¹ For the sake of convenience he will be referred to throughout as Leicester, although he was not created Earl of Leicester until 29 Sept. 1564.

² Information from the Department of Manuscripts suggests that the cataloguing will not be completed before the end of 1996, and that Additional MS numbers will not be assigned till then. The eventual catalogue will, however, include cross-references to the Christ Church Evelyn Papers catalogue numbers, which perforce are those employed here.

³ These are, it should be admitted, the only ones known to me, but no others have been detected by the WCRO, the SBTRO or the BRL, the obvious repositories for any antiquarian notes of local provenance.

⁴ See in general Mertes, K., The English Noble Household 1250–1600 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, esp. Appendix A, ‘A List of Household Records, c.1250–1600’, pp. 194–215. The Elizabethan section is not the strongest part of this list, however, for it omits not only Leicester's accounts but also those of Sir Henry Sidney and the Earls of Essex and Hertford. This work has now been superseded for the medieval period by Woolgar, C.M. (ed.), Household Accounts from Medieval England (British Academy Studies in Social and Economic History, xvii–xviii, Oxford, 1992–1993)Google Scholar, but the catalogue of accounts published here (ii, 691–726) ends at 1500.

⁵ Cf. Woolgar's comments on the survival of medieval household accounts, Household Accounts, i, 5–7.Google Scholar

⁶ The earlier Burghley account is BL, Lansdowne MS 118; the later (which has been badly damaged) Hatfield MS 226. See the discussion in Read, C., ‘Lord Burghley's Household Accounts’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. ix (1956), 343–8. There are also some summary accounts.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Listed in ‘Leic. Pap. III’, Appendices I–IV.

⁸ They are now found in Vols. II, III and V of the Devereux Papers at Longleat House. These reached Longleat (coincidentally) by the same means as Leicester's papers.

⁹ E.g. BL, Harl. MS 1641, the account book of Sir Thomas Heneage for 1585–86, to which reference is made in the notes. The accounts rendered by the Treasurer to the Exchequer (PRO, E 351/541–3) are only summaries. Officers and servants of the Crown and departments of the Court are capitalised to distinguish them from possible equivalents in Leicester's household.

¹⁰ For a fuller discussion and more extensive references, see ‘Leic. Pap. I–III’.

¹¹ For Leicester House, see below, p. 26. The settlement of Leicester's estate is discussed in ‘Leic. Pap. III’. There was also an ‘evidence house’ at Kenilworth Castle. In the case he brought against her in Chancery in 1590 (PRO, C21/ElizI/D/5/2, see below, p. 29), Sir Robert Dudley (Leicester's illegitimate son, see n. 393 to the texts) accused the Countess of Leicester inter alia of having papers removed from it after Leicester's death (presumably to be transported to Leicester House).

¹² These papers are the subject of ‘Leic. Pap. III’.

¹³ ‘Amye Robsart’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, xvii (1878), 47–93Google Scholar, see 84–5.

¹⁴ Hist MSS Comm, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Bath. V. Talbot, Dudley and Devereux Papers 1533–1659 (1980), 136–8, 148–51.Google Scholar

¹⁵ For a full discussion of this collection and biographical notes on Browne, see ‘Leic. Pap. I’. * indicates an entry in the Index of Servants.

¹⁶ See her article, ‘Leicester and the Evelyns: New Evidence for the Continental Tour of Leicester's Men’, Review of English Studies, new ser. xxxix (1988), 487–93Google Scholar. I have since examined the uncatalogued Evelyn Papers myself and found no further Leicester material apart from one or two pages from a household inventory. Any other unidentified or miscatalogued Leicester material will undoubtedly come to light during the BL's cataloguing.

¹⁷ Original Letters, Manuscripts and State Papers … Collected by William Upcott (1836), p. 30.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Catalogue of the Collection of Manuscripts and Autograph Letters formed by the Late William Upcott Esq. (Leigh, Sotheby at Evans, 22 06 1846)Google Scholar. The annotated copy in the BL (Pressmark 824 K. 10/2) gives the purchasers.

¹⁹ The circumstances of the fire are reported in detail in The Times, 13–15 01 1879Google Scholar. For other sources, see ‘Leic. Pap. I’, 77. The completeness of the destruction was attributed to the tardy arrival of the fire engine (though this was disputed) and frozen water mains.

