Many wives and daughters of Privy Councilors
attended the Queen in her privy chamber. Most of the knights or
gentlemen of the royal household were also members of Parliament
or Justices of the Peace for certain districts in the counties.
Instead of the office of Chancellor, which was the highest legal
office, Elizabeth appointed a man of common birth to be Lord
Keeper of the Great Seal; she never made a Lord Keeper a peer.
Elizabeth encouraged her lords to frankly make known their views
to her, in public or in private, before she decided on a course of
action. She had affectionate nicknames for her closest courtiers,
and liked to make puns. The rooms of the Queen were arranged as
they had been under Henry VIII: the great hall was the main dining
room where the servants ate and which Elizabeth attended on high
days and holidays; the great chamber was the main reception room,
where her gentlemen and yeomen of the guard waited; the presence
chamber was where she received important visitors; beyond lay her
privy chamber and her bedchamber. She ate her meals in the privy
chamber attended only by her ladies. She believed that a light
supper was conducive to good health. The Lord Chamberlain attended
the Queen's person and managed her privy chamber and her well-born
grooms and yeomen and ladies-in-waiting. The Lord Steward managed
the domestic servants below the stairs, from the Lord Treasurer to
the cooks and grooms of the stable.
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