Wardrobe (government)
The King's Wardrobe, together with the Chamber, made up the personal part of medieval English government known as the King's household. Originally the room where the king's clothes, armour, and treasure were stored, the term was expanded to describe both its contents and the department of clerks who ran it. Early in the reign of Henry III the Wardrobe emerged out of the fragmentation of the Curia Regis to become the chief administrative and accounting department of the Household. The Wardrobe received regular block grants from the Exchequer for much of its history; in addition, however, the wardrobe treasure of gold and jewels enabled the king to make secret and rapid payments to fund his diplomatic and military operations, and for a time, in the 13th-14th centuries, it eclipsed the Exchequer as the chief spending department of central government.
There were in fact two main Wardrobes for much of this period: around 1300 the confusingly named Great Wardrobe, responsible only for expenditure on such things as clothing, textiles, furs and spices, split away from the more senior Wardrobe, which remained responsible for financing the king's personal expenditure and his military operations. In addition there were smaller Privy Wardrobes at various royal palaces; most of these provided items for the personal use of the king when in residence, but the Privy Wardrobe in the Tower of London came to specialize in the storage and manufacture of armour and armaments, and as such it too developed into an autonomous department of the State.
By the 15th century the Wardrobe had lost much of its earlier influence, and it eventually merged entirely into the Household and lost its separate identity. At the same time, the Great Wardrobe began to be referred to, more simply, as "the Wardrobe", to some extent taking on the identity of its forebear; but in the sixteenth century the Great Wardrobe lost its independence.
The King's (or Household) Wardrobe
Origins and early development
In the Middle Ages persons of wealth and power often slept in a chamber, alongside which a secure room or wardrobe would be provided for storage of clothes and other valuables. In the royal household, the Chamber came to represent the king's nearest advisers. Before long the Wardrobe emerged, under the auspices of the Chamber, to become an administrative body in its own right, providing secure storage for the robes, treasures, archives and armaments of the king. Like other offices of the household it was an itinerant operation: carts and cases containing valuables travelled with the king and his court as they moved from place to place around the realm.Prior to the 13th century references to the Wardrobe and its keepers are few. The 10th-century King Eadred bequeathed substantial sums of money in his will to his hrœgelthegns, which may suggest that these were persons of some importance. By the reign of Henry II the king's Wardrobe is identified as a 'place of safe deposit' with its own staff, and its own premises within various royal palaces or strongholds; there remained, however, a good deal of functional overlap between the Chamber and the Wardrobe.
The rise of the Wardrobe
After 1200, however, the Wardrobe grew in activity and in prestige, partly as a result of King John's constant travelling of the realm, which required a more immediate source of funds than the fixed Exchequer. The Wardrobe first rivalled, and then eclipsed the Chamber in terms of power within the Court and in relation to the governance of the realm. Thus we see, early in the reign of Henry III, the office of Treasurer of the Chamber annexed to that of Keeper of the Wardrobe. At around the same time the Keeper's deputy was given oversight of the Privy Seal. This meant that the Wardrobe, which already served as a repository of important documents and Charters, began producing them as well; and thenceforward its Controller tended to be an important and trusted adviser to the king. With these developments, a third official, the Cofferer of the Wardrobe, began to take increasing responsibility for the day-to-day business of the Wardrobe.The administrative historian T. F. Tout has speculated that a reason for the Wardrobe's increasing influence was its "new and elastic" nature: it was not hidebound by restrictive traditions or customary ways of working. Moreover, it was able to respond quickly in times when speedy expenditure was required – most especially in time of war – and with a flexibility which suited both the monarch and the nascent powers of English government. It did so largely by securing loans, on the basis of its valuable assets and treasures, from Italian bankers. In this way the Wardrobe became an independently powerful financial office.
There was however also a political dimension to the Wardrobe's rise. As G. M. Trevelyan put it, "If one office…was secured by the baronial opposition, the King could dive underground and still govern the country through the Wardrobe": hence the baronial demand in 1258 that all money should in future go through the Exchequer.
During the reign of Edward I, the Wardrobe was at the height of its power as a financial, administrative and military department of the Household and State. It was "the brain and hand of the Court". Its seal, the Privy Seal, no longer functioned solely as the personal seal of the King, but began to serve as a second, and somewhat less formal, State seal alongside the Great Seal of the Realm.. It was by letters authenticated by this seal that officials across the Kingdom received their instructions, as did both the Exchequer and the Chancery ; those serving in the armed forces were paid through the Wardrobe accounts. The Keeper or Treasurer of the Wardrobe was considered to be one of the two chief officers of the Household at this time.
The Wardrobe was still at this point an itinerant operation, but it did maintain two permanent 'Treasuries': one in the Tower of London, and one in the crypt of the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. It was the latter that served as the main repository for the royal jewels, plate, coin and bullion through the 13th century; but, following the burglary of the contents of this Treasury in 1303 by a certain Richard Pudlicott, the bulk of the remaining treasure was removed to the Tower.
Its influence fades
Toward the end of Edward's reign, a series of costly wars took their toll on the Wardrobe's hitherto independent means. Then, during the reign of Edward II, concerted efforts were made to reassert traditional rights of the Chancery and the Exchequer, and to limit the authority of the Wardrobe. For example, 1307 saw a separate Keeper of the Privy Seal appointed; over the next few decades the Privy Seal developed into a minor office of state, operating alongside the Office of Chancery, outside both Wardrobe and Household. Then in 1311 a series of Ordinances were issued by barons opposed to the King, a number of which reasserted the status quo ante over recent Wardrobe innovations; for example, ordinance 8 insisted that the Exchequer alone was to receive taxes and other state revenue. Later, under Edward III, any ongoing conflicts over the confusion of authority between the wardrobe and the exchequer were finally resolved when William Edington, Treasurer in the mid-fourteenth century, effected a number of reforms which brought the Wardrobe firmly under the financial oversight of the Exchequer.It was around this time that the Wardrobe began to be known as the Household Wardrobe: this was in part to differentiate it from the increasingly autonomous 'Great Wardrobe', but it also reflects the fact that the wardrobe was by now losing its wider influence. In England, its business was restricted now to Household administration; and although it retained greater influence when accompanying the King and Court overseas, it did so only as a subsidiary arm of the Exchequer.
With the Wardrobe under increasing scrutiny, the King began to look to the erstwhile-dormant Chamber as providing a more effective structure for overseeing his personal administration and finances. It is there that the beginnings of a privy purse are seen under Edward II, alongside a 'secret seal' which the King now used for personal correspondence in place of the Privy Seal; and under Edward II and Edward III the chief Chamberlain began to re-emerge as a key person of influence within the Household.
By the reign of Richard II, the Chamber had re-established its seniority within the Household, and the Wardrobe then 'ceased to be the directive force of the household, remaining simply as the office of household accounts'. Rather than being a separate department, the Wardrobe and its officers now came under the authority of the Steward, and before long, even within the Household, the Wardrobe began to lose its separate identity: by the late 14th century, its senior officers were more often than not referred to as the Treasurer of the Household, Controller of the Household and Cofferer of the Household. Despite this gradual demise of the Wardrobe, these three officers remained as senior officers of the Household who are also members of the Government. A vestige of the Wardrobe's former significance is seen in the 15th century, when in time of conflict the Treasurer of the Household was also frequently appointed 'Treasurer of Wars'.