Royal Households of the United Kingdom

The Royal Households of the United Kingdom are the collective departments which support members of the British Royal Family. Many members of the Royal Family who undertake public duties have separate households. They vary considerably in size, from the large Royal Household which supports the Sovereign to the household of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, with fewer than ten members. The lesser households are funded from the Civil List annuities, paid to their respective royal employers for their public duties, and all reimbursed to HM Treasury by the Queen.

In addition to the royal officials and support staff, the Sovereign's own household incorporates representatives of other estates of the Realm, including the Government, the Military, and the Church. Government whips, defence chiefs, several clerics, scientists, musicians, poets, and artists hold honorary positions within the Royal Household. In this way, the Royal Household may be seen as having a symbolic, as well as a practical, function: exemplifying the Monarchy's close relationship with other parts of the Constitution and of national life.

The sovereign's domestics were his officers of state, and the leading dignitaries of the palace were the principal administrators of the kingdom. The royal household itself had, in its turn, grown out of an earlier and more primitive "thegnhood", and among the most eminent and powerful of the king's thegns were his "dishthegn," his "bowerthegn," and his horsethegn or staller. In Normandy at the time of the Conquest a similar arrangement, imitated from the French court, had long been established, and the Norman dukes, like their overlords the kings of France, had their seneschal or steward, their chamberlain and their constable. After the Norman Conquest, the ducal household of Normandy was reproduced in the royal household of England; and since, in obedience to the spirit of feudalism, the great offices of the first had been made hereditary, the great offices of the second were made hereditary also, and were thenceforth held by the grantees and their descendants as holder of tenure in grand serjeanty of the crown.

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