Lord Chamberlain of England

“ This office he resigned in 1700, in order to proceed to a warmer climate, and he resided for a short period at Montpellier in France. After the decease of the King of Spain and the accession of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of that kingdom, he quitted France and proceeded to Geneva, and subsequently crossed the Alps into Italy. After his return to England he was reappointed by Queen Anne to the office of Lord Chamberlain, and in 1712 he was appointed ambassador to the French court to finish the negociations for peace. In 1713 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ”

“ He had obtained a grant of thirty manors belonging to suppressed monasteries; the title of Earl of Essex was revived in his favour, and the office of Lord-Chamberlain was added to his other appointments. He was the performer of all the great acts of the State. He brought in two bills, vesting the property of the Knights Hospitallers in the king, and settling an adequate jointure on the queen. He obtained from the laity the enormous subsidy of four-tenths and fifteenths, besides ten per cent. of their income from lands, and five per cent. on their goods ”

“ Dying without surviving issue, he was succeeded in the title and estates by his brother, Philip Herbert, who thus became fourth Earl of Pembroke, and was shortly afterwards created Earl of Montgomery, and appointed Lord Chamberlain, Gentleman of the King’s Bed-chamber, and Lord Warden of the Stannaries. He was twice married: first, to Lady Susan Vere, daughter to the Earl of Oxford, by whom he had a numerous family; and, secondly, to Anne, daughter and heiress of George, Earl of Cumberland, and widow of Richard, Earl of Dorset. ”

“ Stephens having consisted in standing on one occasion as a candidate for the House of Commons without success.
Formerly a statesman regularly began his official life as a parliamentary under-secretary; and he did not become the head of a department, or win a seat in the cabinet, until he had in this way served his apprenticeship in public administration—a practice which furnished both a guarantee of experience and a test of executive capacity. Of late years there have been a number of exceptions to this rule. Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. ”

“ The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to carry her letter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there. Rochester declined the office of messenger, and, though he tried to restore harmony between his kinswomen, was by no means disposed to plead the cause of the Churchills. He had indeed long seen with extreme uneasiness the absolute dominion exercised over his younger niece by that unprincipled pair. Anne's expostulation was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only reply was a message from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding Lady Marlborough to leave the palace. Mrs. ”

“ The Count answered, "Most gracious sovereign, they are dead; they are dead in the sight of the law because they have no value, and they will be so physically before they can be brought from the knacker's house to the knights' stables." To this the Elector, putting the letter in his pocket, replied that he would himself speak to the Lord Chancellor about it. He spoke soothingly to the Chamberlain, who raised himself on his elbow and seized his hand in gratitude, and, after lingering a moment to urge him to take care of his health, rose with a very gracious air and left the room. ”

“ Chamberlain always kept his visionary schemes within the due bounds of seriousness and reason. Though I think he placed no limits to the capacity of the English people to meet and to overcome dangers and difficulties in the world of politics, and always held them, as, indeed, do I, capable to be of heroic mould, he never inflated himself or his countrymen on any subject, but spoke always weightily and with good sense. To take a concrete example, he, no more than Lord Cromer, would have intoxicated his mind with a fantastic idea like that of the Cape to Cairo railway as did Mr. Rhodes. ”

“ Chamberlain has educated them into the abandonment of all their ancient virtues. If, as he is almost certain to do if he live, he become before long the Premier of England, he will do immeasurable harm both to Great Britain and the world.
The reign of Queen Victoria has been a long succession of wars; few, if any, were either necessary or inevitable. But not one of these has been a war of defence at home; the English citizen and peasant know nothing in their own land of the horrors of war; they have never seen its desolation and its horrors ”

“ He held the rank of Lord Chamberlain; but he was practically the King's minister in state affairs, domestic or foreign. He was backed since his marriage by the influence of the Howards; and his father-in-law, Suffolk, was Lord Treasurer. He was girt round indeed by rivals and foes. ”

