Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/356

 348 THE COUNCIL UNDER THE TUDORS July marks for which he sued ; ' so by the space of six yeres and an half I servyd the King not in the Sterre Chamber onely, but in some things pertayning to the Clerk of the Crowne, some to the Secretaries, and other travailes. . . without fee,' and ' finally after the dethe of my sayde Lorde, there was a former patente founde of the sayde Office, and myn was callid in and cancelled, and I discharged without any recompence, rewarded only with the order of Knighthode '. Elyot's memory was not quite accurate ; after Wolsey's disgrace but before his death the clerk- ship of the council was, on 20 April 1530, granted to Richard and Thomas Eden in survivorship, on the surrender of Richard Eden's patent made out to him alone on 20 October 1512. l Elyot's reference to six and a half years' service in the star chamber would date his clerkship back to 1524 and link his clerkship up with Lee's, and that may be correct enough. The grant to Richard and Thomas Eden makes no reference to him or to Lee, and it seems clear that both had been intruded into office in defiance of Eden's original patent and by a high- handed act of Wolsey's which was treated as null and void after his fall. Richard Eden had been archdeacon of Middlesex since 1516 and presumably retained his patent until his death before the end of 1551, 2 when Thomas, apparently his nephew, succeeded him, surviving until 1567. This brings us to a date long after the council had been differentiated into the privy council and the council in the star chamber, with their distinctive clerks. But on 5 October 1532 we have a grant to (Sir) Thomas Pope of the offices not only of clerk of the crown in chancery, but also of ' clerk of the writs and processes before the King and Council in the Star Chamber at Westminster ' ; 3 and on 23 December 1534 William Smyth is associated with him, on Pope's surrender of his sole patent, as ' clerks of the Star Chamber '. 4 This, however, is a misleading abbreviation of the former grant, which itself was not the clerkship of the star chamber, but one of those subordinate offices therein, the multiplication of which was later on lamented by Hudson. 5 So, too, we must distinguish the keepership or ushership of the star chamber which was held successively by Sir Thomas Palmer and Percival Harte 6 1 Letters and Papers, iv. 6490 [1]. 2 Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 330 ; Letters and Papers, xiv. ii. 435 [27], xvn. 556 [2], xxi. ii. 452. 3 Letters and Papers, v. 1499 [8]. 4 Ibid. vii. 1601 [33]. 5 Star Chamber in Hargrave, Collectanea Juridica, ii. 37. In Harl. MS. 6448 there is mention of two copying clerks as well as a keeper of the records of the star chamber (Scofield, p. 63 n.). 6 Litters and Papers, iv. 3087 ; vi. 196 [20].