After so bad an oeconomist (to say no worse of William Rufus), we may hope to see a more prudent direction of the revenues of the State, and a less abandoned Retinue about the Royal Person. This is, however, no great compliment to Henry, who succeeded: for a moderate character will appear with some degree of lustre, after one so very much disfigured as that of Rufus. Henry had, without question, many good qualities. He was a wise and prudent Prince, and, as the Saxon Chronicle says, "magno honore habitus[94];" but yet, we shall discover, one of his ruling passions was avarice, when we come to look nearly into his interior conduct in life. There was a glaring inconsistency in his very outset; for, soon after his accession, we find him punishing and imprisoning the abettors of William Rufus's exactions, and, among the rest, Ranulph Bishop of Durham, the Minister and instrument of all those oppressive and unwarrantable measures; and yet, very soon after, we behold Henry sequestering to his own use the revenues of the Archbishopric of Canterbury, and keeping them in his hands for five years, after the example of the very man whose rapacious conduct he had, but just before, publicly condemned[95]. It is true he recalled many grants bestowed upon creatures and undeserving persons in the late Reign; but whether upon motives of justice or avarice I do not determine. It will be found that he died exceedingly rich for those times (by whatever means the wealth was amassed); for he did not omit any opportunity of taxing his subjects, where he could do it with a tolerable grace, though he did it not in so bare-faced a manner as Rufus had done. Thus he availed himself of an antient Norman feudal custom, on occasion of the marrying his eldest daughter[96]. This custom was not now first established by Henry himself, as some have supposed[97]; but was one of the antient aids due to the King from his subjects, and having lain dormant many years, was now revived, but not introduced otherwise, than that Henry happened to be the first King, of the Norman race, who married his eldest daughter. In this he might be justifiable enough; but then he seems to have laid the tax at a prodigious high rate, for it is said, by some calculations, to have amounted to upwards of 800,000l. sterling. Among other things, Henry was very attentive to the reformation of abuses and irregularities that had crept into the Court during the Reign of his Brother.

The accounts given of William's Court are surprizing for that age, when one would suppose our ancestors to have been rough and unpolished, little addicted to the softer vices, and totally unacquainted with the effeminacies of succeeding times; but we find that, notwithstanding men's minds were then so much turned to war and athletic diversions, excess and sensuality prevailed in a very scandalous manner among the Nobility, and even among the Clergy. Vanity, lust, and intemperance, reigned through the whole kingdom. The men appeared so effeminate in their dress and manners, that they shewed themselves men in nothing but their attempts upon the chastity of women[98]. So William of Malmsbury, speaking of the effeminacy of William Rufus's Court, says, "Mollitie corporis certare cum foeminis—gressum frangere—gestu soluto—et latere nudo incedere, Adolescentium specimen erat: enerves—emolliti—expugnatores alienÆ pudicitiÆ, prodigi suÆ." By many evidences it appears that a luxury in apparel was very general among the Nobles and Gentry of that age; even the Nuns were not free from it.

The garments of the English, before their intermixture with the Normans, were generally plain; but they soon adopted the fashions of these new-comers, and became as magnificent in their dress as their fortunes could bear[99]. So that we see the French have, ever since the Conquest, been the standard of the English dress; and though we often complain of the folly of our times, in adopting French modes, it appears to be a practice that has existed time immemorial. Lord Lyttelton informs us (from Ordericus Vitalis) that there was a revolution in dress in William Rufus's reign, not only in England, but in all the Western parts of Europe; and that, instead of close coats, which till then had been used, as most commodious for exercise and a military life, trailing garments with long sleeves, after the manner of the Asiaticks, were universally worn. The men were also very nice in curling and dividing their hair, which, on the fore-part of their heads, was suffered to grow very long, but cut short behind[100];—a style of head-dressing, which, if introduced now, would spoil all the Macaroni's of the age; for their comfort, however, it may be inferred from hence that similar beings have long subsisted in some shape or other.

To return to Henry. We find the reformation of his Court was one of the first steps towards ingratiating himself with his subjects. The Courtiers, for the most part, sure of impunity, were wont to tyrannize over the people in a shameful manner. Not content with every species of oppression, and of secretly attempting the chastity of women, they gloried in it publicly. To remedy these disorders in his Court, Henry published a very severe edict against all offenders in general, and particularly against Adulterers; and such as abused their power by oppressing the people, he ordered to be put to death without mercy. Some who were already notorious on that account were banished the Court, among whom was Ranulph Bishop of Durham, who was likewise imprisoned by the advice of the great Council of the Kingdom[101]. This was in the first year of Henry's Reign; but it had so little effect, that five years afterwards we find a second reformation; for, the former proclamation being ineffectual, it was necessary to publish another, with still greater penalties; and this severity was unavoidably necessary, to check the licentiousness that had crept in, from the connivance which offences of every kind had hitherto met with.

