Royal Servants in Tudor times

The archetypical modern view of servants is that they are downtrodden, exploited souls who have no option but to run around after someone else. Even as recently as the First World War, though, the attitude to being 'in service' was very different. Yes, you may be on call from 6am - 11pm, but you had a safe home, all the food you needed and, in the main, employers appreciated you because they knew they could not function without you.

In Tudor times, servants had immense influence and, therefore, power. Although Henry VII, a very private man, learned the hard way that the fewer people he trusted the safer he was, his successor was a very different man. Whereas Henry VII surrounded himself with people of lower status to ensure that they would not get ideas above their stations, Henry VIII had a wide circle of friends, men of standing, who came from noble families. There were always Howards, Greys and Talbots at court, in capacities as gentlemen of the bedchamber and the various posts around the King's 'bathroom' activities. In Great Harry's court, they had to be linguists with exquisite social graces, as well as having military training.

The King was the centre of everything at court - the primate, in the same way as the Elizabethans regarded the sun as the primate of the heavens because it was the brightest star. So there would be plenty of scrabbling on and over rivals to obtain the choice places, even if that meant wiping the royal bottom and bathing the mountain of flesh that Henry became in his later years. Why? A perfect opportunity to ask for favours either for themselves or their families. The young Henry was known to be indulgent and, on more than one occasion, when he had agreed a course of action with a minister, would then be persuaded to change his mind by one of his close servants. This frequently enraged Cardinal Wolsey, but constant attendance upon the monarch bred a closeness that made saying no difficult at times.

So next time you wrinkle your nose at the thought of some unfortunate courtier having to carry out Henry's bodily waste, think on. The courtier in question might just have been promised a nice rich widow or an estate stripped from a traitor. Then again, your sympathy might well be justified, because, when it came to his sense of self, Henry was just as likely to execute men he had counted as friends from childhood, if he thought they had crossed the line.