What does a lady in waiting do?

A lady-in-waiting attends a queen, princess or other high-ranking woman as a companion and aide. Debrett's says she helps the royal with her day-to-day duties and sometimes replies to non-official correspondence and handles diary events. Earlier ladies-in-waiting also dressed royal women and looked after their clothes and valuables, and in 1728 Lady Masham described a bedchamber woman kneeling to pour water over Queen Anne's hands.

Are ladies in waiting paid?

Ladies-in-waiting are not paid in Britain's modern royal household. Hello! magazine reported in 2021 that Elizabeth II's ladies-in-waiting were not paid, and the BBC reported in 2022 that the companions Camilla appointed as Queen Consort receive no salary but have their expenses covered. Under Queen Anne (1702-1714) the posts were salaried: lodgings and 1,000 pounds for a Lady of the Bedchamber, lodgings and 500 pounds for a Woman of the Bedchamber, and 300 pounds for a Maid of Honour.

Do ladies-in-waiting still exist?

Ladies-in-waiting still exist in the British royal family, though the Queen no longer has them under that name. In November 2022 Camilla, then Queen Consort, dropped the title in favour of Queen's companions, who help at public events but do not handle correspondence or administration, and Elizabeth II's former ladies-in-waiting became ladies of the household. Other royal women still appoint them: in January 2024 the Princess Royal named five new extra ladies-in-waiting.

What was the Bedchamber Crisis?

In May 1839 Sir Robert Peel, sent for to form a government, asked Queen Victoria to remove some of her Ladies of the Bedchamber, several of whom were close relatives of the outgoing Whig ministers. She refused, Peel declined to form a government, and Lord Melbourne's Whigs returned to office. Two years later the two sides arranged for three ladies to resign on their own, so that Peel did not have to insist.

Is the maid of honor at a wedding named after the royal job?

The wedding maid of honor is named after the court post, which came first. Etymonline dates maid of honor to the 1580s, meaning an unmarried lady of noble birth who attends a queen or princess, and records the meaning principal bridesmaid only from 1895.

What Is a Lady in Waiting? Once Salaried, Once Political

On the morning of 9 May 1839, Sir Robert Peel, sent for to form a government after Lord Melbourne resigned, went over his ministers and a few household posts with Queen Victoria, then 19. Then, by her account in her journal, he said: “Now, about the Ladies.”

He asked whether she meant to keep all of them. “‘All,’ I said,” she wrote. When he objected that they “were the wives of the opponents of the Government”, she told him she never talked politics with them.

The next day she refused in writing to remove “the Ladies of her Bedchamber”. Peel declined to form a government, Melbourne’s Whigs went back into office, and the row over the queen’s attendants is now known as the Bedchamber Crisis.

What is a lady in waiting?

A lady-in-waiting is a woman who attends a queen, a princess or another high-ranking woman as a companion and personal aide, helping with her day-to-day duties and sometimes her letters and diary. “In waiting” means on duty: waiting has meant “service, attendance” since the late 14th century.

Debrett’s describes her as “usually the wife or daughter of a peer but could just be a close friend or cousin of the royal she is attending.”

The job once involved more than company. Keeping monarchs, noblewomen and their entourages properly dressed was “a key duty of medieval ladies-in-waiting,” writes the Clemson historian Caroline Dunn. Elena de Sackville, who appears regularly in the records of Edward III’s queen, Philippa of Hainault, was at one point “in charge of the queen’s crowns”.

The ranks ran from duchess to dresser

Victoria ranked her ladies herself that morning. When Peel said he meant only “the Mistress of the Robes and the Ladies of the Bedchamber”, not all the Bedchamber Women and Maids of Honour, she answered that “they were of more consequence than the others”.

The Mistress of the Robes, traditionally the senior woman in the royal household, has almost always been a duchess, and Victoria’s, from her accession until 1841, was the Duchess of Sutherland. Under Queen Anne (1702-1714), the bedchamber ranks were salaried, according to the court-officer lists published on British History Online:

Office under Queen Anne	Who held it	Pay
Lady of the Bedchamber	Titled women; the 11 appointed in 1702 included two duchesses and three countesses	Lodgings and 1,000 pounds
Woman of the Bedchamber	Gentlewomen “often described as dressers”	Lodgings and 500 pounds
Maid of Honour	Six, appointed by royal warrant	300 pounds

The last title was later borrowed for weddings. Etymonline dates maid of honor in its court sense to the 1580s, and as “principal bridesmaid” to 1895.

Lady Masham’s job description, dictated in 1728

In May 1728 John Arbuthnot sent Henrietta Howard, a bedchamber woman to Queen Caroline, a description of the job “dictated by” Lady Masham, who had held the same post under Queen Anne. The letter appears in an 1824 edition of Howard’s correspondence edited by John Wilson Croker.

The bedchamber woman “came in to waiting before the queen’s prayers”. If the queen changed her shift at noon, the woman handed it to the lady of the bedchamber “without any ceremony, and the lady put it on.”

At hand-washing she set the basin before the queen, knelt and poured the water, “the bedchamber-lady only looking on.” She pulled on the queen’s gloves when the queen could not, and “brought the chocolate, and gave it without kneeling.”

A shift was, in Etymonline’s gloss, a “body garment, underclothing”, the job the T-shirt started out doing. Croker added in a note that Napoleon, setting up his imperial court, got the same kind of briefing from Madame Campan, who had been a bedchamber woman to Marie Antoinette.

Under Queen Anne a lady of the bedchamber was paid twice what a bedchamber woman got, yet at the queen’s dressing, by Lady Masham’s account, taking the shift and sometimes the fan “was all that the bedchamber-lady did about the queen at her dressing.”

Closeness to the queen made the job political

Croker’s note on Lady Masham credits her with more than handing over shifts. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, had placed her beside Queen Anne as a bedchamber woman, and after Sarah lost the queen’s affection, he wrote, “by her means the Tory administration of 1710 was formed.”

Peel feared the same closeness working against him in 1839, because several of Victoria’s ladies were, in his words to the Commons, “immediate relatives of our political opponents”. He would start with a minority in the House of Commons, and his colleagues, Victoria recorded, “agreed unanimously they could not go on” without some sign of her confidence, which keeping all her ladies would not give.

Her written refusal was worded by Melbourne’s outgoing Cabinet, which sat until 1 a.m. on 10 May to settle it. She wrote it out before going to bed and sent it at nine that morning.

Both sides worked to avoid a repeat. In May 1841, with a change of government at hand, Prince Albert’s private secretary, George Anson, told Peel the queen might “procure the resignation of any Ladies” he objected to if he did not insist on his principle, and named three she might give up, among them the Mistress of the Robes. At her first meeting with Peel as incoming premier, on 30 August 1841, she “mentioned the three Ladies’ resignation”.

The title outlived the salary

Hello! magazine reported in 2021 that Elizabeth II’s ladies-in-waiting “are not paid for the service”.

In November 2022 Camilla, then Queen Consort, dropped the old title for her own assistants and named them “Queen’s companions”, an honorary role that, the BBC reported, “will not involve correspondence or administration”. The companions “don’t receive a salary but their expenses will be covered.” The late Queen’s ladies became “ladies of the household”, helping the King host events at Buckingham Palace.

Other royal women kept the old title. According to the Court Circular for 31 January 2024, the Princess Royal appointed five new extra ladies-in-waiting as four of her ladies-in-waiting retired.

Victoria kept every one of her ladies in 1839. Sixty years later, after praising Peel to her private secretary, Sir Arthur Bigge, she said: “I was very young then, and perhaps I should act differently if it was all to be done again.” Strictly FYI.