Everybody knows that medieval governments had kings and queens, but surely there were more people than that, right? What were their titles, and what responsibilities did they have? How did they get into these positions? My main area of interest is England during the 14th and 15th centuries, but feel free to talk about whatever you know best.
You are entirely correct to assume that there were other people working for the royal governments in the medieval period. Even a medieval kingdom required organization in order to ensure that it was governed effectively.
The titles and duties of those who would actually carry out these tasks did tend to vary, but in Western Europe, there were some common structures which arise from similar beginnings and needs. I am going to use England as an example here, since it is considerably less messy than trying to discuss how things worked in France or the Holy Roman Empire, but many of the concepts also applied in those kingdoms as well.
The first thing to consider in this time period was that the Kings were considerably more hands-on than they would be later. They often personally led the army, would decide judicial cases personally and they would transact business with subjects more directly.
That sort of hands-on approach would often fall short of what was needed. The King could not handle all issues himself. He certainly could not manage his various land holdings and accounts himself. So, what arose is what is known as the Royal Household, and in most ways, it is exactly as it says: household servants.
One other piece of the puzzle to make clear here is that when we think of a President or even a King today, the personal income of that official is usually only a salary or a payment to the ruler paid out of the treasury. The money of the government itself is separate.
In the medieval period, or at least, the earlier part of that period in Western Europe, the treasury of the kingdom was the same thing as the King's personal holdings.
With this in mind, the King would entrust the people who ran his own household to act for him, because any and all of the money and holdings he had were already in the hands of these people. The same money used to pay for the King's dinner was used to pay out any governmental expenses for England itself.
If you look at the historical Great Officers of State for the UK, you see a number of offices that arise directly from the idea that the King used his own household to run the early medieval monarchy.
While only the Lord High Chancellor is still in active use in the UK today, all of these offices still exist, at least on paper.
So, what is a Lord High Steward? A steward is:
"one employed in a large household or estate to manage domestic concerns (such as the supervision of servants, collection of rents, and keeping of accounts)"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steward
That is exactly what the Lord High Steward started out as for the King of England. He was the head of the King's household and managed it.
As for chancellor and chamberlain? A chancellor is basically one who manages the correspondence, basically a secretary for the king, and a chamberlain is an servant who works in the bedchamber of their employer.
A secretary may not be a lofty position, but the secretary of a king handles highly important and matters every day. The estate manager of a king is managing the largest number of estates and people in the whole kingdom.
Most importantly, if the King can trust you to sleep in the same castle, or even the same bedchamber as he does, he can rely on you to carry out his instructions, and the nobles will recognize you as a trusted representative of the King.
The second factor in the development of royal government is what is known as the curia regis or the King's Council.
As you might often see in medieval and fantasy works, the King tends to be surrounded by not only the officers of his household, but the top lords of the kingdom. This was the King's Council, or the Court.
The King's Council was based on the idea that a feudal King was the ruler of the Kingdom, but that he managed that kingdom with the advice of his tenants-in-chief, or the great lords who received their fiefs directly from the King.
When the King gave out justice, especially to lords, it was nearly obligatory that the King sought the advice and counsel of his lords first. While the decision was still technically the King's alone, it would only be a foolish King who ignored the advice of his Council unless he had a very good reason.
After all, most of the great lords were quite rich, and had armies of their own during this time period. A King who ignored his great lords too often would face rebellion and possible overthrow. So, the "advice" of the council often became much like a command, when the King himself was weak.
In the earlier period, the King would travel not only with his household, but also with some number of members of the nobility to act as a council for him when he needed to render judgements, get advice, and to witness his decisions.
This council or court eventually would become both the legislative and judicial branches of the later government.
In England, the King eventually created King's justices to hear out cases which he could not hear himself due to being too busy or too far away to handle them himself.
In some cases, other courts formed, and in England one of the sitting Courts became the High Court of Parliament, which consisted of the Lords and eventually, Commoners as well.
Today, Parliament is the legislature of the UK and most of its judicial functions are gone, but up until fairly recently, the House of Lords in the UK still did carry out some judicial functions.
Finally, there is something about England itself that was somewhat special.
In 1066 William the Conqueror, who was Duke of Normandy in France, defeated the English King Harold and took over England. William set up many of the structures that we see in England later, especially the fiefs and curia regis.
However, England was not feudal before the arrival of the Normans.
By 1066, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom had divided up the kingdom into the shires. Each shire was run for the king by a leader called an ealdorman or what we'd later call an "earl".
These shires had certain customs and structures which allowed the English king to have a bit more direct control over the kingdom than the King of France would have had over his very feudal realm during the same time period.
When William invaded and then took over, he maintained the shires for the most part, and while he kept the title of "earl", he replaced them at the head of the administration of the shires with "shire reeves" or what we call today, "sheriffs".
A reeve is basically just an officer who was there to make sure that obligations to the King were carried out in each shire or other holding.
It is important to note that being a sheriff was not actually a "police" job. The sheriff would have some "police powers" to do his job, but there was no concept of "police" in this period.
While it was not uncommon for the English kings to appoint nobles as sheriffs, the job itself was that of a King's officer and this allowed the Norman kings to exercise the royal government of the previous Anglo-Saxon kings in addition to the new feudal order.
So, to sum up, the English royal government after William the Conqueror consists of the following parts:
So, what happened in the 14th and 15th Centuries? How did this change?
As you have already seen, the requirements of actually ruling the kingdom would have been increasingly more difficult to manage from one location. The King traveling between his estates and trying to manage this sort of government himself was never going to last. There was a need to not only create more jobs for officials, there was also the need to start putting an increasingly complex government in one place so that it was not always on the road.
Creating these static locations for government meant that you'd now have the need for the King's court and officers to be based in one place that the King himself probably would not have often visited personally.
Consider what happens when a small company becomes a big one. The CEO becomes less and less able to view everything that happens personally and must rely more and more on his or her officers.
For that reason, offices like the Lord High Steward and others stopped being directly part of the King's personal household because the Treasury and other functions no longer followed the King around. The Steward or Chancellor would have to start working from their own offices and they would have to manage the increasing number of people who worked for them.
As soon as those offices stopped being direct members of the King's household, you would also start seeing the King start creating new household jobs to replace those he lost. Today, in the UK, there is a Lord High Chancellor, but the Queen has her own Personal Secretary, who actually does her correspondence, which is the job the Lord Chancellor started out doing hundreds of years ago.
Finally, how were these jobs filled? Many jobs in the English kingdom were filled either by lords who were considered loyal to the king, or members of the King's personal household such as his own knights or the children of past servants.
It's important to realize that favoritism and nepotism was considerably more accepted in this time period. Finding a patron who already held an office to hire you or recommend you for an open position was the most likely prospect for a commoner to join the government.
Critically, the King would often employ those who had been employed in the service of other lords or people who worked for him. Clerics, particularly abbots and bishops, were commonly employed as well.
And like today, clerks trained by universities would be sought out for royal administration. These would also be clerics, as universities started out for the training of clerics in theology and natural philosophy.