Page:The Public Records and The Constitution.djvu/25

 although the two sit together when Parliament is sitting, we see that the Council is now distinguished from the Parliament.

The definite separation of the Council from Parliament, which occurred in the reign of Richard II, was a great event in the history of the constitution, and left a corresponding mark upon the Public Records. In earlier times the proceedings of the Council, when it was not the Council in Parliament (that is to say, if it sat when Parliament was not sitting), found their way, if of a public nature, to the rolls of the Chancery, or of the King's Bench, or both. When the Council sat independently, and had a separate existence even during a Session of Parliament, its proceedings were recorded in separate Registers.

The earliest extant proceedings of this separate Council, which, in some unexplained manner, fell into private hands, were collected by Sir Robert Cotton and others, and so found their way to the British Museum, and not to the Privy Council Office, the State Paper Office, or the Public Record Office.

The proceedings of later date—from the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII downwards—are, or were, for the most part, at the Privy Council Office, and are technically Public Records under the charge and superintendence of the Master of the Rolls.

The Council was at one time very closely associated with the Court of Star Chamber, which comes into prominence in the reign of Henry VII; and its general powers were somewhat curtailed in the reign of Charles I, by the Act by which the Court of Star Chamber was abolished. Its legal jurisdiction was, however, destined to be of a very far-reaching character in later times, as it became the highest Court of Appeal for Colonial, as well as some other matters, while Parliament—or the