Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/353

1922 been calendared when he wrote, was unable to date the 'court' of requests earlier than 1493; but it is clear that whatever credit attaches to the institution of that court must be transferred from Henry VII to Richard III, if not to Edward IV; for while the definite appointment of a special clerk of the council of requests dates from Richard's reign, it seems obvious from the terms of Harington's patent that he had long been discharging the functions which were for the first time formally assigned to him in December 1483. Harington was authorized by his grant to exercise his office by deputy, but no contemporary reference to a deputy or successor has yet been found in Henry VII's reign. It is almost certain, however, that the office was continued. Richard Oseley, who according to Lambard was clerk of requests for forty-six years and was examined by Burghley in 1573 on its history and procedure, declared that, on the testimony of his uncle and predecessor [Richard Turner?], who, again according to Lambard, spent sixty-six years in the service of that 'court', William Lacy had been clerk 'of the same counsell in King R. 3 his tyme, and that he continued about 2 or 3 yeares in H. 7th tyme … and that after his decease Mr. Robert Sampson (who was my uncles Mʳ) was a clarke there'. The phrase 'the same counsell' is symptomatic of the tendency at the end of the sixteenth century of each of the offshoots of the council to claim identity with the king's council of the later middle ages. But there is enough corroborative evidence to substantiate the general truth of Oseley's contention that the council of requests goes back at least to Richard Ill's reign.

There appears, however, to have been only one person at a time in Henry VII's reign who was generally known and officially described as the clerk of the council. One only is mentioned in the references to Baldeswell and Rydon and in the acts of 1495 and 1504 exempting the clerk of the council from military service; and he is paid the regular fee of forty marks. But with the accession of Henry VIII the greater abundance of edited and indexed records puts an end to this simplicity and reveals a bewildering chaos of clerks which is only cleared up with the gradual differentiation of the council, the privy council, the council in the star chamber, the council in the white hall, and elsewhere. Even in Henry VII's reign there had been a