f 59 (17–18 January)
...
| Tailors worke | paid to Ieferay for
making the fools
hose and capp
with a paire of mittings for my self |
xj s. |
...
f 65 (13 May) (Foreign charges)
...
...for shooes and stocks for the foole and a capp iij s. x d....
...
f 66 (30–1 May) (Payments)
...
for a paire of shooes for the foole xx d....
...
f 67 col 2 (29 July) (Servants' wages)
...
Foole (blank)
...
f 75v col 2 (28 September) (Servants' wages)
...
Foole (blank)
...
f 79 (1 November) (Payments)
...
...for mending the fools shooes iiij d....
...
f 80 (10 November) (Gifts and rewards)
...
geven my Lord of lesters plaiers xl s....
...
f 83 (8 December) (Servants' wages)
...I spared many for lache of money
...
col 2
...
Foole (blank)
...
The gift to a 'foole lackey' (f 36 v), followed by money spent on shoes for a lackey and shoes for a fool, respectively, implies that lackey and fool are two different positions – the shoes are filled by two different individuals, so to speak. Further, the 'foole lackey' entries (ff 37 and 41) describe clothing which could be for both a fool and a lackey, though only a lackey is specifically mentioned. It is difficult to determine whether the fool and lackey are completely separate people, or a fool-lackey, sometimes called 'lackey,' who is sometimes lumped with other lackeys. There is also the possibility that the 'foole lackey' may be a steward or a keeper for a potential 'natural' fool.
'my piper,' who appears on the list of servants along with the fool (f 41v), may not have been a musician but a carpenter whose surname was Piper and appears elsewhere.
The fool is listed this year as a servant (f 44, col 2), but no salary is noted.
Elizabeth I's visit to Kirtling (f 74) was part of a larger procession through East Anglia beginning in the summer of 1578. She began at Greenwich and visited the royal palace at Havering (11 July), then looped through Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, where she stayed in Norwich, during which time she also visited Cambridge (Zillah Dovey, An Elizabethan Progress: The Queen's Journey into East Anglia, 1578 (Madison, NJ, 1996), pp 15, 20, 27, 34, 40, 45; see also Galloway, Norwich 1540–1642, pp xlii–xliii, and Nelson, Cambridge, vol 2, p 736).
Record title: Lady North's Household Accounts
Repository:
BL
Shelfmark: Stowe MS 774, vol I
Repository location: London
Lady Dorothy North (née Dale, 1560–1618), was the only daughter of Dr Valentine Dale (c 1520–89), civil lawyer, resident ambassador in Paris, 15 April 1573–October 1576, dean of Wells and canon residentiary, 8 January 1574–89, and master of Requests (possibly by 1564, but definitely from 1576–89), and Elizabeth Forth (d. 1590), daughter of Dr Robert Forth (d. 1595). John and Dorothy resided at Kirtling Hall, the manor where George North wrote his 'A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels' (see the Introduction, 'Historical Background: Cambridgeshire Families'). John and Dorothy had four sons, Dudley North (bap. 1582, d. 1666), third Baron North, Sir John North, KB, Roger North, the navigator, and Gilbert, and two daughters, Elizabeth, who married William Horsey, son of Sir Jerome Horsey, and Mary, who married Sir Francis Coningsby of South Mimms, Hertfordshire. Dorothy remarried in 1604 (Michael Hicks, 'Dale, Valentine (c. 1520–1589), civil lawyer and diplomat' ODNB, accessed 28 September 2021; HPO, accessed 28 September 2021; D.J.B. Trim, 'North, Sir John (c 1550–1597), soldier and traveller,' ODNB, accessed 28 September 2021).
1575–1582; English; paper; 170 leaves; 295mm x 205mm, 19th-c. pencil foliation superceding 2 earlier ink foliations; bound with vol 2 in modern leather binding, title in gold spine: 'Lord North's | Household | Book | 1576–1589. | Brit. Mus. | Stowe | 774.'