²⁰ The former is discussed below, pp. 6–7. The latter is described as a manuscript codex of the Statutes of the Order of St Michael on vellum, autographed by Leicester on 25 Jan. 1565/6. This was the day after he was invested with the order; the statutes were probably presented to him on that occasion. The volume can be found in several early nineteenth- century sale catalogues, see ‘Leic. Pap. I’, 82.

²¹ (Warwick, 1872), Postscript II, pp. 46–50.

²² Knowles introduced the extracts with the note (p. 46) ‘I am enabled by the kindness of Mr. Staunton of Longbridge, to give my readers a few extracts from the Book of Expences of the Earl of Leicester, in 1585–6, beginning after his arrival at Flushing.’ Mr Staunton was presumably Joseph. I am extremely grateful to Mr G.M.D. Booth of the WCRO, Mr Kenneth Mount, secretary of the Cumbria Branch of the Historical Association, and my former student Mr John Rule, now of Wadham College, for their generous assistance in tracing what is known of Knowles's life and career.

²³ This quotation is taken from the ist edition (Brighton, 1881), p. 101; however it is also found without amendment or addition in the much expanded 7th edition (1887), ii, 290. The ‘poet’ is, of course, Shakespeare, and the Coventry records the famous collection that Staunton bought from Thomas Sharp. An the sources I have consulted (see ‘Leic Pap. I’, 77Google Scholar) give the younger Staunton's Christian name as Joseph.

²⁴ EUL, H.-P. Coll., L.O.A. 55, fo. 14. The Knowle Guild-Book was one of the few Staunton MSS to survive the fire.

²⁵ EUL, H.-P. Coll, MS 327 [Diary of Henrietta Halliwell-Phillipps, vol. I, 1836–56], see pp. 298–301, 307.

²⁶ Ancient Inventories … illustrative of the Domestic Manners of the English in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1854)Google Scholar. The Kenilworth inventory is found on pp. 115–54.

²⁷ Bodl. MS Malone 5. Since Edmund Malone died in 1812 and his collection was deposited in the Bodleian in 1821, roughly when Staunton began collecting in earnest, it is probable that this copy was made before Staunton obtained the original.

²⁸ Ancient Inventories, pp. 157–9Google Scholar. See also ‘Leic. Pap. III’, Append. III, n. 142.

²⁹ FSL, MS Wb 160 [Kemp] and Wb 200 [Noble Companies]. The entries are found on Wb 160, p. 1, and Wb 200, pp. 70–1 and 78 (pp. 24–85 of this volume are devoted to Leicester's company).

³⁰ ‘Leicester's Men in the Low Countries’, Rev. English Studies, xix (1943), 395–7Google Scholar. He appears to have published all the Halliwell-Phillipps extracts, my own examination of the scrap-books has not discovered any others, and I was unable to locate one of the entries he prints, see p. 374 below.

³¹ FSL, MS Wb 160, p. 1.

³² FSL, MS Wb 200, p. 78. He may have done so in the hope of finding evidence for Shakespeare's purported service in the Netherlands expedition.

³³ Not only has my admittedly rapid and selective examination of the vast number of notebooks in the Halliwell-Phillips' Collections in Washington and Edinburgh proved unsuccessful, but so has what I assume to be the more exhaustive search by R.W. Ingram, the editor of Records of Early English Drama: Coventry (Toronto and Manchester, 1981)Google Scholar, see p. lxviii, n. 36. The report on the Birmingham fire in The Times for 14 January (p. 10) includes a collection of Shakespearean notes given to the library by Halliwell-Phillipps among the casualties. Although the marginal note referred to in n. 31 above was clearly written after 1879, there is no evidence that the other scrapbook entries were. This is perhaps the most convincing explanation for the absence of all but a few notes of Staunton MSS in the collections of an otherwise notorious (to use Ingram's description) ‘hoarder of notes and clippings’.

³⁴ See the discussion in Mertes, , Noble Household, pp. 79–86.Google Scholar

³⁵ As a result entries relating to a specific episode are scattered among several different categories; two good examples are those relating to Leicester's visit to his wife in March 1559 and her visit to London several weeks later. See the discussion in Appendix I.

³⁶ The twenty volumes of the Dudley Papers were bound in red leather or placed in uniform slip covers. Further loose papers were filed in eight boxes. However, the Dudley Papers do not exhaust the Leicester papers at Longleat; a large number are also to be found in the general collection of estate muniments. These are referred to here as ‘Longleat MS’. See ‘Leic. Pap. III’ for a fuller discussion.

