Privy Council of England

“ But, in order to prevent any persons under foreign attachments from insinuating themselves into this important trust, as happened in the reign of king William in many instances, it is enacted by the act of settlement [m] , that no person born out of the dominions of the crown of England, unless born of English parents, even though naturalized by parliament, shall be capable of being of the privy council. ”

“ And though the Privy Council had at first promoted the movement by its connivance, it immediately withdrew it, as soon as it was perceived that the centre of gravity of ecclesiastical and political life was to be placed in the General Assemblies independently of the government: from that time most official persons severed themselves from the leaders of the nobility. ”

“ We have already seen that the central government, the Privy Council, energetically tried to enforce the law, and that this increased energy makes the seventeenth century the important period in England for the poor law administration. We now see that in justices, judges and overseers the local government existed through which the action of the Privy Council could be made effectual. ”

“ As the English Constitution then stood, the Cabinet system Pg 480 was but half developed. The modern idea that the queen's advisers should be a small homogeneous body of men of the same party, meeting together under the presidency of the prime minister, was only just coming into being. It was still a moot point whether, during the sovereign's illness or at his or her death, the executive power lay in the hands of the whole Privy Council or of the members of it alone who were actually ministers and members of the Cabinet. The supporters of the Protestant succession took advantage of this doubt. ”

“ They thought that the King’s subjects should prove their gratitude to him by hearty obedience, and that whoever henceforth should venture to disturb the peace of the realm ought to be chastised with all severity. The old Covenant was signed by the members of the Privy Council, and was then transmitted to the King in proof of re-established harmony. Proclamation was made with his sanction that a free General Assembly should be held on the 21st of November following at Glasgow, and a Parliament at Edinburgh in the May of the next year. ”

“ But the principal council belonging to the king is his privy council, which is generally called, by way of eminence, the council. And this, according to sir Edward Coke’s description of it [9] , is a noble, honorable, and reverend assembly, of the king and such as he wills to be of his privy council, in the king’s court or palace. The king’s will is the sole constituent of a privy counsellor ”

“ Besides the appellate there exists in the sovereign in council an original jurisdiction in questions concerning boundaries between dependencies, the extent of charters and the like. Until recently the council dealt with the petitions to extend the time patents were protected, but this work has now been given by statute to the controller-general of patents.
Ireland has its own privy council. The lord-lieutenant takes the place of the Crown. There is little real work and the distinction of membership is titular as in England. ”

“ The king himself, on the 30th of April 1679, before the heats on the subject had become so violent as they were the next year, offered not only to secure all ecclesiastical preferments from the control of a popish successor, but to provide that the parliament in being at a demise of the Crown or the last that had been dissolved, should immediately sit and be indissoluble for a certain time; that none of the privy council, nor judges, lord lieutenant, deputy lieutenant, nor officer of the navy, should be appointed during the reign of a catholic king, without consent of parliament. ”

“ The bill provided that certain great officers of state, namely, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the lord-chancellor, the lord-treasurer, the president of the council, the lord privy seal, the lord high admiral, and the chief-justice of the Queen’s Bench at the time being respectively, should act as lords-justices, to exercise all the powers and authorities of the successor of the crown, as a king would exercise them at present, until his arrival in the kingdom, or until he should otherwise order. ”

“ I will have no private interrogatories, which are but tricks and entanglements unknown to the law of England."
"Lady, lady," cried one of the Councillors, "you are very rash. It is a well-established principle, that a refusal to answer questions before the Privy Council, touching matters wherein the interest of the state is concerned, is a contempt of the King's prerogative."
"Show me a case," exclaimed the Countess. "You say it is well established--produce an instance where it has been so adjudged ”

“ He now recommended the King to grant the demands of the Scots, and entered into an alliance with their leaders, his former opponents, and with the lords of the opposition party. By his mediation the most conspicuous of the latter, Bedford and Hertford, Essex, Mandeville, Saville, Say, as well as Bristol, were admitted into the Privy Council, thereby obtaining a certain share in the administration. ”

“ The tendency of the Privy Council to mingle in the affairs of the north increased during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and (as a result of the strained relations between England and Scotland in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII.) reached its culmination under Wolsey. ”

“ We recognise in this her high idea of the kingly power and its divine right; but we can also easily conceive that the discord which broke out on this point in the family could not but act on the members of the Privy Council, of whom only a section were in complete understanding with Northumberland, while the rest had merely yielded to the ascendancy of his power. ”

“ That the Lord High Steward of England, Lord High Constable, Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Lord Treasurer, Lord Privy Seal, Earl Marshall, Lord Admiral, Warden of the Cinque Ports, Chief Governor of Ireland, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Wards, Secretaries of State, two Chief Justices and Chief Baron, may always be chosen with the approbation of both Houses of Parliament; and in the intervals of Parliament, by assent of the major part of the Council, in such manner as is before expressed in the choice of councillors. ”

“ Then there are the Constitutional Dryasdusts, who deny the existence of a Cabinet or a Prime Minister, and insist that the Privy Council is the only Ministerial body known to the law; and the Ecclesiastical Dryasdusts, who affirm that the Church of England is really free because the bishops are freely elected by the Chapters of their respective Cathedrals, acting under licence from a Sovereign who, having been anointed, is a Persona Mixta—part layman, part ecclesiastic. ”

