ABSTRACT
The firm distinction which the nineteenth century was to draw between politics and administration did not yet exist under Elizabeth I. The minister in charge of a government department was also its administrative head, its principal accountant, its chief establishment officer. There had been masters—or overseers—of liveries since at least the beginning of the Tudor period, but the expression appears sometimes to have been used loosely by contemporaries of the Master of Wards himself. In the Elizabethan age the struggle continued, with the county all too often resisting the crown. The early Tudor policy against enclosures and evictions was subverted by the slack and hostile responses of the men in the shire. Custom had hardened the original total into a fixed amount; but the office holders had somehow managed to move their salaries upward in the wake of inflation.