³⁷ The bills are printed below, see pp. 108, 173–5. It will be noted that the poulterer's bill covers the period January 1560–April 1561 and has no connection to this account. There is no obvious reason why it should have been pasted into the volume.

³⁸ The descriptions in the 1836 and 1846 catalogues are practically identical, the sale catalogue may simply have reproduced the relevant entries of the earlier one.

³⁹ The change of hands is noted in the text.

⁴⁰ See Appendix II. These vagaries are the main reason why Appendix II has been necessary.

⁴¹ Leicester spent 5 to 14 April in Bath taking the waters, and then visited Bristol on 15–16 April. There is a detailed account of his visit to Bristol in Bristol RO, MS 04026(12) [Chamberlains' Accts, Audit Book, 1587–92], pp. 29–30. Presumably 8 April was a page heading and the page contained entries for later dates as is the case in the 1584–86 book.

⁴² The implication of Knowles's introduction (quoted in n. 22 above) is that his extracts are taken from the beginning of the volume.

⁴³ This is suggested by MacLean (487–8), though her knowledge of the 1585–87 account is derived from Bald's edition of Halliwell-Phillipps' notes. Dr MacLean informs me that she was not aware of Knowles's extracts at the time, nor presumably was Bald.

⁴⁴ See p. 340 below.

⁴⁵ There may be some minor emendations to specific entries, e.g. the introduction of dates in brackets from the headings, but there is no radical transformation apparent, with the exception of the entry for 2 Jan. 1586, where Knowles seems to have run two entries together, see p. 371. He has also misread a few names (corrected in the notes).

⁴⁶ See P. 353.

⁴⁷ See p. 343. The two Longleat volumes, by contrast, contain no obvious Leicester marginalia.

⁴⁸ The description of the provisioning account in Upcott's 1836 catalogue reads ‘Book of such provision sent out of England by Richard Browne for the use of the Earl of Leicester, 10 October 1585 ending 18 June 1586. Signatures of Gabriel Harvey and William Gorges.* Folio half-bound in Russia.’ The reference to the signatures of Harvey and Gorge implies that they audited the account. ‘Gabriel Harvey’ may be a wishful extrapolation from a signature G. Harvey, which is more likely to have been that of George Harvey*.

⁴⁹ BL, Lansdowne MS 61, fos. 206–7, Atye to Burghley, 9 Dec. 1589 (printed in Ellis, H., Original Letters Illustrative of British History (3rd Ser., 1846), iv, 75–9).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ As is noted in the entry in the Index of Servants, Chancy received livery in 1567, but no further reference to him in the household after 1559 can be traced.

⁵¹ The note on the examination of this account is not dated, see pp. 107–8. The Ellis account (DP XV) contains references to the expenses of an audit in March 1561 in which Thomas Blount* took part, see p. 148. It could not have been for the Ellis account itself, for it ran until 30 April. The Chancy account is a more likely candidate, but Blount did not sign the examination. The Ellis account does not refer to an earlier audit, though the purchase of paper and ink and a case for the Walton books in March 1560 (see p. 135) may be relevant. The March 1561 audit may have been concerned with the ‘Book of Servants Wages’ (Part II: Document A, discussed on pp. 20–1 below) which both terminated on Lady Day 1561 and was signed by Blount, but it also includes payments in early April. The audit is, however, referred to in John Guy the capper's bill, from which Part II: Document C is extracted, which suggests that it was at least used to settle some accounts.

⁵² The Robsart estate (the manors of Syderstone, Bircham Newton and Great Newton near King's Lynn) was inherited by Leicester and his wife on the death of Lady Elizabeth Robsart in the spring of 1557, see ‘Dudley Clientèle’, pp. 249–51Google Scholar. (There I assumed that Lady Elizabeth died in the winter of 1557–8; however since I wrote it I have discovered at Longleat an assignment to Leicester and his wife of chattels from the estate by John Appleyard* administrator of the late Lady Elizabeth dated 27 June 1557 (MS 3188).) Rents from the Robsart estate for Michaelmas 1560 can be found in the Ellis account (see p. 116). The earlier rents may have been included in one of the lump sum receipts in the Chancy account, or alternatively they may have been paid directly to Amy Dudley herself (who of course was dead by Michaelmas 1560).

