Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/64

 56 COUNCIL AND CABINET, 1679-88 January those connected with the plot, the banishment of the duke of York, or the meeting, prorogation, or dissolution of parliament. 1 Whether the two houses should meet depended more on the prospects of a French pension than on the advice of English councillors. It is, therefore, natural to find that while the committee was occasionally consulted as to the king's speech or the answer to be given to an address from the commons, 2 it was apparently never even informed beforehand of the dissolu- tions of July 1679 and January 1681. The minutes of the committee end with 1 February 1681, and as the clerk, William Bridgeman, used the end of the book for other purposes there is no reason to believe that any more were kept. 3 This is not surprising because the position of the com- mittee with respect to the privy council had altered. During the first eighteen months of its existence it is mentioned not infre- quently in the privy council register, and the earlier additions to its membership are made at the meetings of the council, but after 18 August 1680 4 there seems not to be a single reference of any kind to it or to any committee for foreign affairs. Another significant fact is that although Sir Robert Carr, chancel- lor of the duchy, was appointed to ' be of all committees of the board ' on 20 October 1680 5 he never attended the committee of intelligence. The inference is that the committee of intelli- gence had ceased to be regarded as an ordinary standing com- mittee of the council, and was becoming merely a number of councillors selected by the king, not nominated at the council, having no business referred to it as formerly by the council and making no reports to the council. In other words, it occu- pied a position similar in these respects to that of a cabinet. Its members were privy councillors, but it was no formal and 1 It is true there was a debate (without any resolution being agreed on) when the king produced a petition for summoning parliament and stopping the forces marching against the Scotch rebels, but there is nothing to show what was actually discussed (Register of committee, 21 June 1679). It is clear from Temple's account that the committee did not discuss the dissolution of July 1679, and no record of any debate on the prorogation of the newly elected parliament in October 1679 appears in the register. On 4 April 1680 the king informed the committee that he was resolved to prorogue parliament, but there is no mention ^of a debate. In any case the proroga- tion to the following autumn had already been decided. There was, however, a debate on 25 January 1681 on the petition of some peers that parliament should not meet at Oxford. address was read, but the question of the reply to be given was referred to the privy council. 3 Unfortunately the report of the examination of Bridgeman before the com- mittee of the house of lords in 1689 is so vague that no argument can be based on it, but it, perhaps, indirectly confirms this surmise (lords' Journals, xiv. 388). 4 Privy Coun. Reg. Ixix. 72-3. This is the last reference to the committee of intelligence I could find, though I examined the privy council register somewhat hurriedly it is true up to the revolution. 5 Ibid, 127.
 * Register of the committee, 14 and 25 December 1680. In the latter instance the