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A Reply: Tudor Goverment: the Facts?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Starkey
David Starkey
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
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The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 921 - 931
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 I have, however, avoided trading insult for insult. On the other hand, I cannot let Elton's treatment of the younger contributors to The English court pass unreproved. They are lambasted for no worse crime than agreeing with me. I am well able to take care of myself, but for someone in Elton's position to attack someone in theirs is pure bullying.

2 Letters and papers of the reign of Henry VIII (LP), XV, 436/40; 942/121. A better example of the groom's ability to embody the royal will would have been an incident in April 1536. John Hussey, Lord Lisle's court agent, had at last secured the king's oral approval for Lisle to pay a visit to England. Hussey asked for ‘licence by writing’. ‘But his Grace said it should not need, for his word was thereof sufficient, and that Mr Norris should bear record thereof.’ The instance is not without problems, as Cromwell was playing a cat-and-mouse game with both Lisle and Norris, but it does make the main point (The Lisle letters, ed. Byrne, M. St Clare (Chicago and London, 1981), III, no. 684)Google Scholar.

3 LP, XIV ii, 201.

4 LP, XIII i, 332. The transaction is clearer in the original (Public Record Office (PRO), SP 1/ 129, fos. 107–8), but a less captious reviewer would have got the point from the calendar.

5 LP, XI, 227 (misdated in the calendar). These errors in his handling of the evidence mean that Elton's account ‘for the record’ of the ‘King's Book’ cannot be accepted. A reasonably full description of its workings will be found in Revolution reassessed, ed. Coleman, C. and Starkey, D. (Oxford, 1986), pp. 53–4Google Scholar, to which the reader was in any case referred by The English court.

6 The term ‘the second palace of Westminster’ would appear to be Professor Elton's invention. I have never come across the king's new palace so described; moreover in every point save chronology it was the king's first palace.

7 LP, XVIII, 546 (p. 331). Any doubt that Searles might be referring to the conciliar court of requests which met in the White Hall of the old palace of Westminster is put at rest by Searles's later reference (in his correction of some minor points in his first account) to the words ‘spoken on Palm Sunday Even at Court when Mr London came out from the Council’ (ibid. p. 333).

8 Acts of the privy council (APC), ed. Dasent, J., 1 (1542–1547), 97Google Scholar.

9 Statutes of the realm, III, 668; Colvin, H. M., ed., The history of the king's works, IV ii (1982), 301 n. 2Google Scholar.

10 This certainly applies to the mid-Tudor years. By 1579 the confusion in terminology between Westminster and Whitehall, which Professor Elton assumes, might well have existed. But to work out the implications for the actual place of meeting of the privy council will require more than the cursory survey of APC that Professor Elton offers.

11 APC, II (1547–50), 372, 377.

12 LP, XV, 541.

13 Pollard, A. F., ‘Council, star chamber, and privy council under the Tudors: II The Star Chamber’, English Historical Review (EHR), XXXVII (1922), 51617CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colvin, , King's Works, IV ii, 288–9Google Scholar; J., Stow, The Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, C. L. (1908), II, 119Google Scholar; Proceedings and ordinances of the privy council of England, 1386–1542 (PPC), ed. Nicolas, N. H. (1834–1837), VII (1540–2), 193, 272Google Scholar and APC, I (1542–1547), 476Google Scholar. Pollard was convinced that the privy council ‘normally sat in the inner Star Chamber during term time’ (‘Council…under the Tudors: III The privy council’, EHR, XXXVIII (1923), 49)Google Scholar. But his examples prove the contrary. Thus on 21 June 1543 the council in London wrote to ‘our very good lords of the king's Majesty's Privy Council’ at the court at Greenwich ‘from the Star Chamber at one of the clock’ (LP, XVIII i, 746). The meeting does not appear in the privy council register, however, though the other meetings at this time of the London council ‘at Westminster’ do (APC, I (1542–7), 142–7). The Elizabethan, references cited in ‘Council…under the Tudors: II The Star Chamber’, EHR, XXXVII (1922), 531 n. 5 contain nothing to the purposeGoogle Scholar.

14 Pollard, , ‘Privy council’, EHR, XXXVIII (1923), 45 and n. 2Google Scholar; LP, XVIII ii, p. 124, (1542–7), 126. For the Ordinaries, and the place of the privy council within the Household, see note 15 below.