“ Surely to have been called by the acclamations of a whole people to defend the most important of its fortresses is quite as exalted a distinction as to be appointed a Lord Chamberlain or a Lord Chancellor by the favor of one minister, and liable to be dismissed the next morning by another. ”

“ Events, too, have served him, as they often do the strenuous, single-minded man. In the outburst of loyalty and the tightening of the Imperial bonds that followed the Venezuelan290 incident and the Jameson Raid, the cards certainly came his way. As a man, Mr. Chamberlain has been fortunate in that he has seen his own doctrines already justified in himself, at least; as a statesman, the trend of British politics would seem to be toward the adoption of his views. ”

“ LITTLE MASTER MINORITY. A Dialogue in Dialect, some way after Bret Harte's "Jim."
[Referring, in the course of conversation, to the deadlock in the Senate, Mr. Chamberlain said:—"My opinion is that the Americans are the most patient people on the globe. Such an outcome from an organised system of obstruction would be impossible in England, which I venture to say, with my foot on New York soil, is far more democratic than America. Democracy, as I take it, means the government of the people by the people."—The "Times'" New York Correspondent, Oct. 13.] ”

“ Mr Chamberlain had a very difficult part to play, in a situation dominated by suspicion on both sides, and while he firmly insisted on the rights of Great Britain and of British subjects in the Transvaal, he was the continual object of Radical criticism at home. Never has a statesman’s personality been more bitterly associated by his political opponents with the developments they deplored. ”

“ The stage alone remains under a censorship of a grotesquely unsuitable kind. No play can be performed if the Lord Chamberlain happens to disapprove of it. And the Lord Chamberlain’s functions have no sort of relationship to dramatic literature. A great judge of literature, a farseeing statesman, a born champion of liberty of conscience and intellectual integrity—say a Milton, a Chesterfield, a Bentham—would be a very bad Lord Chamberlain: so bad, in fact, that his exclusion from such a post may be regarded as decreed by natural law. ”

“ Chamberlain was no doubt a marvel of demagogic art. He could say supremely well what the average man felt a difficulty in putting into words. He was intensely sensitive to changes in public feeling, and extraordinarily clever in just anticipating them. He had a great knack of condensing into one sharp and memorable phrase the idea he wanted to sink deep into the public mind. But he was not an orator in the sense that John Bright was, and he lacked the capacity of Lord Randolph Churchill, in his best days, of whipping a popular audience into yelling, laughing, almost hysterical sympathy. ”

“ Here there is no reference to the Master and the allowance of plays is committed to Samuel Daniel 'whome her pleasure is to appoynt for that purpose'. Nor is the Master mentioned in the unexecuted draft (c. 1604) for the Queen's men. Probably the reason is to be found in the existence of a separate Chamberlain for the Queen's Household. The Master of the Revels was of course an officer of the King's Lord Chamberlain. The Master's rights are reserved in the patent actually issued to the Queen's men in 1609. Daniel's licensing had been far from a success; cf. p. ”

“ With the best will in the world Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill found it very difficult to work in close accord. Their opinions were nearly alike, but their political positions were different. They had similar aims, but divergent antagonisms. The disputes within a party are always fiercer than those between regular political opponents and their rage burns long in the breast. Mr. Chamberlain had resigned from Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet, and his attitude tended to become mainly one of opposition to him. All other political leaders, of whatever complexion, stood more or less in shadow. ”

“ When he spoke, it was to counsel the Dutch in Cape Colony to warn their kinsmen in the Transvaal against any fatal rashness. Henceforth, though Chamberlain was always ready to interfere if necessary, British policy was mainly directed by the man on the spot. It was the fashion amongst a certain school of radicals to regard Chamberlain as a firebrand, who was only kept in order by the influence of his more moderate colleagues. ”

“ And when I found out just how much the Lord Chamberlain had to say in the matter—how he arranged the exact length of my train and cut of my bodice, and what I wore in my hair—the whole undertaking, while it grew in consequence, grew also in charm. It was interesting in quite a novel way to come within the operation of these arbitrary requirements connected with the person of royalty. I liked getting ready to go to Court infinitely better than if I had been able to do it quite my own way, and the Lord Chamberlain had had nothing to do with it. ”

