Subseries 2 - Butlers

In earlier times the Butlers were powerful individuals at the top of the College servant hierarchy, and the post itself seems to have developed out of that of the manciple described in the 16th-century statutes. One of the earliest recorded butlers was Thomas Burton, whose burial in June 1633 is recorded in the registers of All Saints Church.

By the early 17th century, and possibly earlier, the College was employing two butlers, one for the Fellows and another for the scholars. Like other College servants, the butlers originally had a fixed stipend which they augmented with perquisites and dues. When William Samuel Powell (Master 1765-75) reformed the College accounts in 1769-70 he noted that the butler had ‘almost every week ... made errors in his arithmetic to his own advantage’. The butlers were responsible for paying the servants directly under them and organised their own supplies.

The traditional structure of service headed by the butlers was left largely untouched until the mid-19th century. A College committee on service was appointed in 1854 and analysed the roll of the butlers in detail. The Fellows’ butler drew his income from selling butter and ale, trade through the College butteries, carrying letters, ruling and writing accounts, and miscellaneous fees such as those received at the election of new Fellows. His expenses included wages paid to his subordinates, such as waiters.
The scholars’ butler received a salary, and a fee from each student upon taking his degree and from each Fellow at his election, while his expenses comprised the wages of the buttery and hall attendants and a clerk.

The 1854 committee criticised the butlers’ lack of professionalism and recommended that both butlers be placed on full stipends, and that a professional hall butler should be employed to manage the service of the dining hall. The committee concluded that the butler’s ‘took too great an income for the nature of their duties, by employing inferior persons’, giving as an example one person employed ‘at a considerable salary to superintend the washing of the dishes’ and others ‘employed for the same duty as regards the plates’.

In 1876 the scholars’ butler took over the duties of the Fellows’ butler, who had died, with an increased salary, and the separate posts of scholars’ and fellows’ butler disappeared, leaving the butler and hall butler in their place. The abolition of the separate fellows’ and scholars’ butlerships had been recommended by a committee to review service appointed in 1854, but reorganization had to await the death or retirement of long-serving staff. In 1900, (CM593/4) the hall butler (Meadowcroft) retired, leaving a single butler in College with a buttery staff below him.

The butler appointed in 1911, Lockhart, also acted as Chief Clerk after the formation of the College Office in 1912. He retired in 1936. After this a Hall supervisor was appointed, and the office of Fellows’ butler was reintroduced to look after the service of the High Table and the Combination Room.

In 1947 Walter Robinson was appointed College Butler, in charge of the service of the Hall apart from high Table. Edward Males, who retired in 1976, was the last to hold office as a separate Fellows’ butler.

In 1957, at the beginning of the restoration work on Second Court, the College Office was relocated in Chapel Court, severing its physical link with the butteries and kitchens.