The Hostel of The Invalides by Thomas Povey (1682) (Lambeth Palace Library MS.745). II.

Having given you an account of the prime officers of this House, who take care both of the military and civil, and afterwards of those officers whose jurisdiction is purely military, upon which occasion my pen slipt' upon some particulars relating to that discipline observed in the House, I think I may now inform you of the Oeconomers or civil officers, I mean such as are intrusted under the Director General and the 4 Sub-directors, with the management of the civil affairs or oeconomy of the House, of which the chiefest occurring to me is. The Treasurer of the House, now Mounsieur de Vilromar, one of the 4 Treasurers of the Extraordinary of War. This gentleman, who both of his own stock and his other employments hath a plentiful fortune, neither lives in the House nor lives by it. He is, I mean, not a charge to it. His Office is to pay, and that [39] without the least fee, all the orders for money drawn upon him by the foresaid sub-directors, Mounsieur de Louvois, who is otherwise employed in weightier affairs being forced, and perhaps rather willing, to leave it to them. Naturally after the Treasurer should follow immediately the Comptroller, but the Comptroller of this House, whom you may better compare to a Clerk of the Kitchen, (being he exercises that function both to the kitchen, buttery, pantry, granery, cellars, linen clothes, and in short to all other particular offices of the House) is nothing near of that stamp as the Treasurer, or 4 Directors, by whom he is put in, and to whom every Saturday at their meeting, he must bring his bills, for all the expenses of that week last past, both in diet and otherwise, as also an account of all the clothes, shoes, linen, and other things, either received in or delivered out, all that week, vizt. from Saturday to Saturday [40] which the Directors do then examine and register. He takes care that the allowed quantity and quality of bread, wine and meat be brought in by the Baker, Butler, and Butcher, into the pantry, buttery, and kitchen, delivers out to the Baker the com, and to the Wash House all the foul linen, which he receives back clean, and to be short, performs all the duty of a good and faithful Maistre de Hostel, or Steward, tho' he is qualified with the name of Comptroller. He hath the character given him by most people and even the very soldiers, of a most faithful, worthy, disinterested and meek man. He is in the world a man of no great rank, or fortune, which they say of late he hath augmented more by his industry, than by by-ways ordinary enough to stewards. His salary from the House is 2000 livres a year, besides diet and lodgings for him and his family. His wife (as most women in France use to be) is no small help to him. She is active both in spirit and body, tho' she [41] is famous for being one of the fattest and biggest women that can be seen.