Thus, we see, the dissoluteness of William Rufus's Court did not die with him; nor is it an easy thing to subdue so many-headed a monster as Vice in power. When the Magnates set bad examples in Courts, the inferior Officers are always ready to ape them; and crimes that in the commission are common to all men very soon descend from the Prince to the Page. In the King's progresses during the late Reign, the Court and its Followers committed many outrages of a very serious nature, in places where they lodged; such as extorting money from the hosts who entertained them, and abusing the chastity of women without restraint. But now the grievance was become much worse; for Henry's Attendants, in his progresses, plundered every thing that came in their way; so that the country was laid waste wherever the King travelled; for which reason people, when they knew of his approach, left their houses, carrying away what provisions they could, and sheltering themselves in the woods and bye-places, for fear their provisions should be taken away by the King's Purveyors[102]. These things called loudly for redress: it was therefore made public, by the King's command, that whoever, belonging to the Court, spoiled any goods of those who entertained them in these progresses, or abused the persons of their hosts, should, on proof, have their eyes put out, or their hands and feet cut off[103]. To us these seem cruel and unwarrantable punishments; but it must be remembered that, at this day, punishments were not prescribed, but arbitrary; there was no common law, and but little statute-law, and nothing to regulate the hand of Justice, which was directed by caprice, and the temper of the reigning King. Coiners of false money were grown so numerous and bare-faced, employed and even protected by the great men about the Court, that this kind of imposition on the publick became, among the rest, an object of redress, and the penalty inflicted was the loss of eyes and genitals.

Taking the whole together, one must conclude that the profligacy, and wanton cruelty, of the King's Suite must have been very enormous, to have required punishments so repugnant to natural mercy;—but we can but ill judge, at so distant a period, of the necessity there might be for such severity.

The Kings, in these ages, moved their Court very frequently, and often to considerable distances; and, as the state of the roads would not permit them to travel far in a day, they were forced to accommodate themselves as well as they could at such houses as lay convenient, there being then no receptacles of a public nature. These motions of so large a body of people, added to the frequency of them, were often, of themselves, very oppressive to the Yeomanry, who were obliged to supply the Court with carts and horses from place to place; and the abuse the people sustained in this kind of Purveyance was the occasion of edicts afterward to restrain any from taking carriages from the subject, for this purpose, except by the persons authorized and appointed to the office, who were called the King's Cart-takers, a post which is now in being, though out of use. But, although the Court was not fixed in these times, yet the Kings generally kept the Feast of Christmas in one place[104], according to their liking or convenience. The other Feasts they kept at different places, as it happened, they having Palaces almost at every considerable place in the Kingdom, viz. besides London and its environs, at York, at Gloucester, Winchester, Salisbury, Marlborough, Bath, Worcester, and many other places, too numerous to mention nominatim. The great Feasts (together with that of St. George, after the institution of the Order of the Garter,) were kept with great solemnity, even so late as the Reign of King ... when the public observance of them was dropped by the King and Court.

Henry was not wanting in splendour and magnificence on these occasions. Eadmerus, speaking of one of them, and more might be produced, says, "Rex Henricus [in Festivitate Pentecostes] curiam suam LundoniÆ in magn mundi gloriÂ, et diviti apparatu celebravit." Wherever the King kept his Court, or indeed wherever he resided, there was, of course, the general resort of all the great men of the time, who brought with them, no doubt, large retinues; and in so great a concourse it is no wonder there should be many disorderly and abandoned people, in spite of all edicts and penalties.

Hitherto I have met with very little mention of any Officers of the Court or Household. In this Reign, however, we hear of William de Tankerville, whom Lord Lyttelton calls, "Henry's Great Chamberlain." The Annotator on M. Rapin calls him only Chamberlain; and Matthew Paris, Camerarius; but this unquestionably means Treasurer, or High Treasurer, and not the great Officer we now understand by the Chamberlain, or the Great Chamberlain. The Latin term for these is Cambellanus, which Du Cange says, is—"diversus À Camerario, penes quem erat cura CamerÆ seu Thesauri Regii—Cambellano autem fuit cura Cubiculi[105]. We have the term Chamberlain, in the sense of Camerarius, still preserved in the City of London, where the Treasurer is called the Chamberlain, and the office the Chamber; and indeed this Officer, of every Corporation, is, for the most part, called the Chamberlain. In the account given by the Saxon Chronicle[106] of the persons who were so unfortunately drowned with Prince William, King Henry's son, in returning from Normandy, in the year 1120, it is said there perished "quamplurimi de Regis familiÂ, Dispensatores[107], Cubicularii[108], PincernÆ[109], aliique Ministri;" indeed all who were on board perished, except one man. These, it is supposed, were all menial and inferior Officers of the King's Household; those of a higher rank, and who appertained to the King's person, probably being on board the same ship with himself.