(The following notes on the Growth of the Royal Administration
have been drawn up from some fragmentary pepers, very
rough and imerfect, and wholly unrevised.)

In the history of the royal administration three stages are dis-
tinctly marked, each of which indicates a fresh step in the progress
of the kingly rule. In the time of Ælfred, the great officers of the
court were the four heads of the royal household -- the hordere, the
staller, the dish-thegn, and the cup-thegn. Under Æthelred the
appointment of the high-reeve shows the first effort of the crown
to create a minister of state. Finally, in the reign of Cnut we may
trace the beginnings of that administrative body which was to be-
come so important under the Confessor, the clerks of the chapel,
or the "king's chaplains."
The four officers of the early West-Saxon court are at least as old
as Ælfred, and, whether borrowed or not in their actual form from
the Frankish court, sprang naturally from the needs of the king's
household for its inner regulation and finance, for its movements
through the country, and for its commissariat. The hordere was
the officer of the court in its stationary aspect, as the staller or bon-
stable was of the court on progress; while the hardly less important
functions of the commissariat of this moving army were shared be-
tween the steward and the butler.

But of the four officers one only retained under the later West
Saxon monarchy any real power. The dish-thegn and cup-thegn
lost importance as the court became stationary and no longer "main-
tained a vast body of royal followers. The staller retained only the
functions of leading in war as the feudal constable, which in turn
passed away with later changes in the military system. The hor-
dere alone held a position of growing importance.

The búr-thegn, camerarius cubicularius; the hrægel-thegn, or
keeper of the wardrobe; the dispensator, thesaurarius, hordere, are
all grouped by Kemble ( Sax. in Eng. ii. 106) as names for the same
great officer. The first instances given by him are Ælfric thesau-
rarius, under Ælfred, Æthelsige camerarius, under Eadgar, and Le-
ofric hrægal-thegn, under Æthelred. No doubt the "hoard" con-
tained not only money and coin, but the costly ornaments and robes
of the crown. Of ail the officers of the court he was far the most
important, (1) as head of the whole royal service; (2) as exercising

-523-