My fellow courtier and courtly thief has clothes of the new fashion and hair hanging like a Lombard’s down to the shoulders, curled up and bristling like a duck’s tail, of which his enemy could take good advantage.

It has long been established that the hub of political power in late medieval England remained firmly entrenched within the king’s household (domus regis) and court. The personal nature of medieval kingship demanded that any site where the king dwelled continued to attract the politically influential. It was such visible prominence that featured in the declarations that the late Middle Ages was the ‘age of the household’ and that the household was the ‘most potent force in every aspect of English life’. The Yorkist monarchs demonstrated a preference for household servants to aid in the effective application of royal authority at the national and local levels of government. There were variances in the power-brokers’ backgrounds, their paths to royal favour, and the resources they possessed independent of the king’s bounty, yet all shared a personal relationship with the sovereign. A connection to the king’s familia was an essential characteristic of their status.

From the royal perspective, the household served a diverse range of functions concerned with the king’s wellbeing and comfort. It met his basic and essential requirements for food, drink, and shelter. It offered security for his person in the form of the corps of knights and esquires of the body as well as the seemingly inexhaustible supply of gentlemen, yeomen, grooms, and pages of the hall and chamber. The capacity for protection naturally proved critical during outbreaks of war or unrest as these men and their respective connections could be quickly mobilised into the core retinue of a royal army. As an instrument for strengthening his security, Henry VII worked through his household to form a standing yeomanry of the guard meant solely for the protection of the royal family and their property.

Beyond these needs, the household officials provided the king with a ready pool of men willing to serve as royal agents. In this partnership, they were sources of information, acting as bonds between the Crown and the wider polity. Many did not serve in their offices continually but rather rotated between the household and their respective regions at fixed terms.