Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

proper arrangements for the cure to be served, normally by pro- viding a stipendiary priest. Such arrangements may, however, have been unnecessary where the chaplain's living was near the household, and a priest such as the vicar of St. Sepulchre's without Newgate may have been able to undertake his parochial duties besides attending at Worcester's household when the earl was in London. There is, however, no evidence to indicate how William Cowpeland or the three other chaplains already mentioned discharged their various responsibilities. Worcester's domestic chaplains are one of several categories of servant rarely mentioned in the documents surviving from the earl's own archives. Even when these are supplemented by other sources, there is disappointingly little evidence on some important aspects of his household. The most serious gap in our information is the absence of any clear indication of its size. As Worcester was one of the less wealthy members of the higher nobility,71 it seems unlikely that his household was as large or as formal in its organisation as some of the greatest households of the early-Tudor period, such as those of Edward, duke of Buckingham (d. 1521), or Henry, earl of Northumberland (d. 1527).72 It may, indeed, have been smaller and less formal than the magnificent household maintained at Raglan by Worcester's great-grandson, Henry, earl and later marquess of Worcester (d. 1646), in the years before the Civil War.73 Nevertheless, so far as can be judged, Worcester's household was by far the most important in Wales, where there were few large households, lay or ecclesiastical, in the early-sixteenth century74 and still fewer after the dissolution of the Monasteries. Its unique position greatly enhanced Worcester's social and political influence. W. R. B. ROBINSON London '"Lands', Part 3, pp. 469-71. 72 T. Percy, The Northumberland Household Book (London, 1770); a list extracted from it of the 166 persons daily abiding in the earl's household at Michaelmas 1511 is given in C. H. Williams (ed.), English Historical Documents, 1485-1558 (London, 1967), pp. 906-8. A checker-roll of the household of Edward, duke of Buckingham (d. 1521), drawn up in 1519, includes 148 persons (K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 110-11). One of the household of Thomas, Lord Darcy (d. 1537), made in 1521, lists 80 persons, including 21 gentlemen (L. & P., Henry VIII, III, pt. 1, no. 1330). 73 H.M.C., Twelfth Report, pt. ix, pp. 1-8. This view is based mainly on the assumption that the size of Worcester's household was approximately commensurate with his income, which was higher than that of any other layman or churchman resident in Wales and higher than that of any religious or collegiate house. With an annual income of nearly £ 500 in 1535, the bishop of St. David's was by far the richest of the Welsh churchmen (G. Williams, The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Cardiff, 1962), p. 271). When Worcester's profits from offices are included, his total income was more than twice as large. Such information as is available about monastic houses in Wales suggests that even the wealthier ones had no more than about twenty domestic servants: Margam had 15 yeomen and 13 farm servants, and probably many of Tintern's total of 35 servants were farm workers (ibid., pp. 412-13).