Surnames of office

Steward had various meanings, ‘an officer of the royal household (a995) and ‘an official who controls the domestic affairs of a household’ (c1000). After the Conquest it was used as the English equivalent of OFr seneschal, of ‘the steward of a manor’ (1303) and of ’the manager of an estate’ (c1386). The Lord High Steward of Scotland was the first officer of the Scottish king in early times; he had control of the royal household, great administrative powers, and the privilege of leading the army into battle. The office, described as senescellatus Scotiae in a charter of 1158, fell in to the Crown upon the accession of Robert the Steward as Robert II, whence the name of the royal house of Stuart. Both in Scotland and in England the surname derives from the lesser offices. In Scotland the term was used of a magistrate originally appointed by the king to administer crown lands forming a stewartry, but there, as in England, every bishop, earl and manor had a steward who was often a man of birth and position, who had to ride hard, hold courts and supervise the bailiffs and the reeves. The surname is no proof of royal descent as James VI emphasised when he said that all Stewarts were not ‘sib’ to the King. Seneschal, found also as Senchell and in the Norman forms Senescall, Seneca! and Sensickle, was an official in the household of a sovereign or great noble to whom the administration of justice and the entire control of domestic arrangements were entrusted, but was later used in a wider sense, ‘steward’, ‘major-domo’.