Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/357

1922 THE COUNCIL UNDER THE TUDOE8 349 and the stewardship which was held by Richard Browne in the later years of Henry VIII. 1 Meanwhile, the junior clerkship of the council with its salary of '20 had, while the senior clerkship remained in the star cham- ber, been developing into a clerkship of what was to become the privy council. One of the difficulties is that in the Letters and Papers and apparently even in original grants or their enrol- ment a clerk is called clerk of the council when he is really clerk of the council at Calais, in Wales and its marches, or in the north. For instance, on 16 December 1527 Thomas Derby is mentioned as receiving in survivorship with John Almain the clerkship of the council vacated by the death of Adrian Dyer. 2 Now Dyer had been clerk of the council at Calais, and this was Derby's office. In March 1528 he was thought to have obtained the clerkship of the council in the north which was given to John Uvedale. Similarly in April 1527 Thomas Hakluyt is styled clerk of the king's council 3 when commissioned to ' order all things belonging to the office of clerk of the king's council in the principality . . . lately held by Henry Knyght ', whom Hakluyt succeeded as clerk of the council in Wales and its marches. The truth is that the general characteristic of clerk of the council was still regarded as being more important and essential than his specialized or localized function ; there was by this time a body of clerks of the council, mostly holding office by patent and for life, and the particular place or council where they acted as clerks was an accidental and transitory detail. Not only were they transferred from one council, or committee of the council, to another, but they were frequently employed in diplomatic and other missions requiring prolonged absence from the council to which they were nominally attached. Nor was the specialized function usually indicated in references to these clerks of the council. Thomas Eden, who was certainly clerk of the council in the star chamber, is as late as 1539 simply styled clerk of the council in a grant of monastic land ; 4 and the precise functions of Thomas Bedell and Richard Lay ton, who examined Bishop Fisher in the Tower on 12 June 1535 and are in the official report of that examination called 1 Ibid. xvm. ii. 124, xix. i. 243, xx. i. 271. Unless the 'Adam, clerk of the star chamber ' in Nicolas, Proc. vii. 278, contains a misprint for Eden, he must have been one of these underlings ; I have found no other reference to such a clerk. 8 Letters and Papers, iv. 3747 [16], 4042. The clerkship of the council at Calais had been held successively by W. Nanfan. Bryan Tuke, Roger Lathbury, and Dyer ; later clerks were Armagil Wade and Seth Traves (Letters and Papers, in. 829, 3255, xx. i. 624 [8], xxi. ii. 332 [5]). 3 Ibid. iv. 3087, p. 1385 b ; cf . xni. ii. 333. Hakiuyt died in 1545 and was succeeded by Julian Evans (ibid. xxi. i. 149 [4]). 4 Ibid. xiv. i. 651 [24]. He was, however, only associate with his uncle, Richard.