Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/351

1922 THE COUNCIL UNDER THE TUDORS 343 porary authority says he had no intimate advisers, and a later limits them to five, Morton, Foxe, Lovell, Bray, and Daubeney. 1 He retained, however, a large number of counsellors, whose functions were hardly more definite than those of a privy councillor to-day. No list of them is known to exist, but from the Calendar of Patent Rolls 2 and other sources it would appear that the number was not at any time after the first few months of the reign far short of a hundred, and that it was possibly even greater. It included all sorts and conditions of men, most of them without political influence or historical importance. Indeed, to judge by the Calendar of Patent Rolls the title ' councillor ' or ' counsellor ' seems as a rule to have been applied in Henry VII's reign to men who held no high office, political, legal, or ecclesiastical. Minute research may some day tell us more about Master Edmund Chaderton, Master Geoffrey Symeon, Master John Wallys, and their like than we know from their occasional mention as counsellors to the king in the records of Henry VII's reign. 3 It is clear that the word ' counsellors ' describes his civil service rather than his cabinet, and it is certain that these counsellors did not constitute a council, great or small. 4 Yet there was a council as well as counsellors, and this council had its clerk and even its president before the end of the reign ; and we naturally turn to those offices to see if their records throw any light on the history of the council of which they were presidents and clerks. The clerk's story is a comparatively simple matter. Professor Baldwin has given a list of clerks which covers the greater part of the fifteenth century. 5 The nominal clerk of the council was usually the senior clerk or secundarius in the office of the privy seal ; but his functions as clerk of the council were exercised by an associate or deputy clerk who received 40 marks a year, while the secundarius had 40. Thus on 23 July 1461 we find Edward IV reappointing Richard Langport as associate with Thomas Kent, who had been clerk of the council since 1443 6 and was subsequently promoted 1 Spanish Calendar, i. 439 ; William Paulet, marquis of Winchester, to Queen Elizabeth, Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd ser., iii. 370. 2 The difficulty of precision in the matter is greatly enhanced by the inadequacy of the index. In the volume for 1485-94 there are five references under ' councillor ', in that for 1495-1509 there are none, whereas there arc nearly a hundred in the text. 3 Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1495-1509, pp. 268, 271, 373, 380 ; Paston Letters, iii. 328. 4 I have not found a single instance of the use of the phrase ' privy council ' in Henry VII's reign. 5 King's Council, pp. 362 seqq. ; to it should be added the name of Thomas Frank, who was apparently acting as elerk of the council in 1438 (Bentley, Excerpta Historica, p. 151). 6 He had probably acted as clerk of the council for some time before this, for on 22 November 1443 he was appointed clerk of the council and secondary to the privy