15 For the title of the council see A collection of ordinances and regulations for the government of the royal household(HO), Society of Antiquaries (1790), pp. 159–60; State papers…King Henry VIII(State papers), I,623–4. The textual history of the Henrician Household Ordinances is complex. For most purposes the versions in HO are adequate. But when actual names of office holders are required, HO must be supplemented from the MSS. Particularly useful is: The Huntington Library, California, HL MS 41,955 (especially fo. 92v). This MS appears to be a later copy of the original Ordinances of 1539–40, hitherto only known in the revised version published after Cromwell's fall. Elton, , The Tudor revolution in government (Cambridge, 1953), p. 385ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. refers to this revised version only in the extracts published in The Genealogist, new series, XXIX–XXX (1913–1914)Google Scholar; the original is now British Library, Additional MS 45,716 (A). The revised 1545–6 Ordinary, again known only from a later copy, is calendared as LP, XXI i, 969/1. That councillors were members of the royal household is taken as axiomatic by that careful antiquary Sir Julius Caesar in his account of the court of requests. ‘The judges of this Court’, he asserts, ‘were always numbered and provided for in the books of the king's household as the king's Council’. (The ancient state authoritie, and proceedings of the court of requests, ed. Hill, L. M. (Cambridge, 1975), p. 24Google Scholar and cf. Guy, , ‘The privy council: revolution or evolution?’, p. 84)Google Scholar. Caesar has also some sharp things to say about the title of the council. He points out that in statutes of 33 Henry VIII (1542) the council is called ‘the king's most honourable council daily attendant on his person’ or ‘the king's Privy Council attendant on his person’ (Ancient state, p. 23). The same formulae are used by the council in London in the addresses of the letters they sent to their colleagues at court (State papers, I, 662, 664, 674). They also appear frequendy in die council register itself at this time (APC, I (1542–1547), 13, 16, 18, 52)Google Scholar. And cf. the references in note 14 above.

16 State papers I, 646–7; APC I (1542–1547), 118Google Scholar.

17 HO, p. 210; LP, XXI i, 969/1. That these officials remained members of the chamber under Elizabeth is noted by Adams, Simon, ‘Eliza enthroned? The court and its politics’; in Haigh, Christopher, ed., The reign of Elizabeth I (1984), p. 56Google Scholar. Elton goes out of his way to praise this essay, yet it draws die same conclusion as I that a ‘clear distinction between the courtier and the bureaucrat is almost impossible’.

18 LP, XX ii, 864. The relevant paragraph is printed in extenso in State papers, I, xiii n. I. The remarks in Gammon, S. R., Statesman and schemer (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 37Google Scholar about Paget's ‘right to double lodging’ at court as clerk of the council are based, as Gammon half admits in the footnote (p. 257 n. 11), on a document that belongs to the period of Paget's secretaryship. And even as secretary, as we are seeing, his accommodation was scarcely generous.

19 APC, I, (1542–1547), 278, 395Google Scholarand see Hoak, D., The king's council in the reign of Edward VI (Cambridge, 1976), p. 160Google Scholar. Professor Elton cites Hoak's discussion as his authority for the location of the Study. But Hoak makes no consistent distinction between ‘Whitehall’ and ‘Westminster’ (ibid. esp. p. 143). His inconsistencies offer clues to the alert reader, however: ‘Whitehall’ is used mostly for seventeenth-century references to the new palace, and these references deal moreover with the loss of much of the privy council archive in the 1619 Whitehall fire (ibid. esp. p. 26). This fire destroyed the banqueting house and the adjoining western end of the privy gallery. It was here that Paget's lodging had been in 1545, and it was here that the council records were stored eighty years later.

20 PRO, C 66/699, membrane 34 dorse (LP, XV, 1027/7).

21 This conclusion is already implicit in Guy, John, ‘The privy council: revolution or evolution?’ in Revolution reassessed, pp. 76–7Google Scholar. It will appear more fully developed in his important treatment of the council in his forthcoming Tudor England, 1460–1603. I am very grateful to Dr Guy for sending me a copy of the relevant section of his text in advance of publication.

22 PPC, VII (1540–1542), passimGoogle Scholar; HO, p. 208. The list of ‘Increase of charges’ also shows the addition of other councillors to the Ordinary (ibid. p. 210). Dismissal is not the only explanation for the omission of Audley and Cranmer from the 1540 commission. More probable, perhaps, is that they (and Audley in particular) were intended all along to be the mainstay of the council in London, while the council ‘attendant on the king's person’ and moving everywhere with him would be drawn from the other seventeen councillors listed in the commission. That this is what happened in practice was noted by Nicolas, in PPC, VII (1540–1542), ixGoogle Scholar.

23 PPC, VII (1540–1542), 27 and n. 20 aboveGoogle Scholar.

24 PPC, VII (1540–1542), 34Google Scholar.

25 APC, I (1542–1547), 10, 19, 42, 53, 181, 306Google Scholar. The phrasing of the last command is particularly instructive: blank was ordered ‘to repair before the Council wheresoever the court for the time should be’.

26 Ibid. p. 32.

27 Ibid. p. 61.

28 The arrangement of the correspondence in State papers, I, 652ff. makes the point very clearly.

29 LP, XIII i, 1; XV, 14 (p. 5).

30 For Cromwell's position, LP, XIV i, 2; PRO, E 101/425/6. In january 1539 Cromwell made New Year's gifts to his new colleagues in the privy chamber, distributing 32 sovereigns among the gentlemen (LP, XIV ii, p. 339). With sixteen salaried gentlemen that made two each. The mid-summer 1540 privy chamber list is LP, XVI, 394/6.

