The King's Wardrobe, together with the Chamber, made up the personal part of medieval English government known as the King's household. Originally the room where the king's clothes, armour, and treasure were stored, the term was expanded to describe both its contents and the department of clerks who ran it. Early in the reign of Henry III the Wardrobe emerged out of the fragmentation of the Curia Regis to become the chief administrative and accounting department of the Household. The Wardrobe received regular block grants from the Exchequer for much of its history; in addition, however, the wardrobe treasure of gold and jewels enabled the king to make secret and rapid payments to fund his diplomatic and military operations, and for a time, in the 13th-14th centuries, it eclipsed the Exchequer as the chief spending department of central government.
Remains of the 12th-century Wardrobe Tower at the Tower of London
The Will of King Eadred, AD 951–955, with bequests to hræglðene (robe-keepers) (15th-century copy, British Library Add MS 82931, ff. 22r–23r)
Wardrobe Place in the City of London, built on the site of the Great Wardrobe
The Jewel Tower housed a branch of the King's Privy Wardrobe at the Palace of Westminster
Eadred was King of the English from 26 May 946 until his death. He was the younger son of Edward the Elder and his third wife Eadgifu, and a grandson of Alfred the Great. His elder brother, Edmund, was killed trying to protect his seneschal from an attack by a violent thief. Edmund's two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, were then young children, so Eadred became king. He suffered from ill health in the last years of his life and he died at the age of a little over thirty, having never married. He was succeeded successively by his nephews, Eadwig and Edgar.
Eadred in the early fourteenth-century Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England
Silver penny, obverse, inscribed 'EADRED REX'
HT1 style reverse inscribed 'INGELGAR M'
Portrait of Dunstan kneeling before Christ, probably by Dunstan himself