The Chamber Staff

The other regular variation to the usual payment format of week by week expenditure is to be found in the lists of monthly, quarterly and half year payments of wages made out of the Chamber. These become longer and more orderly as the reign progresses, and provide a valuable insight into the composition of the body of servants closest to the king. In the first of the five extant payment books, the list of around 10 individual entries of people receiving their monthly wage is headed by Piers Crossbow maker and Crochet the armourer.[201] The trumpeters follow (usually 8 of them), then the Shakbusshes (2-6), occasionally followed by the ‘Stringmynstrelx’ (3-4) and, usually individually named, the falconers (between 6-8 of them). By the end of the reign the list had grown to encompass not only the musicians, falconers and armourers (Piers remained in post until the end of the reign), but also the Chamber’s growing administrative staff, headed by John Heron as Treasurer of the Chamber, and certain of the king’s personal servants, such as his fool.[202] Wage inflation during Henry VII’s reign was selective. The monthly salary of the trumpeters, shakbusshes, Piers the crosbowmaker (13s 4d per month) and Crochet the armourer (16s 8d per month) remain constant throughout the reign.[203] The value placed on the expertise of the Shakbusshes and trumpeters was reflected in the £2 per month salary they received after completing a year-long probation period, during which they received half wages.[204] Contrast this amount to the 66s 8d per quarter (just over £3, compared to the £6 per quarter received by the aforesaid musicians) paid to Pero the French cook, who joined the king’s household from that of Philip, archduke of Burgundy and claimant of the Castilian throne, in 1506.[205] Peter Gumpter, whose name heads the list of 6-8 falconers named in the monthly salary lists, is paid 60s per month between 1495 and July 1505, after which his wages drop to 40s – whether his duties had correspondingly changed is unknown, though the reduction corresponds with the recruitment of a new falconer, Michell Percy, who received 20s per month.[206]

Of note was the multi-cultural nature of the king’s personal staff. Though the majority of Henry VII’s closest servants in the Privy Chamber were derived from the families of minor gentry, there are named within the payment books a profusion of Bretons, French and Welsh household servants and courtiers. This perhaps might have been expected initially, given the composition of Henry’s supporters at Bosworth and the fourteen years he spent in Breton and French exile prior to the battle, but the numbers remained or were renewed throughout the reign. To illustrate the point, two of the highest paid, and probably most among the most intimate body servants of the king, are elusively mysterious. Piers Champion and Piers Barbour may have been Breton in origin, and may have come to England with the king in 1485. Both received the same salary of 66s 8d per quarter from the Chamber in the 1490s, and both were trusted to receive money intended for the king’s hands in the first receipt book (1488-1490).[207] Champion had ceased to receive a salary from the Chamber by the time the first payment books starts in October 1495, but he remained a presence at the court, occasionally receiving rewards, sending the king greyhounds, receiving ambassadors and making (minor) payments on the king’s behalf.[208]

Piers Barbour, Groom of the Privy Chamber, received an annual salary from the chamber of 20 marks per annum, which increased to £15.6.8 by 1495; the same salary as John Heron initially drew even after he took over the position of Treasurer of the Chamber from Thomas Lovell in 1492.[209] His salary was his main income, as there appears to be no grants of stewardships, wardships, land or other of the usual boons handed to him in the patent rolls, possibly because he was foreign in origin and therefore barred from acquiring lands in England or Wales without a grant of denization. David Starkey theorised his surname reflected his function, and therefore he was a professional body servant and paid as such.[210] His role as a barber is less likely, given that from the start of the payment books, a ‘king’s barbour’, named Harry, is paid for his services and in May 1499 another Breton, Massey Villiard, took over as the ‘king’s barber’.[211] At Henry VII’s funeral, Piers Barbour was listed first among the grooms of the chamber, so perhaps Barbour was indeed a ‘professional body servant’, but undertook the role of valet rather than that of barber.[212] 

The aforementioned Massy Villiard, who may also have been a Breton, did not receive a salary during Henry VII’s reign, but rather was paid four shillings a week. This was formalised into a higher income of 66s 8d per quarter in the first year of Henry VIII’s reign.[213] Within ten years he was sergeant of the Ewery, and was assessed for the subsidy of 1527 as able to pay £56 10s 6d.[214] His association with the court continued and he still received wages from the Chamber in December 1545.[215]

Other servants receive wages in the Chamber Books and are equally impossible to trace with any degree of confidence. Some, like Petit John Pregeant, who received a total of £6 13s 4d in rewards in the first eight months in the first of the payment books, was often referred to as ‘the Brutan’, thus his origins in Brittany are evident.[216] Similarly, Wulf the Dane and the ‘Long Flemming’, who both receive wages in the Chamber, had their origins spelled out in their names, though not much can be discerned about how they entered service within the household or their function there.[217] The origins of Dego the Spanish fool, for example, are also readily apparent.  Guilliam and Andolf, the ‘luters’, quite probably also came from the continent. Of Henry VII’s falconers, Peter Gumpter, Haunse and Fredrik, all individually named each month in the Chamber Books, were possibly of Low Country or Germanic origin, and another, Frauncois, possibly French or Breton.[218] The profusion of foreign entertainers and household servants might be taken as indicative of Henry VII’s continental tastes and cultural preferences.

Also of note were the number of Welsh men who served in Henry VII’s chamber, and in remembrance of his Welsh roots, each St. David’s day in the last 6 years of his reign they received a small bonus.[219] A retained fondness for his homeland is also reflected in payments made in his later years to servants of Rhys ap Thomas for bringing him Methclen, a type of Welsh mead, and Llanthony cheese was regularly bought by the king or sent by the prior of the religious house that made it.[220]