31 Miller, H., Henry VIII and the English nobility (Oxford, 1986), pp. 85–6Google Scholar lists the nobles in the privy chamber; pp. 112–18 lists the nobles in the council. A comparison of the two groups shows the overlap I indicate.

32 Hoak, D., ‘The king's privy chamber, 1547–1553’ in Guth, D. J. and McKenna, J. W. (eds.), Tudor rule and revolution (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 87–108Google Scholar, and Hoak, D. ‘The secret history of the Tudor court’, Journal of British Studies, XXVI (1987), 208ff. esp. 231CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Elton, G. R., ‘Tudor government: the points of contact: II The council’ in Studies in Tudor and Stuart politics and government, III (Cambridge, 1983), 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elton disagrees with himself and everybody else because his methodology here degenerates into mere list-worship. Lists are important in establishing the membership of institutions, but they are not the only source and can never stand alone. Elton is equally out of line on the general question of the council's membership of the court. This is taken as axiomatic by the founding fathers. Nicolas, notes that ‘the greater part of the members of the Privy Council were in constant attendance on the king. They resided in the court, and accompanied him wherever he went’ (PPC, VII (1540–1542), ix)Google Scholar. Pollard is even more emphatic: ‘it is difficult to realize that the king's council was part of the king's household,…and that we have to trace the development of the council with the help of household books and ordinances’ (‘Council…under the Tudors’, EHR, XXXVII (1922), 340Google Scholar). I tried to apply this dictum in my paper read at the conference on ‘The court at the beginning of the modern age’, held under the auspices of the German Historical Institute at Madingley Hall, Cambridge in December 1987. The proceedings of this conference are to be published shortly.

34 I have followed closely Elton's tri-partite division of the sources for the early Tudor council in ‘Why the history of the early Tudor council remains unwritten’, Studies, I (Cambridge, 1974), 326–7Google Scholar.

35 Another instance, with even more far reaching consequences, is Elton's deduction of the date of Sir Thomas More's move to court from the ‘record’ of More's backdated grant of wages (‘Thomas More, councillor’, Studies, I, 130–3). A wage grant, in fact, is often an unreliable guide to the precise date of appointment (cf. Elton's comments on Derby's appointment as clerk of the council attendant in January 1533 and the backdating of his wages to the previous midsummer: The Tudor revolution, p. 335 n. 1). So it is hardly surprising that Elton's deductions cut across not only the ‘contemporary comment’ of Erasmus's letters, but also the ‘ascertainable fact[f]’ of the correspondence of Richard Pace, the king's secretary, with Thomas Wolsey, the king's minister. Elton dates More's move to court, which he wrongly equates with his appointment as a councillor, to mid-1517. But on 26 March 1518 Pace describes Henry VIII's ‘charge’ to More and Clerk to perform properly their duties at court (LP, II ii, 4025), and six days later, on 1 April, he recounts their difficulties in obtaining the ‘bouche of court’ they had been granted by the king (ibid. 4055). Clearly these are the problems of the newly-appointed – which is why Erasmus is to be believed when only just over a fortnight later, on 17 April, he reports as news that More ‘is now quite a courtier, always attending on the king’. I intend to discuss the issues raised by this more fully shortly.

36 Something like the position Elton misattributes to me is advanced by Hoak, in ‘The secret history of the Tudor court’, p. 231Google Scholar. He writes that the author of the ‘Redress’ ‘assumes a virtual identity of privy council and privy chamber’. This stretches the source, which is more soberly reported in The English court, pp. 13–14.

37 Hoak, , ‘Secret history’, esp. pp. 209–10Google Scholar.

38 The Washington Post, 26 December 1986. Facts like this led Hoak to describe Denny's account in the 1540s as ‘an indulgent sovereign's bloated purse’ (‘Secret history’, p. 215). This contradicts his earlier characterization in the same article of the account as a treasury dealing with the costs of ‘secret affairs’ of state, and the contradiction is nowhere reconciled or even acknowledged. The contradiction, of course, is a product only of his neo-Eltonian terminology: these accounts dealt with matters both ‘public’ and ‘private’.

39 PRO, E 101/546/19. Hoak's unsystematic survey of Osborne's expenditure (‘Secret history’, pp. 221–2) helped mislead Elton into his characterization of the account as handling ‘money spent on business personal to the king’. Murphy, , The English court, p. 137Google Scholar offers a proper classification of Osborne's expenditure, but he does not give full totals.

40 Cf. Hoak, , ‘Secret history’, p. 213Google Scholar.

41 Cuddy, Neil, ‘The king's chambers: the bedchamber of Jame s I in administration and politics, 1603–1625’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford 1987), pp. 206–7Google Scholar.