that durst speak against the opinion of any of the great lords? And why might not then men, by means of corruption of the servants, counsellors, and of some of the lords, move the lords to partiality, and make them also favourable and partial as were the same servants or the parties that so moved them?

Then could no matter treated in the Council be kept quiet. For the Lords oftentimes told their own advisers and servants that had sued to them for those matters how they had sped in the Council and who was against them. How may the King be counselled to refrain giving away his land, or giving officers grants or pensions of abbeys by such great lords to other men's servants, since they most desire such gifts for themselves and their servants?

Which things considered, and also many others which shall be showed hereafter, it is thought good that the King had a council chosen and established in the form that follows, or in some other form like thereto. First that there were chosen twelve ecclesiastics and twelve laymen of the wisest and best disposed men that can be found in all parts of this land, and that they be sworn to counsel the King after a form to be devised for their oath. And, in particular, that they shall take no fee, no clothing, and no reward from any man except from the King as do the justices of the King's Bench and of the Common Pleas when they take their offices. And that these twenty-four men be permanent councillors, but if any fault should be found in them, or if the King should desire it by the advice of the majority of the Council, he should change any of them. And that every year be chosen by the King four lords spiritual and four lords temporal to be for that year of the same council, exactly as the said twenty-four councillors shall be.

And that they all have a head or a chief to rule the Council, one of the said twenty-four, and chosen by the King and holding his office at the King's pleasure, which may then be called Capitalis consiliarius. . .

These councillors might continually, and at such hours as might be assigned to them, discuss and deliberate upon the matters of difficulty that have fallen to the King, and upon the policy of the realm, how the going out of money

may be restrained, how bullion may be brought into the land, how plate, jewels, and money lately taken out of the country may be got back again. For all this truly wise men will soon find the means. Also how the prices of merchandise produced in this country may be maintained and increased, and how the prices of merchandise imported into England may be lowered. How our navy may be maintained and augmented, and upon such other points of policy which are of the greatest profit and advantage to this country. How also the laws may be amended in such things in which they need reform.

Through the activity of the Council the Parliament will be able to do more good in a month by way of amending laws than they do now in a year, if the amendments proposed be debated and made ripe for their hands by the Council.

Sir John Fortescue complained that the greatest lords' of the King's Council, the Cabinet of the time, attended chiefly to their own business and to that of their friends and retainers, neglecting that of the King and Nation, that they practised a shameless favouritism, did not keep secret the affairs of State, and thus made a wise policy and efficient administration impossible. He proposed that a new council of twenty-four of the wisest and best-disposed men should be established, one-half being laymen, and one-half clerics. Before the Reformation the Church represented learning and was comparable to the professional classes of the present day. Besides Churchmen had learnt the art of organisation, of administration and of government through their Church. Lastly, as the Church was an international body, Churchmen were best acquainted with international affairs. Hence, ecclesiastics were the greatest administrators and diplomats of the time. The twenty-four councillors were not to be great lords,' corresponding to eminent politicians of the present. They were to be chosen on the ground of their capacity for business and to be permanently employed. In modern language, they were to be permanent officials, experts. They were to be reinforced by four lords spiritual,

and four lords temporal, corresponding to Members of Parliament of the present day, but these were not to be permanent members of the Council, for they were to be chosen every year. The President of the Council, it is worth noting, was to be taken from the permanent official members, not from the powerful representatives of the nobility or the Church, and he was to act as manager for the King who was to be the real head of the Council. Sir John Fortescue wished to create a Council which combined the functions of the present Cabinet with those of Napoleon's Conseil d'État described in these pages, for the Council was to prepare all measures which were to be submitted to Parliament making them ripe for their hands.'

