Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/354

346 THE COUNCIL UNDER THE TUDORS July clerk of the council in Ireland, a clerk of the council at Calais, and a clerk of the council of Wales and its marches ; but they are distinct enough to cause no confusion and to throw little light on the organization of the council at Westminster or the council attendant upon the king's person. Rydon survived into Henry VIII's reign and by some of his last acts helped to establish one disputed fact, that the clerk of the king's council was the clerk of the king's council in the star chamber. On 20 May 1509, at the instance of the abbot and convent of Shrewsbury, a writ of certiorari was directed to him as consilii regii clericus to certify the tenor of a judgement given by Warham and others of the council on 8 July 1508 in a suit between the monastery and commonalty of Shrewsbury. Ten days later Rydon certified that on searching ' the books of the acts of the council ' he had found the decree which he recites. 1 The case is properly included by Leadam in his Select Cases from the Star Chamber. 2 Similarly on 27 February 1506, after searching ' the acts and decrees of the king's council in the star chamber at Westminster ', he had as clerk of the council certified a decree made in a case between Gloucester, Coventry, Bewdley, and Tewkesbury. 3 There is a third exemplification of a judge- ment given by the king and council in the ' sterre chamber ' on 26 November 1503 ; 4 and when on 17 October 1509 John Meautis had succeeded Rydon, deceased, as clerk of the council, he certified in the same way a decree of the council in the star chamber relating to a dispute about commons between the warden and canons of Ottery St. Mary and their customary tenants. 5 The clerk of the star chamber remained in fact the senior clerk of the council so long as the star chamber survived, receiving to the end of the Tudor period, at least, the same forty marks salary which had been paid to John Prophet, clerk of the council in the reign of Richard II. 6 But the implications of this identity between the clerk of the council and the clerk of the star chamber must be left to a later stage of our investigation. The clerk of the council in the star chamber is not the only clerk of th6 council mentioned in 1509. William Belhouse is 1 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, new ed., I. i. 132 [43]. 2 i. 178-88; my Henry VII, iii. 201-10. 3 Calendar of Patent Bolls, 1495-1509, pp. 461-2. 4 Ibid. pp. 388-9 ; cf. Scofield, Star Chamber, pp. 22-3 ; Leadam, Star Chamber, ii. 285-7. 5 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, new ed., I. i. 257 [93]. 6 Baldwin, p. 364. Both Hudson and Tate in their accounts of the star chamber (Hargrave, Collect. Juridica, ii. 41 ; Hearne, Curious Discmirses, 1771, ii. 305) give 26 13s. 4d. ( =40 marks) as the salary of the ' clerk of the court entitled chief clerk of the council of state ' ; cf. Scofield, p. 62. The same fee is given in the account of ' Queen Elizabeth's Annual Expence ' printed in Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, I. ii, and in the Soc. of Antiquaries' Royal Households, 1790, p. 250. The account is there dated 1578, but it cannot be earlier than 1590.