⁵³ These have not been reproduced here, see p. 36. However, reference is made to such bills as survive.

⁵⁴ These have been reproduced, see p. 36. Canon Jackson surmised from these page references that this account had been extracted or copied from another, see p. 39, n. 1. It is more likely that the page references are to a day-book.

⁵⁵ See p. 101. It will noted that no further page references are encountered after 30 September. See also the comment in n. 182 to the texts on the possible omission of some items of expenditure after that date.

⁵⁶ See pp. 56, 74–5, 81–3.

⁵⁷ See p. 101.

⁵⁸ See p. 106.

⁵⁹ See BL, Add. MS 35308, fo. 205, Henry Killigrew to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, 28 Sept. 1561. In discussing the journey to France of John Marbury*, Killegrew referred to ‘his brother Ellis (who was then and still is in disgrace about his account to my lord)’.

⁶⁰ See p. 173. DP III (a volume of miscellaneous papers) contains what appear to be drafts of sections of this account and a number of pages of sums which are probably related to it.

⁶¹ See p. 118, textual note F.

⁶² See p. 176. There are also references to lump sum payments to Jinks, Horden and the acaters on p. 130.

⁶³ Part II: Document A. For the evidence that it was compiled by Ellis, see the introduction to the document on p. 399. See also the two entries deleted in the main account (pp. 131–2) and noted as entered in the Book of Servants Wages.

⁶⁴ CPR, 1560–63, 189–191Google Scholar. This consisted of a number of the duke of Northumberland's lesser properties, most of which were sold or otherwise disposed of in the following years, see ‘West Midlands’, 30. On the other hand, no reference this grant can be found in the Ellis account.

⁶⁵ Had the accountant of the 1585–87 book been identified in an introduction to the volume it is probable that either Upcott or Knowles would have referred to him; Upcott noted the accountants of the other Leicester accounts he possessed, probably from their introductions. It is possible that, since they were only day-books, it was not considered necessary to provide formal introductions to this or the 1584–86 book.

⁶⁶ See pp. 179, 249, 251. As is noted in the Index of Servants there were possibly two household servants William and Robert alternately named Pitchford or Pitchfork.

⁶⁷ E.g. pp. 302–3.

⁶⁸ This is a subjective assessment, and to some extent it is contradicted by the suggestion below that Hand D was Thomas Ardern. However, as will be clear from the entries in the Index of Servants, a number of the established household servants fall into the large grey area between yeomen and gentlemen.

⁶⁹ The Netherlands household lists are Part II: Documents G and H.

⁷⁰ For references to More by Hands C and D, see below pp. 324, 367.

⁷¹ His Welsh origins are suggested by the lease in the lordship of Chirk, referred to in the entry in the Index of Servants. Hand C's phonetic spellings suggest that he had a strong regional accent.

⁷² See ‘Leic. Pap. III’.

⁷³ Robert Christmas (d. 1584), MP, was a central figure in Leicester's household between 1565 and the late 1570s. He received livery and a badge in 1567 (for references to the documents in Part II, see p. 31 below), and in 1571 was described as Leicester's treasurer (Black Book, p. 36).Google Scholar

⁷⁴ There is a note that this volume also included outpayments in an article on the Staunton Collection in the Birmingham Weekly Post of 18 Dec. 1886. See the volume of cuttings on the Staunton Collection kept in the manuscripts department of the BRL, p. 46. This was one of a series of articles that attempted to reconstruct the catalogue of the collection.

⁷⁵ PRO, SP45/20/282 (Williamson's notes on the State Papers), ‘a great part of them have perished by time & the distraction of the warres & being left in England by Sir R. Browne during the Rebellion many had been abused to the meanest uses &c.’ I discovered this after writing ‘Leic. Pap. I’ and it suggests that my conclusion (p. 85) that most of the Browne Leicester papers had survived should be revised.

⁷⁶ ‘Leic. Pap. I’, 78–80.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ A number of papers relating to these settlements were filed at Christ Church prior to 1995 in Evelyn Papers, Sir Richard Browne Miscellaneous Boxes, Box IV.

⁷⁸ See below, p. 39, n. 3.

⁷⁹ Evelyn MS 16, art. 3.

