Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/363

 1922 THE COUNCIL UNDER THE TUDORS 355 the journals. Arundel is simply accorded his place as an earl, while Paget as lord privy seal recovers the old precedence after the chancellor and treasurer, which had existed before the act of 1529. Once only in Elizabeth's reign, on 28 January 1559, is Arundel put in the place, but without the title, of lord president. Elizabeth made him lord steward, but the office of lord president disappeared with many others in Elizabeth's anti-waste campaign, and was not revived until James I conferred it in 1621 on Viscount Mandevile ; it lapsed again from 1631 to 1679. The references to a lord president late in Elizabeth's reign are either to the presidents of the north and of Wales or to the lord president of the garter. 1 This chequered history of the presidency of the council is capable of a simple explanation. The lord president was clearly intended to preside over the council attendant upon the king, as the chancellor presided over the council in the star chamber, and the lord privy seal over the council of requests. But the president of the council attendant upon the king was the king himself ; there was no room under personal monarchy for a deputy in the royal presence, and the only time when the office had real importance was when Northumberland was ruling in place of Edward VI. There was room for presidents in the councils of Wales, in the north, and in the west, as there was for deputies in Ireland and at Calais. There was room also for actual if not nominal presidents of the council in the star chamber and the white hall. There might have been room, as there certainly would have been need, for a president of the council attendant, had that king's council attempted to do all the work which gradually devolved upon its several branches. That was wisely not the plan adopted. Instead, the council attendant confined itself more and more to matters of state, and became more and more a privy council. Henry VIII appears for a moment after Wolsey's fall to have felt the need of a successor and to have attempted to give that successor an official position. He thought the better of it, and, in spite of Suffolk's title, became the president of his own council. The presidency is therefore a will o' the wisp throwing but a fitful and misleading light upon the council. Some of the obscurity is due to the fact that it was an office conferred by word of mouth and not by patent or other formal document (it had not even a seal of office to be transferred) ; but more is due to the vagueness or non-existence of any specific functions. Whatever the president did, he did not preside over the council, still less take the lead in framing its policy ; and the office was never, save in Northumberland's time, held by 1 Of. Wilbraham, Journal, Camden Soc., pp. 15-16 ; Hawarde, Star Chamber Cases, p. 118. It was one of the charges against Wolsey that ' he hath attempted to be President of the Garter ' (Letters and Papers, iv. 2555). Aa2