“ But at the outset there was another class of chamberlains, the camerarii, i.e. high officials charged with the administration of the royal treasury (camera) . The camerarius of the Carolingian emperors was the equivalent of the hordere or thesaurarius (treasurer) of the Anglo-Saxon kings; he develops into the Erzkämmerer (archicamerarius) of the Holy Roman Empire, an office held by the margraves of Brandenburg, and the grand chambrier of France, who held his chamberie as a fief. Similarly in England after the Norman conquest the hordere becomes the chamberlain. ”

“ Lloyd George’s defence of Free Trade soon began to develop a character of its own. His tactics gradually began to take on a note of attack. His defensive became an aggressive.
He had recognised, from the opening of the struggle, that the strength of Mr. Chamberlain’s case lay in his frank recognition of the grim, shameful facts that lay beneath the smooth surface of English life. He realised that Mr. Chamberlain was the first great statesman to recognise fearlessly the existence of that England which so few statesmen had yet recognised—the England of the poor. Mr. ”

“ But when the king insisted upon it that the Prime Minister should be cut in pieces, the Lord Chamberlain fed upon rabbit skins and oil, and the Chief Justice baked without further delay, these functionaries severally and together came to the conclusion that the thing could go no further.
The laws of Pigmyland were clear and well known; upon the death or incapacity through illness of the reigning sovereign, his eldest son always ascended the throne as a matter of course, and, failing sons, his nearest relative succeeded to the sceptre. ”

“ Morley, and Lord Herschell from the one side, and by Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan from the other, was an attempt to find a modus vivendi between men who were in fact fundamentally at issue. In this state of things, a provocative letter by Chamberlain in The Baptist merely killed what could never have survived. The resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill (December 1886) had seriously affected Chamberlain’s position. The tory democracy of Churchill attracted him ”

“ The Lord Chamberlain nodded. “Then ask his Excellency when next you see him, Where is Rozel? But take good counsel and keep your ignorance from the Queen,” he added. “She has no love for stupids.”
“You say you are butler to the Queen? Whence came your commission?” said the Lord Chamberlain, smiling now; for Lempriere’s words and ways were of some simple world where odd folk lived, and his boyish vanity disarmed anger.
“By royal warrant and heritage. And of all of the Jersey Isle, I only may have dove-totes, which is the everlasting thorn in the side of De Carteret of St. Ouen’s. ”

“ In this debate the fear and hatred with which many of the best friends of the Government regarded Sunderland were unequivocally manifested. "It is easy," such was the language of several members, "it is easy to guess by whom that unhappy sentence was inserted in the speech from the Throne. No person well acquainted with the disastrous and disgraceful history of the last two reigns can doubt who the minister is, who is now whispering evil counsel in the ear of a third master." The Chamberlain, thus fiercely attacked, was very feebly defended. ”

“ These great richards find Joseph Chamberlain more to their taste than Lord Salisbury, who is too scholarly, too satirical, and too great a gentleman for them; his health is failing, he speaks rarely, there is a cynical contempt in his occasional speeches which cuts the novi homines like a whip. It is impossible that a man of Lord Salisbury's pride of character and acuteness of intellect should much longer consent to be the mere echo of his Colonial Secretary. There is every sign that his retirement will be followed by the accession to the premiership of Chamberlain. ”

“ On this same day Cyril Flower told me that on the previous day the Irish members had informed Mr. Gladstone that it was their wish that he should entirely abandon that land purchase scheme which he had adopted for the sake of conciliating Lord Spencer. On March 27th Chamberlain wrote: "My resignation has been accepted by the Queen, and is now therefore public property. We have a devil of a time before us."
'On April 5th there was a misunderstanding between Hartington and Chamberlain which almost shivered to pieces the newborn Liberal Unionist party. ”