⁸⁰ The bills at Longleat are filed in DP, Box V. Those relevant to the Chancy and Ellis accounts are referred to in the notes. There are some exceptions to the statement made above, in particular the two bills for badges and livery of 1567–8 (Part II: Documents D and E), and a series of wardrobe warrants for the period 1565–67 (fos. 300–438). A large number of the bills were settled in the early months of 1566 when Leicester was negotiating a substantial exchange of lands with the Queen, which was finally granted on 29 June 1566 (CPR, 1563–66, 457–66Google Scholar). There may have been a connection between this grant and the commencing of the Browne account two months later, similar to that suggested above between the 1 March 1561 grant and the conclusion of the Ellis account.

⁸¹ See ‘Leic. Pap. I’, 68–72, 85. Most of the correspondence Evelyn gave to Samuel Pepys and is now found in Pepys MSS 2502–3 (Letters of State, Vols. I–II).

⁸² The only accounts of the 1570s extant are an account of cloth supplied to William Whittle and Maynard the hosier in 1571–74 (Longleat, DP XII), and the account of Leicester's factor in Spain for 1576–79 (Evelyn MS 257). However, a number of household inventories of the early 1580s have survived, see ‘Leic. Pap. III’, Appendices III–IV. Leicester's correspondence for the 1570s and 1580s survives in quantity (see ‘Leic. Pap. II’), but the fate of the household archive is unknown.

⁸³ For check or chequerrolles, see Merles, Noble Household, p. 90. It might be noted that Elizabethan practice appears to have varied. A single wage-list of the household of the 3rd Earl of Huntingdon for the half-year ending Michaelmas 1564 survives in HEH, HA, Financial Box I. Sir William Petre employed quarterly wage-lists (see Emmison, F.G., Tudor Secretary: Sir William Petre at Court and Home (1961), pp. 151–4Google Scholar), as did Cecil in 1554–5 (BL, Lansdowne MS 118, fos. 42V–44), while the gth Earl of Northumberland employed annual check-rolls (see Batho, G.R. (ed.), The Household Papers of Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564–1632) (Camden Soc. 3rd Ser., xciii, 1962), 148)Google Scholar. Overall, relatively few chequerrolles have survived, see the comments on fifteenth-century chequerrolles in Woolgar, i, 35, and McFarlane, K.B., The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 109–13.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ See p. 14 above.

⁸⁵ The division between the gentlemen and the yeomen appears to be between Mr [Richard] Hilliard* and George Gyles*, see p. 403.

⁸⁶ See p. 155.

⁸⁷ See, for example, the entry for Richard Flamock* on p. 412.

⁸⁸ Nevertheless, some caution should be employed in reaching any precise conclusions about numbers on the evidence of this book. Hugh Jones*, for example, who received wages only for the year Midsummer 1559–Midsummer 1560 (p. 406), was apparently still in the household in 1567.

⁸⁹ Each list refers to three further un-named yeoman servants in receipt of liveries.

⁹⁰ In his letter to Throckmorton on John Marbury of 28 Sept. 1561 (see n. 59 above) Henry Killigrew referred to Marbury ‘being denied his coat because he was not bent to follow the progress’. See also the reference on p. 74 to the supply of liveries for the progress of 1559.

⁹¹ See pp. 98, 174.

⁹² All that survives is the series of wardrobe warrants for 1565–67 (see n. 80 above); these two bills may well have been filed with them.

⁹³ See the discussions in ‘Puritan Crusade’, pp. 21–22, and Adams ‘The English Military Clientele 1542–1618’, in Giry-Deloison, C. and Mettam, R. (edd.), Patronages et Clientélismes 1550–1750 (Lille, 1995), pp. 220–1Google Scholar, and the literature cited there.

⁹⁴ CPR, 1563–66, 206Google Scholar. This was one of fifteen licences to retain granted by Elizabeth between her accession and 1571, either to Privy Councillors, peers or officers of the Crown (listed in BL, Lansdowne MS 14, fo. iv). One hundred men was the highest number licensed, and together with Leicester, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Sussex, Shrewsbury and Pembroke, and Lord Clinton received licences of this size. Precisely why they were granted is unclear, though in some cases they may have been related to offices.

⁹⁵ See Netherlands Guard in Abbreviations of Major Dudley Family Documents above. The list of ‘Leicester's train’ in 1585 now Bodl. MS Eng. Hist. C 272, pp. 82–7 (see n. 103 below) identifies forty-five men in the train as retainers but how much weight should be placed on it is unclear.

