The accounts of the Lord Chamberlain’s department identify William Hester as the first pest controller, who was provided with a ‘crimson cloth coate lined with searge and guarded with black velvet’.

A new coat seems to have been provided each year and special liveries were made for mourning. Unfortunately the accounts do not mention any expenses for equipment so we don’t know how Hester and his successors went about their work.

Payment was made for the embroidery of Hester’s coat on the ‘back and breast with our and dearest consort the queens letters and Crownes, and … on the arms with Ratts and wheatsheaves’.