Privy Council

The personnel of the council was recruited from clergy, peer age and commons. The baronage, as we saw, had failed in the middle ages to secure exclusive membership. The Tudors pre ferred to employ men of low degree who would be wholly de pendent on their master, and could be rewarded inexpensively by promotion in the Church, to the judicial bench or to other State offices, where their dignities would not become hereditary. In deed, so professional did the council become that even the peers on it were members by virtue of office rather than of birth. The ecclesiastics also, who in the middle ages had predominated in the great offices of State, now declined in numbers and influence, partly because they had no longer a monopoly of education, and partly because, since the Reformation, they had ceased to be officials of an international hierarchy, semi-independent of sec ular control. Thus the majority of the council came to consist of lay commoners, and the proportion may fairly be illustrated from the council of Edward VI., which consisted of 17 com moners, cwo prelates and seven peers, only one of whom held a peerage of more than 12 years' creation.

Members.

Both in the middle ages and for several centuries later contemporary opinion favoured 20 as about the ideal total of conciliar membership. But seldom did practice conform with theory. When the privy councillor register begins, in 154o, we do, indeed, find 19 members, but by Henry VIII.'s death there were 29. In Edward's reign the record was 40, in Mary's 44, and, although Elizabeth reduced the numbers to between a dozen and a score, the Stuarts, as usual, were less successful. By 1623 the total had increased to 35, and Charles L's council aver aged at about the same figure. The nucleus of principal offi cers, if a rough generalization be permitted, comprised the arch bishop of Canterbury, the lord chancellor, the lord treasurer, the lord president (when there was one), the lord privy seal, the lord admiral, the lord steward, the lord chamberlain, the two secre taries of State, the chancellor of the Exchequer, the treasurer and the comptroller of the king's household, and the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. At the Restoration the problem of num bers became even more acute. Gen. Monk, we are told, presented Charles with a paper containing "the names of at least three score and ten persons, who were thought fittest to be made privy coun sellors." Charles had also to remember the survival of his father's council and his own advisers, whom he had brought with him from beyond the seas. All things considered, it is not surprising that, though he managed to begin with only 28, the total had reached 47 by 1679. Temple's abortive attempt at conciliar reform temporarily reduced the figure to 33, but by i688 it was back again at 48, by '707 it had reached 6o and, by 1723, 67.

The Pre-eminence of the Cabinet.

In proportion as the numbers of the privy council rose, so did its powers decline. Even in Tudor times the increasing membership and the volume of work had led to the institution of committees, and already, under the early Stuarts, one of these committees, out of which was to develop the cabinet, was beginning to usurp the functions of the council. (For the development and extent of this usurpation see CABINET.) Unpopular as this tendency was, it could not be checked. The petition of Lords and Commons in 1642 "that matters of State proper for the privy council might be debated and concluded there" is only one instance of many unavailing protests. Charles II., after his restoration, carried caballing on

official and unofficial committees beyond the limits of the nation's endurance, and was at last, in 1679, forced to submit to the first serious attempt to restore the powers of the council. Sir William Temple was the reputed father of the scheme, but it seems that the king played a, for him, not unusual part in the begetting of it. The reformed council was to consist of 15 "who shall be privy councellours by their places" and of 15 others representing the various sections of parliamentary opinion, plus princes of the blood, a lord president, and a secretary for Scotland when in England-33 in all. The scheme was, in fact, a failure from the start. Membership was still too numerous for efficiency, too di verse in opinion to be able to pursue, much less to dictate, a con sistent policy; worse still, the experiment was received with cold suspicion by parliament. Charles, in spite of recent professions of loyalty to the new council, began flouting it at once. He pro rogued the parliament without consulting it, dissolved the parlia ment contrary to the advice of a large majority, and finally, in spite of it, prevented for a year the meeting of the new parlia ment. Once more he had resort to caballing. Not unnaturally, the opposition members of the council ceased to attend meetings which were nothing but a farce, and with their disappearance the council may be said to have reverted to its former constitution.

The last serious attempt to restore the privy council to its former position and influence may be found in the clause of the Act of Settlement (1701), which enacted that, on the Hanoverian accession, "all matters and things relating to the well-governing of the kingdom, which are properly cognizable in the privy council by the laws and customs of this realm, shall be transacted there, and all resolutions taken thereupon shall be signed by such of the privy council as shall advise and consent to the same." But the proposal was by that date impracticable, and the clause was repealed in 1705 before it even came into force. The council board had been not merely short-circuited by the cabinet, it had even lost the power of debating such measures as came before it. In 1711 a debate on the subject in parliament elicited the remark that "the privy counsellors were such as were thought to know everything and knew nothing. Those of the cabinet council thought nobody knew anything but themselves." And the last occasion on which the council asserted its former rights was when, in 1714, as Queen Anne lay dying, certain Whig lords forced their way in at a meeting of the lords of the committee (see CABINET), claimed their right to be present as counsellors of the Crown, converted the meeting into a session of the privy council and, reinforced by their conciliar colleagues, ushered in the Hanoverian succession. From the accession of George I. the privy council may be described as a purely formal body meeting on purely f canal occasions to transact purely formal business. There are pow (1928) nearly 300 "right honourable lords and others of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council." They are mostly dignitaries who have held, or hold, high political, judicial or ecclesiastical office in Great Britain, the dominions, or the colonies ; though the list, we are told, "occasionally" includes "eminent persons in science or letters." Office lasts for the life of the sovereign and six months after, but it is the modern custom for the new sovereign to renew the appointment.