⁹⁶ For examples, see Cameron, A., ‘The Giving of Livery and Retaining in Henry VII's Reign’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, xviii (1974), 26–7Google Scholar, and for the admittedly notorious case of Lord Abergavenny, Cooper, J.P., ‘Retaining in Tudor England’ in Land Men and Beliefs (ed. by G.E. Aylmer and J.S. Morrill, 1983), p. 83.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ (Leiden and Oxford, 1964), see Appendix III, pp. 108–134.

⁹⁸ For the summoning of these men see Appendix II, and for a further discussion, ‘North Wales’, 137–9, and ‘Puritan Crusade’, pp. 17–24.

⁹⁹ The Leiden list came from a local source, the Hague list is BL, Cotton MS Vespasian C XIV, fos. 321–28.

¹⁰⁰ PRQ SP84/6/79ff, printed in Tenison, E.M., Elizabethan England (14 vols., Leamington Spa, 1933–1961), vi, 45–7.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ AGS, Estado K 1564, fo. 4, entitled ‘El sequito del Conde de Lestre’, it was enclosed in Mendoza's despatch of 29 Dec./8 Jan. 1585/6, and is printed in CSPSp, 1580–6, 554–6.Google Scholar

¹⁰² For the list of the guard, see Netherlands Guard in Abbreviations of Major Dudley Family Documents.

¹⁰³ Bodl., MS Rawlinson B 146, fo. 235–v; MS Eng. Hist. C 272, pp. 82–7. The latter was originally a Gurney manuscript and is calendared among them in Hist MSS Comm, XIIth Report, Pt. 9 (1891), 146.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Discussed in ‘Puritan Crusade’, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ See the comments on the Netherlands Guard in Abbreviations of Major Dudley Family Documents above.

¹⁰⁶ The names counted in the July list are those on fos. 98–99v (pp. 430–5), the sum tallies with the totals computed on each folio. Those counted in the November list are found after the middle of fo. 212 (p. 442) and exclude the bargemen. Owing to the difficulty of identifying under-servants precisely, the sum is approximate, but the magnitude of the difference is clear enough.

¹⁰⁷ Also found in the earlier but not the later are the Lord Admiral (Howard of Effingham) and the Lord Chancellor (Hatton). The earlier list includes twenty-one knights and ten esquires, the later only twenty knights and ten esquires.

¹⁰⁸ See nn. 28 and 267 to the texts.

¹⁰⁹ See the introductions to the Chancy and Ellis accounts, pp. 39, 113, and for Browne, Evelyn MS 16, art. 3.

¹¹⁰ See ‘Dudley Clientèle’, esp. pp. 243–7.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Mertes, , Noble Household, pp. 57–8Google Scholar. There was one later exception, the keeper of the napery at Kenilworth Castle in the 1580s was a woman, Anne King*. For Mrs Picto see n. 161 to the texts.

¹¹² The GVE (fo. 59) notes the sale of Kew to Francis Pope (see n. 173 to the texts), but the date is not given. It ultimately came into the possession of Thomas Gardiner, a Teller of the Exchequer, who surrendered it to the Queen in 1574 (V.C.H. Surrey, iii, 483Google Scholar). The evidence for Leicester's residence at Durham House is supplied by bills and wardrobe warrants dated 1565–8, Longleat, DP Box V, fos. 215, 263, 300, 438. The house was used for the accommodation of ambassadors and courtiers throughout Elizabeth's reign (King's Works, iv, 76).Google Scholar

¹¹³ For Leicester's visits to Kenilworth, see ‘West Midlands’, 33–4.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ PRO, 054/818/32 (30 Jan. 1569/70).

¹¹⁵ Essex RO, D/DCw [Child Deposit, Wanstead Estate]/TsC/3 (lease, 15 April 1577); T3C/5 and 7 (bargain and sale, 10 Feb. 1577/8). Leicester may have been using it as a residence before the spring of 1577.

¹¹⁶ He was granted the stewardship of the honour of Grafton on 4 Dec. 1571 (CPR, 1569–72, 478Google Scholar), and several further leases thereafter. This grant is overlooked in the account of Grafton in King's Works, iv, 94–5Google Scholar. Benington was a Devereux manor and part of the jointure lands of the Countess as Countess of Essex (V.C.H. Hertfordshire, iii, 75Google Scholar). For Langley see n. 391 to the texts.

