Clerks of the Closet in the Royal Household: Five Hundred Years of Service to the Crown - Hardcover

Bickersteth, John; Dunning, R. W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0862998735 ISBN 13: 9780862998738

Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd, 1991

Synopsis

The office of Clerk of the Closet emerged in the Royal Household in the reign of Henry VI: the holder was a minor cleric charged to ensure that the furnishings of the Chapel Royal were in proper order. Under Edward IV at least one Clerk was also a diplomat; under Henry VII a former supporter in exile; under Henry VII scholars involved with State business. In the seventeenth century the holders, nearly all bishops, were distinguished men intimately concerned with the Royal Family and with affairs of Church and State, and included three who became Archbishops of Canterbury and two who became Archbishops of York. For six years in the mid-eighteenth century the office was held by the great philosopher-bisphop Joseph Butler, and for the twenty-seven years from 1781 by George III's great friend Richard Hurd, perhaps better know as the pioneer literary figure of the Romantic Movement than the Sovereign's spiritual adviser. The High Tory Clerk Robert Carr was not acceptable when Queen Victoria came to the throne; her preference for liberal Evangelicals Stanley of Norwich to Court; Randall Davidson, the Queen's last and favorite Clerk, took his great influence with him to Canterbury, ands successors under Edward VII and George V were more friends of the Royal Family than ecclesiastical statesmen. This book comprises biographies of all the 55 known Clerks since 1437; a study of the role of the Clerk today in his main responsibility as head of the College of Royal Chaplains; and describes the Clerk's duties, past and present, including his former role of the ceremony of Touching for the King's Evil.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sutton Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0862998735
• ISBN 13: 9780862998738
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160