Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/361

 1922 THE COUNCIL UNDER THE TUDORS 353 that office in 1502. Neither, however, gives any authority ; and ' my lord president ' might conceivably have been Surrey, who was acting very much like a president of the council in the north, although that designation had not yet been recognized. 1 In 1495-6 Caesar's list gives simply Dominus Praesidens Con- silii Regii, whom Leadam identifies with Foxe ; but in 1499- 1500 Caesar gives R. Fitzjames, bishop of Rochester, as presidens regii consilii. 2 Here we are on apparently firmer ground : for we have a definite record of a session of the court of requests on 14 March 1502 in which Fitzjames is styled presidens, 3 and on 15 April 1506 Henry VII is made to describe him as ' councillor and president of our council '. 4 But neither reference is free from ambiguity, and the only conclusive evidence of a president of the king's council in Henry VII's reign is an apparently unique reference in the Calendar of Patent Rolls to ' Edmund Dudeley, esquire, president of the council '. 5 The case becomes even stranger in the reign of Henry VIII. There is, indeed, one reference 6 to the bishop of Lincoln as president of the council, but this is to Bishop William Smith who was president of the council in Wales from 1501 to 1512. 7 Apart from this, no reference to such a person or such an office has been found before 1529. It does not occur in the elaborate ordinances for the household and the council drawn up at Eltham in 1526, where every kind of office is detailed. It is absent alike from chronicles and literature as from official records and correspondence. Then suddenly the ' Reformation ' parliament, which met on 3 November 1529, passes an act 8 which after remarking in a tone of regret and surprise that in the ' good and profitable estatute ' of 3 Henry VII, c. 1, 'the presydent of the Kinges most honourable council for the time being attending upon his. . . person ys omytted and not namyd ', proceeds to associate him with the chancellor, treasurer, and lord privy seal in their collective statutory functions. Even so there was no lord president as yet ; but on 6 February 1530 Chapuys writes that Suffolk had been appointed president of the council ' with the same authority as the chancellor ' for the purpose of assisting 1 Cf. R. R. Reid, Council in the North, pp. 77-84 ; in the instructions to the earl of Lincoln, Richard Ill's nephew, and ' the said counselle ', Lincoln is nowhere called president (Gairdner, Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII, i. 56-8) 4 Venetian Calendar, i, no. 876. This appears definite enough, but it is a transla- tion from the Italian, which is not given ; and in the Italian Relation (Oamden Soc.), p. 53, ' President of the Council ' is adventurously given as the translation of il Senatorio. Nor in the session of 14 March 1502 is Fitzjames described as presidens consilii regii, and one of Caesar's objects was to prove that the president of the court of requests was president of the king's council. 5 1495-1509, p. 471. Letters and Papers of Hvnry VIII, ii. 1447-8. 7 Skeel, Council of Wales, pp. 30-2. * 21 Henry VIII, c. 20. VOL. XXXVH. NO. CXLVII. A a
 * Leadam, Requests, pp. cvii-cviii. 3 Ibid. p. xviii.