¹¹⁷ For the Kenilworth staff, see ‘West Midlands’, 41–2; for the keepers of Grafton and Langley, see nn. 584, 587 to the texts and Edmund Carey*.

¹¹⁸ The attraction of residences near Richmond for Tudor courtiers is also noted in V.C.H. Surrey, iii, 482.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ See p. 75 below.

¹²⁰ For Thomas Dudley, see his letter to Leicester of 11 Feb. 1586 from Leicester House, Leic. Corres., 111–14.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Braithwait's outline of an earl's household is printed in Batho, xxii. There are nine secretaries listed in the July 1587 Netherlands household where Braithwait only recommends one, but obviously special circumstances applied.

¹²² Batho notes that Braithwait's household for an earl would number over one hundred. An interesting point of comparison is the reference to the fifty-eight servants who accompanied Leicester on his tour to Kenilworth in August 1585 on p. 301.

¹²³ Leicester left bequests to Bridget Fettiplace and Lettice Barrett, the Countess's maids, in his 1582 will. For Lettice Barrett, see also also n. 436 to the texts.

¹²⁴ Leicester, for example, left a general bequest of a year's wages in his 1582 will to his servants ‘that are in ordinary & receave wages’. For the Household and the Court, see Adams, , ‘Eliza Enthroned? the Court and its Politics’, in C. Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (1985), pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ Extraordinary servants were not solely gentlemen, they also included some ‘professional’ yeoman servants as well. Huntsmen are a good example, see the Book of Servants Wages, pp. 407–8, 412.

¹²⁶ The wills, for example, of Thomas Blount and Anthony Dockwra* (PRO, PROB11/51/51v, 11/69/461), two of his leading servants, contain no reference of their relationship to him, while that of John Dudley* (PROB 11/63/117v–8) does. In his 1582 will Leicester left gifts to several named servants as well as the general bequest of a year's wages. In his 1587 will he noted his intention of adding for his servants a ‘bill under my hand what I will have done for them’, but no trace of this document can be found.

¹²⁷ The depositions in the Kenilworth case (referred to above, n. 11) are found in PRO, C21/ElizI/D/5/2; the case is discussed in ‘West Midlands’ 50. The 1604–5 Star Chamber case depositions are discussed in Abbreviated Documents above. Both the Longleat and the Penshurst collections contain lists of the deponents, fifty-six for the Countess and ninety for Sir Robert Dudley. Relevant surviving depositions are referred to in the notes.

¹²⁸ The lower figure for Cecil's household is given in Read, C., Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1955), p. 87Google Scholar, and the higher in Barnett, R.C., Place, Profit and Power: a study of the servants of William Cecil, Elizabethan statesman (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), p. 9.Google Scholar My own examination of the wage lists for 1554–5 m BL, Lansdowne MS 118, fos. 42V–44, suggests that there was a core of about twenty liveried and waged servants and an overall household of some thirty odd. Owing to limited sources, it is not easy to be precise about Burghley's later household, but see Barnett for the expansion and Batho, xxiii. Morrison, G.R., ‘The land, family and domestic following of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, c. 1550–1598’ (Unpub. Oxford University, D.Phil, thesis, 1990)Google Scholar, is more concerned with wider patronage than the household.

¹²⁹ These totals are drawn from Batho, xxii–iii; Emmison, p. 154, for Petre; the 1564 wage list (see n. 83 above) for Huntingdon; and BL Stowe MS 774 (Household Accounts, 1576–89), pt. i, fos. 2V-3, pt. ii, fo. 2, for North.

¹³⁰ Reference to the documents in Part II is made in the following manner: [A] BSW, [B] livery 1559, [C] livery 1560, [D] badge 1567, [E] livery 1567 [G and H] Netherlands household 1587, [I and J] funeral. References to rank or office are also noted.

¹³¹ The spelling of surnames in the notes follows that employed in Bindoff and Hasler.

¹³² For James, see n. 465 to the texts. Reference will also be made to a second (anonymous) diary in French covering December 1585-February 1586 in CA, Vincent MS 216, pp. 15–22.

¹³³ This discussion is limited to the resident ambassadors, comments on the extra ordinary embassies will be found in the notes.

¹³⁴ The account here of the Spanish embassy is derived from that in the ‘Feria Dispatch’, where full reference to the scholarly literature is made.

