Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2009
It is just fifty years since Thomas Frederick Tout died on 23 October 1929. Apart from a few formative years at St. David's College, Lampeter, Tout spent the whole of his academic career in Manchester. It was there that in 1908 he read and reviewed Eugène Déprez's Etudes de diplomatique anglaise and soon afterwards conceived the monumental work of a lifetime, modestly entitled Chapters in the administrative history of Mediaeval England. This six-volume work describes the organization of the household of England's medieval kings between the Norman conquest and the revolution of 1399, and the way in which the great administrative departments of state sprang from it. Beginning as a study of the king's personal chamber and wardrobe, it blossomed into a study, first, of the principal and less personal offices of the chancery, the exchequer and the privy seal—their growing complexity and bureaucratization, their increasing professionalism and specialization, and their eventual permanent settlement in or near London—and, second, of the way in which these offices affected, and were affected by, the relationship between individual kings and their subjects. The focus of Tout's work was the court and the central government, institutions and administration.
1 For the impression which Déprez's work (published in Paris in 1908) made on Tout, see Tait, J.'s obituary notice in Eng. Hist. Rev., xlv (1930), 82Google Scholar; Tout reviewed it in ibid., xxiii (1908), 556–9.
2 Chapters was published by Manchester University Press, in whose foundation Tout was centrally involved, between 1920 and 1933. For a statement of its developing purpose, see Chapters, I, pp. 4–6, and III, pp. vi–vii.
3 ‘Literature and learning in the English civil service in the fourteenth century’, Speculum, iv (1929), 366.Google Scholar
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5 See the list of his later writings compiled by his widow (History, xiv (1929–1930), 323–4).Google Scholar
6 Obituary in Proc. British Academy, xv (1929), 517.Google Scholar
7 Chapters, III, pp. 187–201. For the queens, see H. Johnstone, ibid., v, pp. 231–89; ‘The queen's exchequer under the three Edwards’, Historical essays in honour of James Tait, ed. Edwards, J. G. et al. (Manchester, 1933), pp. 145–53Google Scholar; and The English government at work, 1327–1336, ed. Dunham, W. H. et al. , I (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), pp. 250–99.Google Scholar For the Black Prince, see Sharp, M., Chapters, v, pp. 289–440Google Scholar, and ‘The administrative chancery of the Black Prince before 1362’, Essays in mediaeval history presented to Thomas Frederick Tout, ed. Little, A. G. et al. (Manchester, 1925), pp. 321–33.Google Scholar
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13 Good series of records survive, for example, for Shrewsbury (now being studied by Mr. D. R. Walker) and Exeter (deposited in the Devon Record Office). See the forthcoming paper by Horrox, R. M., ‘Urban patronage in the fifteenth century’Google Scholar (which also uses the archives of Beverley and Hull), which the author allowed me to read in typescript.
14 Trésor de la langue française, IVGoogle Scholar, sub ‘bureau’, quoting the royal household accounts for 1316. For Brecon's exchequer, see Staffordshire Record Office, D 641/1/5/2; for Carmarthen's chancery, exchequer and green cloth, Griffiths, R. A., The Principality of Wales in the later middle ages, I: South Wales, 1277–1536 (Cardiff, 1972), pp. 37–40Google Scholar; for Durham's organization, Dobson, , Durham PrioryGoogle Scholar; for the exchequer at Christ Church, Canterbury, Knowles, D., The religious orders in England, II (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar, ch. XXV; and for the administration of Bath and Wells, Dunning, R. W., ‘The administration of the diocese of Bath and Wells, 1401–1491’ (unpublished University of Bristol Ph.D. thesis, 1963).Google Scholar
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