Lord Justiciar: The King's chief lieutenant and representative, able, when granted letters patent by the king, to act as the king in the king's absence.
Current Holder: Ranulf de Glanville
Lord High Steward: This office is responsible for the royal household, including making arrangements for royal travel and making sure that the palaces and castles are maintained and staffed with loyal and well-trained servants. While this gives the office a great deal of soft power, its true might is in its role as judge for trials of peers of the realm.
Current Occupant: Robert "Whitehands" de Beaumont
Lord Chancellor: The Lord Chancellor is responsible for the keeping of the Great Seal and advising the king in both spiritual and temporal matters. The Great Seal is used to stamp all documents requiring royal assent, and thus the Chancellor has a role in every formal decision the king makes. This office has traditionally been occupied by a clergyman, as they are almost always literate and usually disinterested in hoarding temporal power, whereas it can be hit-or-miss with laymen. Because he is usually such an important cleric, the Lord Chancellor often doubles as royal chaplain.
Current Occupant: Geoffrey fitzHenry, Bishop of Lincoln
Lord High Treasurer: The Lord High Treasurer is the official responsible for keeping track of the king's money. In time, this office will give rise to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in practical terms it is invested with incredible power. Money makes the world go 'round, after all.
Current Occupant: Fr. Richard fitzNeal
Lord Great Chamberlain: The Lord Chamberlain is responsible for the series of rooms used by the Sovereign to receive increasingly select visitors, terminating in the royal bedchamber. His department not only furnishes the servants and other personnel (such as physicians and bodyguards, the Yeomen of the Guard and Gentlemen Pensioners) in intimate attendance on the Sovereign but arranges and staffs ceremonies and entertainments for the court. He has (secular) authority over the Chapel Royal. When the king is unable to address his court, it is the Lord Chamberlain that speaks for him.
Current Occupant: Aubrey de Vere, 1st Earl of Oxford
Lord High Constable: The Constable is the commander of the royal armies and master of the king's horse.
Current Occupant: In abeyance for the majority of Henry de Bohun.
The Great Offices of State
The Great Offices of State
Gm * Man of Angles * Sionnach * Scealai *
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,/Every poem an epitaph. And any action/Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat/Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:/See, they depart, and we go with them./We are born with the dead:/See, they return, and bring us with them./The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree/Are of equal duration. A people without history/Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern/Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails/On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel/History is now and England --Eliot, Little Gidding
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,/Every poem an epitaph. And any action/Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat/Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:/See, they depart, and we go with them./We are born with the dead:/See, they return, and bring us with them./The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree/Are of equal duration. A people without history/Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern/Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails/On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel/History is now and England --Eliot, Little Gidding