¹³⁵ ‘Ferja Dispatch’, esp. 304. The 1558–63 section of CSPSp 1558–67 is little more than a translation of the first volume in the Spanish series Correspondencia de Felipe II con sus Embajadores en la Corte de Inglaterra 1558 á 1584 (Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España [CODOIN], lxxxvii, Madrid, 1886), supplemented by transcriptions made at Simancas by J.A. Froude. The CODOIN series is limited to correspondence between the ambassador and the King. Lettenhove included such correspondence in his collection as he considered relevant to Anglo-Netherlands relations. There is a substantial overlap with CSPSp, but also numerous omissions and the addition of correspondence with the Netherlands government. The relevant legajos in the AGS, E 812–3, contain much unpublished material.

¹³⁶ In the ‘Feria Dispatch’ all the various versions of the documents are cited, but this has not been considered necessary here.

¹³⁷ They are found in the Noailles collection, AMAE, CFA, IX–XX: XIII, XIV and XX are the relevant volumes. Some have been transcribed for the PRO (PRO31/3/24), and a selection has been published in Teulet, i, 318–400.

¹³⁸ A fragment from one of his despatches is referred to in n. 282 to the texts.

¹³⁹ Discussed in Adams, , ‘Outbreak of the Elizabethan Naval War’, p. 50.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ The best introduction to Castelnau's embassy is provided by Bossy, John in Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair (1991)Google Scholar. His announced study of the embassy itself is eagerly awaited.

¹⁴¹ The present location of both Castelnau's own papers and contemporary copies poses a number of technical problems, see the discussion in Teulet, i, xxvi–vii. Employed here are the volume of in-letters for 1584–5, BN VCC 470, and the selections of correspondence published in Teulet, iii, 249–330, and in the eccentric but useful Egerton, F.H., The Life of Thomas Egerton, Lord Chancellor of England (Paris, 18[28]), pp. 189–206.Google Scholar

¹⁴² For Ortel's appointment, see CSPF, 1583–4, 43.Google Scholar

¹⁴³ ARA, Eerste Afdeling, Regeringsarchieven 90A-B. Some extracts can be found in the relevant chapters of J.L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands.

¹⁴⁴ ARA, Eerste Afdeling, Regeringsarchieven 101B (Staten Generaal 8299).

¹⁴⁵ Examples will be found in the notes. However, it might be noted that there is some support here for Spanish claims that Leicester was ‘French’ in allegiance.

¹⁴⁶ Apart from the evidence found here, see also Bossy, Bruno. It should be noted, though, that by 1584 the relationship was nearly ten years old and had to some degree been affected by the complex intrigues surrounding the Anjou marriage. As Bossy suggests, one gets the sense that Castelnau was very discreet about his social relationships in his despatches.

¹⁴⁷ The Collectic Ortel, in ARA, Eerste Afdeling, is a disappointment, consisting mainly of his papers as a military commissioner for Orange in the 1570s. Few of his diplomatic papers survive, lias 50 includes an undated account of expenses, with a few references to Leicester.

¹⁴⁸ The ‘history’ is found on fos. 350–69v. It was first brought to my attention over a decade ago by Dr G.W. Bernard and Ms Pam Wright; I am extremely to Dr Bernard for his generosity in supplying me with a copy of his transcription of the document, which has saved me a great deal of work. The history is used extensively in Jones, N.L., The Birth of the Elizabethan Age (Oxford, 1993).Google Scholar

¹⁴⁹ A collection ‘on the rivalry between the Dukes of Northumberland and Somerset’ which can only be be this work was among the papers of Norton's that were seized by the Privy Council after his death, see Graves, M.A.R., Thomas Norton the Parliament Man (Oxford, 1994), p. 147Google Scholar. Patrick Collinson has noted the preservation of Norton's papers among Beale's, see ‘Puritans, Men of Business and Parliaments’, in Elizabethan Essays (1994), p. 77Google Scholar, but the whole subject needs further examination.

¹⁵⁰ The author, together with ‘Mr Dannet’, was at Hampton Court when Leicester returned to Court after his wife's death (see n. 280 to the texts), but he states ‘And for my self I knewe him not, for I never sawe him before’, which suggests that he did not have much contact with the Court.

¹⁵¹ Owing to a considerable overlap between the two capper's bills, only part of the second is printed.