HOUSEHOLD, THE ROYAL, or CURIA REGIS (king's court), was the source of most English offices of State, for the early kings, like their continental neighbours, did not dis criminate between public and private business, but used the same means to rule both home and kingdom. Their household system, on which the households of their greater subjects were modelled, was no insular invention. It showed traces of Carolingian, papal and imperial influence. The king's familiares, members of his household, were by turns domestic servants and ministers of State with advisory, secretarial, financial, judicial and military func tions. The first extant list of them, with their wages and per quisites, occurs in the Constitutio domus regis (1135). The chief dignitaries were the chancellor, master of the scriptorium, chap lain, master dispenser, stewards, chief butler, master chamberlain, treasurer, tallycutter, constables and master marshal. In addition to the menials of pantry, buttery, spicery, kitchen, larder and mews, there were intermediate clerks, chamberlains, stewards, mar shals, serjeants, ushers, huntsmen, archers and watchmen. While the demands of the State were light a simple organization sufficed, but when they grew heavier some division of labour was impera tive. From the king's chamber (q.v.) in the r2th century there sprang the Exchequer (q.v.) to deal with public finance. Between the 12th and the 15th centuries the chancery, wardrobes, king's council and parliament, king's bench and common bench, king's chamber as the privy purse, privy seal, signet and secretary (q.v.) similarly differentiated themselves. Yet the separation of depart ments was rarely absolute, and there was constant overlapping of national and domestic offices. During the 15th century the house hold, no longer a camera clericorum (chamber of clerks) or a training ground for the civil service, but superseded by its greater offspring, relapsed into its primitive condition, content to busy itself with the sovereign's domestic welfare only. In addition to the Constitutio domus regis, regulations for the better direction, economy and security of the household have been passed period ically since at least 79. Besides being the mainspring of govern ment, the royal household, in the middle ages, was the king's most effective weapon against aristocratic and popular opposition, largely because wardrobe and chamber had the use of the king's small seals (q.v.). The royal household of to-day is a modification of its mediaeval prototype, for even Burke's act of 1782 did not destroy continuity. Two of the three chief departments, the lord chamberlain's and the lord steward's, are direct links with the past, while the third, that of the master of the horse, can claim importance from Tudor days and descent from a mediaeval minor office.
See Society of Antiquaries, Collection of Ordinances and Regulations made for the Government of the Royal Household from Edward III. to William and Mary (1790) ; W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (1873) ; H. Hall, Red Book of the Exchequer, iii. (1896) ; L. M. Larson, King's Household in England before the Norman Con quest (1904) ; T. F. Tout, Place of the reign of Edward II. in English History (1914, bibl.), The English Civil Service in the Fourteenth Century (1916), Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England (1920, etc., bibl.) ; J. C. Davies, Baronial Opposition to Edward II. (1918, bibl.). (D. M. B.)