“ A.D. 1635. deliberations of Parliament. But the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which was set up was still more burdensome to the Lords. In Scotland, as well as in England, a High Commission based upon this supreme jurisdiction of the King was instituted, in order to bring before the tribunal all transgressions of ecclesiastical ordinances, and even those persons who were only suspected of transgressing them. The Privy Council, which exercised the power of the King in Scotland, was commissioned to enforce its sentence. ”

“ A Parliament had already been held in Scotland without the King’s participation. What else did the threats mean that Bedford and Hertford had uttered before the assembled Privy Council? It was asserted that the Queen, who was close at hand at Hampton Court, and was taking counsel on the state of affairs with her confidants in the Privy Council, had been induced by the impending [Pg 221] A.D. 1640. dangers to advise the King to summon Parliament immediately ”

“ A Privy Council is summoned for to-morrow, to which all the Privy Councillors are summoned; those of the Royal Family by letters from the Lord President. The physicians are ordered to attend, and questions will be put to [Pg 28] them, to which they will be to give their answers on Wednesday. It is then meant, that on Friday, the Lord President in the House of Lords, and Pitt in the House of Commons, should communicate these questions and answers, but not as a message, from the Privy Council. We hope that Parliament will be disposed to proceed, without any inquiry, by themselves ”

“ The Act ‘for placing the Lords’ restrains the Queen from granting any precedence in Parliament or in the Council, over any of the Royal and official personages and others, who have places assigned to them therein. She may make any man a Privy Councillor, but she cannot authorise him to sit in a higher place than that to which he is by law entitled, or above those whose places are marked out by the statute. ”

“ You will not know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done or spoken against Her Majesty’s Person, Honour, Crown or Dignity Royal, but you will lett and withstand the same to the uttermost of your power, and either cause it to be revealed to Her Majesty Herself, or to such of Her Privy Council as shall advertise Her Majesty of the same. You will in all things to be moved, treated and debated in Council, faithfully and truly declare your Mind and Opinion, according to your Heart and Conscience ”

“ It is a curious illustration of the functions of the Privy Council as a household board that, during the whole of Elizabeth's time and the greater part of that of James, the actors could not get their fee or 'reward', except through the medium of a formal warrant addressed by that body to the Treasurer of the Chamber. ”

“ It is found impossible for parliament to enact long and intricate measures dealing with departmental detail, hence a general measure is passed and the privy council is authorized under the act to draw up orders in council which of course have the full force of law. This power is exercised usually by committees to which matters are referred by the Crown in council, the departments of state concerned settling the details. ”

“ Upon these points the Privy Council debated long and eagerly, if not altogether wisely. Men are slow to confess even to themselves that they have been imposed upon, and the State Council had months before by an overwhelming majority declared its faith in the integrity of the claimant. ”

“ They represent, or are intended to represent, the nation. The Parliament is, in theory, the nation, assembled at the king's command, to give him their advice. The Privy Council, on the other hand, represents the king. It is the king's Privy Council. They act in his name. They follow his directions when he chooses to give any. Whatever they decide upon and decree, the king signs—often, indeed, without any idea of its nature. Still he signs it, and all such decrees go forth to the word as the king's orders [Pg 86] in council. ”

“ The ambiguity of his position at home was brought home to him in April, when he was requested to preside, for the first and only time in his career of heir-apparent, over the privy council. Since 1880, when Queen Victoria had made it her practice to spend the spring in the The prince Riviera, a commission had been and the privy privately drafted empowering the prince and some of the ministers to act, in cases of extreme urgency, on her behalf in her absence from the council. ”

“ You have only to imagine the Privy Council as consisting of men of the world highly endowed with common sense, to persuade yourself that the supplementing of the law by the common sense of the Privy Council would settle the whole difficulty. ”

“ The permanent co-existence of royalty and a great public council, through all these vicissitudes of government and liberty, is an important fact. This council, formed at first by the general assembly of the nation, afterwards restricted to the great barons, and speedily admitting within its circle the representatives of other social conditions, has always been in England the principal organ of the central government. The English monarchy has never succeeded in isolating and enfranchising itself therefrom. ”

“ The Council accept without hesitation his recommendation of the Prince and his affairs to their care. When Parliament is sitting, it votes him money for the purposes of his campaigns.
The proceedings, however, in the first half of 1406 are so important as bearing on the position of the Prince that they must be specially mentioned. At some time in March or April the Privy Council held a meeting, at which the succession of the Prince of Wales to the throne was considered, as was also the subject of his lieutenancy in Wales, and of his power to amnesty rebels who might give in their submission. ”

“ The Privy Council, of course, would have its meetings, its officers, its records, its rules of proceeding, and its various usages, and these grew, in time, to be laws and rights; but still it was, in theory, only a sort of expansion of the king, as if to make a kind of artificial being, with one soul, but many heads and hands, because no natural human being could possibly have capacities and powers extensive and multifarious enough for the exigencies of reigning. Charles thus had a council who took charge of every thing, except so far as he chose to interpose. ”

“ The Commons were proceeding with a fresh resolution for an address to his Majesty, praying that not any foreigner, except Prince George of Denmark, should be admitted to his Majesty's Council in England or Ireland, the resolution being aimed at Portland, Albemarle, and Galway, when the king sent a private message to the peers, desiring them to pass the Resumption Bill, and on the 11th of April he went down to the House, and gave it the royal assent. ”