, but Epernon and Joyeuse.’ Historical Manuscripts Commission; Salisbury (Cecil) MSS. 1889, iii, 75, Sir E. Stafford to Sir F. Walsingham, 8th Dec. 1584. See also the summary of the Règlement Royal of January 1585 in Batifol, pp. 22–23.
page 184 note 4 ‘Les tragiques exemples des rois, ses ancetres, ont augmenté sa défiance naturelle…. Il est certain que jamais aucun Souverain ne fut protege avec une vigilance plus soigneuse. Les nombreuses gardes françaises et suisses qui gardent le Louvre, les gardes du corps répartis dans les salles, ne suffisent pas. Sa Majesté ne passe jamais d'un appartement dans un autre que ne soient disposés des gardes dans les corridors, dans les escaliers et dans les angles qui servent aux communications.’ Venetian Despatch of 1683, quoted Hautecoeur, p. 194.
page 184 note 5 Levron, Jacques, La Vie quotidienne à la cour de Versailles aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris, 1965, p. 215Google Scholar.
page 185 note 1 The following description is based on Batifol and Hautecoeur, op. cit.
page 185 note 2 Babeau, A., Le Louvre et son histoire, Paris, 1895, p. 88Google Scholar.
page 186 note 1 Batifol, p. 25.
page 186 note 2 For a detailed description of the King's day as a boy, see Marie Dubois, seigneur de Lestourmière et du Poirier, Valet de Chambre de Louis XIV, Mes petites curiosités, éd. de Grandmaison, Louis, Paris, 1936Google Scholar.
page 186 note 3 These works were started on the return of the court to the Louvre in 1654.
page 186 note 4 Jacques Wilhelm, Le Marais, âge d'or et renouveau, Paris, Musée Carnavalet, n.d., p. 16.
page 186 note 5 When the Due de Guise recognized Tancrède as the due de Rohan, ‘… il le mit dans son carosse et le mena à l'hôtel de Guise, le fist passer devant lui, le mit dans une chambre avec le balustre et le dais, et fist servir avec le cadenas.’ Journal d'Olivier d'Ormesson, éd. Cheruel, , Paris, 1860, i, 342Google Scholar.
page 186 note 6 ‘En la chambre d'une personne de grande qualité oú le lit est clos, c'est une incivilité de s'asseoir sur la balus-trade.’ A. de Courtin, Nouveau Traité de la Civilité, 1672, quoted in Franklin, A., La Civilité, l'étiquette, le bon ton, la mode depuis le XIIIe au XIXe siècle, Paris, 1908, ii, 252Google Scholar.
page 187 note 1 Batifol, p. 218. How far the identification of the Bed and the Canopy had gone can be judged by the fact that the King of France received the condolences of the am bassadors on the death of his mother-in-law, the Queen of Poland, in 1747 in his bedchamber, derrière le balustre but that the Queen, the Dauphin, and Mesdames de France did so, standing on a black half-pace under a black canopy, in their Antichambres. de Luynes, C. P. Due, Mémoires 1735–58, viii, Paris, 1862, 180Google Scholar.
page 187 note 2 The princes of Rohan-Soubise tended to make much of their princely status and had canopies in the apartment of every member of the family, yet the inventories of the eighteenth century make it clear that the chambres du dais were used as waiting rooms for footmen. See Langlois, C. V., Les Hôtels de Clisson, de Guise et de Rohan-Soubise, Paris, 1922, pp. 226–48Google Scholar.
page 187 note 3 Hautecœur, p. 74.
page 187 note 4 The following description is principally based on de Nolhac, P., Création de Versailles, Paris, 1925Google Scholar; Versailles, résidence de Louis XIV, Paris, 1925Google Scholar; Versailles au 18e siècle, Paris, 1927Google Scholar; and his biographies of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour and Marie Antoinette. Comte de France d'Hézecques, F., Souvenirs d'un page de la cour de Louis XVI, Paris, 1895Google Scholar, and Brocher, Henri, A la cour de Louis XIV, le rang et l'étiquette sous l'ancien régime, Paris, 1934Google Scholar, have both been frequently consulted. C. Mauricheau-Beaupré, Versailles, l'histoire et l'art, Guide Officiel 1949, contains useful summaries of the history of each room and the events that took place in it.
page 190 note 1 Visconti, Primi, Memoires sur la cour de Louis XIV, éd. Lemoine, Jean, Paris, 1908, pp. 75–76Google Scholar.
page 190 note 2 Mlle de Scudéry describing a ball in the Salle d'Apolled. Mauricheau Beaupré, p. 39.
page 191 note 1 On her return from exile after the Fronde, the Grande Mademoiselle was shocked by the informality with which the King expected to be treated at a supper-party given by the Comtesse de Soissons and was told by the Queen that the King ‘n’ aimait pas les cérémonies’, Mémoires, éd. Petitot, et Monmergue, , xlii, Paris, 1825, 275Google Scholar.
page 191 note 2 A black canopy was put up for the death of the Queen of Poland in 1747: ‘… c'est l'usage, par la meme raison, il devroit toujours y avoir un dais de couleur’, Luynes, viii, 152.
page 193 note 1 Ambassadors were not allowed to live at Versailles and apart from visits of ceremony only came up on business from Paris once a week. Picavet, C. G., La Diplomatic franfaise au temps de Louis XIV, Paris, 1930Google Scholar, chap, ii, on foreign envoys in France.
page 193 note 2 Peter the Great had his Marly in the gardens of Peterhof and the Italian princelings their Marlia. More direct imitations can be found in the Favorite of the Elector of Mayence which copied the layout of the central pavilion and its ancillary buildings, all now destroyed, and in the surviving derivatives of the main building at Clemenswerth in Westphalia, at Rastatt in Baden, and, in Bavaria, at Fürstenried and the Pagodenburg in the gardens of Nymphenburg near Munich.
page 193 note 3 (a) Letters of the Archbishop-Elector Joseph Clemens of Cologne to Robert de Cotte (1712–1720), ed. John Finley Ogleve, Bowling Green State University, 1958.
(b) Hofordnung of 7th Nov. 1717, promulgated in the Cologne Court Calendar of 1718 and published in L. Ennen, Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg und Kurfürst Joseph Clemens, Jena, 1851, pp. 225 seq.
(c) Düsseldorf Staatsarchiv, Kurköln Erzbf. Clemens August Nr la ‘Documentum Notariale super facta inventarisatione deren zu hiesiger Residenz befindlichen Meublen und Effecten. Bonn 17 Feb. 1761 f.’
The following have also been used: Bonner Jahrbücher, pp. 99–100, Bonn, 1896–7. E. Renard, ‘Die Bauten d. Kurfürsten Joseph Clemens u. Clemens August v. Köln’ and Annalen d. hist. Vereins f. d. Geschichte d. Niederrhein, pp. 153–4, Düsseldorf, 1958. M. Braubach, ‘Von der Schlossbauten u. Sammlungen d. Kölnischen Kurfürsten d. 18. Jhs.’ Much useful information is also to be found in Kalnein, Wend Graf, Das kurfürstliche Schloss Clemens-ruhe in Poppelsdorf, Düsseldorf, 1956Google Scholar.
page 195 note 1 Letters of … Joseph Clemens, pp. 4–11.
page 195 note 2 ‘Il m'a done fait remarquer, que lorsque, suivant vôtre plan, je recevray au Rhin quelque Prince etranger, s'il veut venir a mon Palais par cette gallerie, il faut qu'il monte l'escalier, qu'il entre dans le Salon, et que de là il passe avec toute sa suite, et mes gardes qui l'accompagnent par honneur, par le Cabinet et par la Chambre de retraite de ma maison d'Eté, qui pourtant doivent étre des lieux tout à fait de retraite, et ou peu de personnes doivent avoir accès. Il y a cette difference dans nos usages, qu'en France tout le monde entre et passe par les appartemens du Roi et des Princes, et que chez Nous tres peu de gens jouissent de cet honneur, et ont cet avantage. Je dois done me conformer, êtant en Allemagne, aux coutumes du Païs, pour ne point choquer la Nobless, qui est fort jalouse de ces sortes d'entrées, et qui pretend que ce privilege n'est dû qu'aux gentils hommes titrez …’ Valenciennes le 15e Aout 1714. Letters of … Joseph Clemens, pp. 30–31.
page 195 note 3 Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, ed. Home, J., Edinburgh, 1889–90, ii, 80Google Scholar.
page 195 note 4 Letters of … Joseph Clemens, p. 108.
page 196 note 1 ‘Wann Ihro Churfuerstl. Durchl. des Abends auf die gewoehnliche Weise nicht oeffentlich speisen, soil man keinen andern den Zugang zum Tisch gestatten, als jenen, so in die Churfuerstl. Anti-Camera kommen duerffen.’ Hofordnung, Nota xxiii.
page 196 note 2 The only description that survives is in a Survey and Inventory of about 1761, Kurfiirst Clemens August, Landesherr und Mäzen des 18ten Jahrhunderts, Cologne, 1961, p. 268.
page 196 note 3 Schmechel, Max, Nicolaus von Pigage's Schwetzinger Entwürfe und Bauten, Darmstadt, 1923, pl. 14Google Scholar.
page 197 note 1 ‘Pour les appartemens des Princes de moindre consequence Il ne faut seulement Qu'une Salle des Gardes. Une anti-chambre. La Chambre du Lict. Un Cabinet. Une Garderobbe.’ Joseph Clemens of Cologne to Robert de Cotte, Valenciennes 25 Juin 1713, Letters of … Joseph Clemens, p. 8.
page 198 note 1 Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, Princess Palatine to the Raugräfin Louise, 10 Feb. 1707, quoted in E. Vehse, Geschichte der Deutschen Höfe, xviii, Hamburg, 1853, pt. i, p. 164.
page 198 note 2 See note 3, p. 193.