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 1921 IN 1562/3 AND 1566 501 four councillors are appointed to administer the Government. Besides this, Parliament is notified that they must meet within thirty days (after the demise), and that not only are the peers and bishops, who are fixed members, to be summoned, but also the same deputies from the towns that have sat in the preceding Parliament. 1 There is no corroboration of these reports to be found in the Lords' Journals ; and indeed it is not surprising after their failure to record the petitioning of the queen : but that Quadra was substantially correct, at any rate in regard to the second act that he mentions, is proved by the survival in the State Papers of a clause, drafted by Cecil and endorsed, * A clawse to have bene inserted in an act ment for the succession but not passed '. The opening and purport of it are as follows : ' And because it shall be very necessary beside the ordynary govern- ment of the realme by the pryncipall or ordynary officers above mentioned having authorite to conserv peace within the realme that there shuld remayne a Counsell of estate usually named a privee Counsell to consider and direct the publick affayres of the realme. ... Be it enacted. . . that if the Q. Maiesty. . . shuld decess. . . without issew of hir body or before the tyme that any person shall be declared by authorite of parlement to be the leefull heyre or successor to hir Maiesty. . .' the privy councillors at the time of her death shall continue as councillors along with such others as the queen shall name in her last will. All these shall continue as the council of estate till the day ' by proclamation to be made by authorite of parlement it shall be declared to whom of right the Imperiall crowne. . . ought to belong '. The council shall sit where it sat under Elizabeth and a quorum of ten, including certain specified officers, shall be necessary to transact business. 2 There is no limitation of the council to twenty-four as in Quadra's report. Nothing came of the act. It ' encountered so many difficulties that they dropped the proposal ', wrote Quadra, according to whom the chief obstacle was the alarm of some of the pretenders who heard that Cecil contemplated including them amongst the twenty-four councillors, which would oblige them * to come here and shut themselves up ', where they would not be safe as on their country estates : ' they would be pre- cluded from working in their own interests and could not justly be arbitrators on their own claims.' 3 It is surprising that the 1 Spanish CaL. Eliz., i. 315, 316-17. 2 State Papers, Dom., Eliz., xxviii, no. 20. In this connexion it is of interest to compare a draft proviso in the State Papers (Dom., Eliz., clxxvi, no. 22) which was meant to have been added to the act for the queen's safety in 1584/5 (1584/5, cap. i. Statutes of the Realm, iv. i. 704-5). It provides for the constitution of a grand council in the event of Elizabeth's death by violence ; for the meeting of parliament and of convocation, both as last constituted ; for the settlement of the succession by parlia- ment; and for the control of finance by a joint committee of both houses of parliament. 3 Spanish Col., Eliz., i. 321.