Coroner of the Queen's Household

The Coroner of the King's/Queen's Household was an officer of the Medical Household of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. It was abolished in 2013.

The office of Coroner of The King's or Queen's Household, reporting to the Lord Steward of the Household, dates back at least to the 13th century, and possibly even earlier, although not always given this exact name. As R.F. Hunnisett put it, "Another privileged area was peripatetic. This was the verge, which extended for twelve miles around the king's court. It had its own coroner, called the coroner of the king's household, coroner of the Marshalsea, or coroner of the verge ..."

There was a mention of the role in Law French by Bretton in 1290, "Et en noster hostel soit un Corouner, qi face le mester de la Coroune par mi la verge" (In our household let there be a Coroner to execute the business of the Crown throughout the verge) and a "William of Walden, coroner of the king's household" mentioned in 1333. A Robert of Hamond was described in 1480 as "coroner of the kynges houshold", and we also have it in legal Latin in 1593 as Coronatore hospicij dicte domine Regine, which Leslie Hotson translated as "Coroner of the household of our said lady the Queen" in his book on the death of the playwright Christopher Marlowe, inquired into by the then Coroner of the Queen's Household, William Danby.

According to Hunnisett, "during the thirteenth century, no other coroner was allowed to act within the verge, with the result that many felonies were not presented to the justices in eyre after the king's court had moved on...", and Richard Clarke Sewell tells us that "Anciently the Coroner of the Verge had power to do all things within the Verge belonging to the office of the Coroner, to the exclusion of the Coroner of the County, but this clearly caused problems, which two acts were intended to solve."

These two acts were, first, in 1300 (28 Edward I c.3, s.2.) the Articuli super cartas (Articles upon the charters), which said "...it is ordained, that from henceforth in cases of the death of men, whereof the Coroner's Office is to make view and Enquest, it shall be commanded to the Coroner of the County, that he, with the Coroner of the (King's) House, shall do as belongeth to his office and inroll it." Second, in 1311 (5 Edward II C.27.) there were the "New ordinances", which said "... We do ordain, that from henceforth in case of homicide, whereof the Coroner's office is to make view and Inquest, it shall be commanded to the Coroner of the Country or of the Franchises where the dead persons shall be found, that he, together with the Coroner of the Household do execute the office which thereunto pertaineth, and shall enter it in his Roll..."

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