Sir John's wish to reduce the power usurped by the territorial and clerical magnates and to increase that of the King, for the Nation's good, and his wish to have the national policy and administration controlled by a king, supported by the most eminent experts, was soon to be fulfilled. In 1485 the wise and energetic Henry the Seventh came to the throne. He did not allow the powerful nobility to dominate him or his Council. He governed the country himself, supported by the ablest men of the land. The great Lord Bacon has told us :

He was of a high mind and loved his own will, and his own way; as one that revered himself, and would reign. indeed. Had he been a private man he would have been termed proud. But in a wise prince it was but keeping of distance, which indeed he did towards all; not admitting any near or full approach, either to his power or to his secrets, for he was governed by none.

To his council he did refer much and sat oft in person, knowing it to be the way to assist his power and inform his judgment. In which respect also he was fairly patient of liberty, both of advice and of vote, till himself were declared. He kept a straight hand on his nobility, and chose rather to advance clergymen and lawyers which were more obsequious to him, but had less interest in the people, which

made for his absoluteness, but not for his safety. He was not afraid of an able man, as Louis the Eleventh was; but, contrariwise, he was served by the ablest men that were to be found, without which his affairs could not have prospered as they did. Neither did he care how cunning they were that he did employ, for he thought himself to have the master-reach. And as he chose well, so he held them up well. . .

He was a prince, sad, serious, and full of thoughts and secret observations, and full of notes and memorials of his own hand, especially touching persons; as whom to employ, whom to reward, whom to inquire of, whom to beware of, what were the dependencies, what were the factions, and the like; keeping, as it were, a journal of his thoughts.

King Henry the Seventh, who had found England impoverished and distraught, left to his son, Henry the Eighth, a well-ordered and prosperous country and an overflowing treasury.

Henry the Eighth, his son, was only eighteen years old when he succeeded his father, and very naturally he was not able to govern in person through a Council. The Government was carried on by the King through a Manager, first through Cardinal Wolsey, who raised England's prestige to the highest point by his foreign policy, and afterwards through Thomas Cromwell, who carried through the Reformation. Henry's rule was of the greatest benefit to the country. In Professor Pollard's words:

Henry the Eighth took the keenest interest from the first in learning and in the navy. . . . No small part of his energies was devoted to the task of expanding the Royal authority at the expense of temporal competitors. Wales and its marshes were brought into legal union with the rest of England, and the Council of the North was set up to bring into subjection the extensive jurisdictions of the Northern Earls.... It was of the highest importance that England should be saved from religious civil war, and it could only be saved by a despotic government. It was necessary for the future development of England that its governmental

system should be centralised and unified, that the authority of the monarchy should be more firmly extended over Wales and the western and northern borders, and that the still existing feudal franchises should be crushed; and these objects were worth the price paid in the methods of the Star Chamber and of the Councils of the North and of Wales. Henry's work on the navy requires no apology; without it Elizabeth's victory over the Spanish Armada, the liberation of the Netherlands, and the development of English Colonies would have been impossible; and of all others the year 1545 best marks the birth of the English naval power. He had a passion for efficiency, and for the greatness of England and himself.

King Henry the Eighth died in 1547, and between that year and 1558 the country was under the rule of the childking Edward the Sixth and of Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, of painful memory. Under their weak and only nominal rule, England was once more torn by party strife, and at the advent of Queen Elizabeth in 1558 disorganisation and poverty had become great and general. Froude has told us in his History:

On all sides the ancient organisation of the country was out of joint. The fortresses from Berwick to Falmouth were half in ruins, dismantled, and ungarrisoned. The Tower was as empty of arms as the Treasury of money. . . . Bare of the very necessaries for self-defence, the Queen found herself with a war upon her hands, with Calais lost, the French in full possession of Scotland, where they were fast transporting an army, and with a rival claimant to her crown, whose right, by the letter of the law, was better than her own. Her position was summed up in an address to the Council as follows: The Queen poor; the realm exhausted; the nobility poor and decayed; good captains and soldiers wanting; the people out of order; war with France; the French King bestriding the realm, having one foot in Calais and the other in Scotland; steadfast enemies, but no steadfast friends.' The Spanish Ambassador, the Conde de Feria, reported shortly after Elizabeth's accession: