Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/347

 1922 THE COUNCIL UNDER THE TUDORS 339 difference between ' council ' and ' counsel ' in the sixteenth century as it is from that between consilium and concilium in the middle ages. Paget, the first clerk of the privy council, spells his council almost uniformly ' counseill ' ; his deputy, Sir John Mason, spells it ' cownsell ', with just an occasional recourse to ' cowncel '. 1 We have since differentiated ' king's council ' from ' king's counsel ', but no such specification was made in the sixteenth century ; and it is between countless instances, in which ' council ' and ' counsel ' may be indifferently used, that we have somehow or other to draw a line to distinguish what was done by K.C.'s from what was done by the king's council. For students of the Tudor period the problem would not have been more difficult had the English language, like the French, derived one word instead of two from the medieval use of consilium. The truth of course is that these modern categories did not then exist, or at least had not been fixed ; and inasmuch as they were not created but grew, we have to trace beginnings which are almost imperceptible. A more material, though not a less important difficulty arises from the original paucity or later dispersion of the council's records. The council was from the first an inner ring of the curia, and inner rings are not addicted to public diplomacy. Parliament and the courts of common law had their rolls, but the council kept none. Some of its records were filed, but many were not, and the files themselves were apt to disappear. Even when the council sat publicly in the star chamber and came to regard itself as the highest court in the realm, its members occasionally argued that, inasmuch as no writ of error could lie against it and its records could not be called for, there was no need to keep any records at all. 2 The clerk, indeed, kept a calendar of orders and decrees, but that was apparently a private venture, and the volumes have not been seen since 1719. 3 As for commissions, declared Richard Oseley, ' an ancient clerk of the council in the court of White Hall ', when examined on the point by Burghley, 4 ' I never heard or knew of any but from the Prince's mouth only '. The student has often to deduce the position and functions of a particular official, not from any record of his appoint- ment or statement of his duties, but from the salary he was paid. 1 Nicolas, Proc. of the Priv. Coun. vii. 248 et passim. 2 Hudson, Treatise of the Court of Star Chamber, in Hargrave, Collectanea Juridica, 1792, ii. 6. Hudson's treatise is said to have been written for Bishop John Williams and presented to him on his appointment as lord keeper in 1621 (Lansd. MS. 639, p. 196). Some versions (for which see Archaeologia, xxv. 349) have later additions. 3 This was stated in the report of the lords' committee (The State of the Publick Records, 1723, p. 41). Strype, however, refers to their being extant in his Cranmer , p. 81 ; cf. Harl. MS. 425, fo. 15 ; Archaeologia, xxv. 382 ; Scofield, Star Chamber, P iv )- 4 Leadam, Court of Requests (Selden Soc.), p. Ixxxiii. Z2