PRIVY-COUNCIL, 



427 



Under the early English kings the royal council 

 was styled the Aula or Curia Regis. It con- 

 sisted of the Chancellor, the Justiciary, the Lord 

 Treasurer, the Lord Steward, the Chamberlain, 

 the Earl Marshal, the Constable, and any other 

 persons whom the king chose to appoint ; the 

 two archbishops belonged to it as of right ; and 

 the Comptroller of the Household, the Chancellor 

 of the Exchequer, the Judges, and the King's Ser- 

 jeants were occasionally present at its meetings. 

 The authority of the curia was originally co-exten- 

 sive with that of the king, in whom all the powers 

 of government, judicial and administrative, were 

 united ; but its constitution gradually underwent 

 a complete change. In the first place, a distinction 

 came to be drawn between the body of the curia 

 the magnum or commune concilium, which was the 

 germ of the modern parliament and the concilium, 

 assiduum& permanent committee of the curia, 

 which was constantly and closely attached to the 

 person of the king. Then the two councils were 

 themselves sulnlivided. The Court ad scaccarium, 

 or Court of Exchequer, which sprang from the 

 concilium assiduum, took cognisance of affairs of 

 finance, then of actions affecting the revenue, 

 anil lastly of civil suits generally. The Courts of 

 King's Bench and Common Pleas descended from 

 the tnagnum concilium respectively acquired their 

 separate jurisdictions. These changes had been 

 accomplished by the end of the reign of King John. 

 They were merely succe&sive delegations of the 

 royal authority, ami left the king's prerogative as 

 the fountain of law unaffected. In spite, there- 

 fore, of the establishment of regular tribunals, the 

 sovereign still continued to exercise judicial author- 

 ity, if not personally, at least through the agency 

 of his chancellor and of the council, whose juris- 

 dictions, afterwards so clearly distinguishable, 

 were originally united. In the time of Edward 

 III., however, the Chancery was rapidly becoming 

 a separate tribunal ; and by the end of the reign of 

 hi* successor its establishment as the great court of 

 equity had been effected. The concilium assiduum, 

 also, had become a separate assembly of royal 

 officials, liniiiiil by a particular oath and paid a 

 regular salary, equally distinct from the courts of 

 law and equity and from the magnum concilium, 

 and regarded with no little jealousy by them both. 



From the accession of Richard II. to the end of 

 the reign of Henry VI. the Privy-council were 

 not merely the servants but the ministers of the 

 crown, and acted as a check upon the royal author- 

 ity. While in theory the king could choose and 

 dismiss the members of the council at his pleasure, 

 the exercise of this prerogative was in fact subject 

 to various restrictions. Some of the officers of the 

 state were members of the council ex officio. The 

 two archbishops claimed to belong to it as of right. 

 The presence of other ecclesiastics, with whom the 

 papal was a higher authority than the royal, intro- 

 duced a further element of independence, and the 

 occjisional efforts of parliament to wrest the appoint- 

 ment of privy-conncillors from the king made 

 his influence over the council still weaker. The 

 Privy-council exercised its control over the royal 

 authority in two ways. Sometimes it merely 

 advised and recommended. A more powerful kind 

 of check was the refusal of the chancellor to affix 

 the Great Seal to any royal grant of which the 

 council disapproved. The English sovereigns en- 

 deavoured t<> defeat the operation of this check by 

 the use of a privy-seal, and by retaining the Great 

 Seal in their own hands. But the privy-seal passed 

 into the custody of a separate official, and by the 

 middle of the 15th century the council had succeeded 

 in bringing every royal grant under its own notice 

 at each stage in the procedure necessary for obtain- 

 ing it. In the time or Henry V. the council assumed 



the name of Privy-council, by which it is now 

 generally known. Its functions were then partly 

 administrative and partly judicial. The former 

 included the control of matters of finance, the 

 establishment of staples i.e. markets in which 

 alone certain commodities could be exposed for 

 sale the regulation of the statutes which limited 

 freedom of commerce between different parts of 

 England, and the preservation of the peace. The 

 latter cannot be better denned than in the words 

 of Mr Dicey : ' Whenever, in fact, either from 

 defect of legal authority or from want of the 

 might necessary to carry their decisions into effect, 

 the law courts were likely to prove inefficient, then 

 the council stepped in by summoning before it 

 defendants and accusers.' 



In the third or modern period of its history, 

 which commenced when the Wars of the Roses 

 were drawing to a close, the character of the Privy- 

 council has undergone a variety of changes. The 

 destruction of the feudal system, and the over- 

 throw of the old ecclesiastical supremacy, reduced 

 it to a position of absolute dependence on the 

 crown. At the same time the power of the council 

 as regards the people was greatly increased ( 1 ) by 

 the subjection of particular places to its control 

 e.g. Ireland under Poynings Act (1494), and the 

 Channel Islands; (2) by the exercise of the right 

 to issue proclamations ; (3) by the erection of new 

 courts under its supervision e.g. the High Com- 

 mission and the Court of Requests ; anil (4) by the 

 extension of its judicial authority in the Court of 

 Star-chamber (q.v.). The judicial powers of the 

 Privy -council were, however, restricted by the Long 

 Parliament ( 16 Car. I. chap. 10, sect. 3), and in the 

 17th and 18th centuries its functions as the adviser 

 of the crown in matters of government and state 

 policy were gradually usurped by the Cabinet (q.v.). 



Present Constitution ana Functions. The list of 

 privy-councillors now includes the members of the 

 royal family, the Archbishops of Canterbury and 

 York, the Bishop of London, the great officers 

 of state, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief- 

 justice of England, the Lords Justices of the 

 Court of Appeal, the President of the Probate, 

 Divorce, and Admiralty Division, the law officers 

 of the crown, the members of the Judicial Com- 

 mittee (see below), several of the Scotch judges, 

 the Speaker of the House of Commons, the 

 Ambassadors, some of the Ministers Plenipoten- 

 tiary and Governors of Colonies, the Commander- 

 in-chief, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the 

 Vice-president of the Board of Trade, the Pay- 

 master of the Forces, &c., and necessarily all the 

 members of the cabinet. Members of the council 

 are in their collective rapacity styled 'His [or Her] 

 Majesty's Most Honourable Privy -council ; ' indi- 

 vidually each member is styled ' Right Honourable. ' 

 ( The Lord Mayor of London, although styled ' Most 

 Honourable,' is not a privy-councillor. See Rotes 

 and Queries, first series, iii. 496 ; iv. 9, 28, 137, 157, 

 180, 236, 284; ix. 137, 158.) Under the authority 

 of letters-patent dated 28th May, 10 James I. 1612, 

 privy-councillors take precedence after Knights of 

 the 'Garter. Amongst themselves they take rank 

 according to seniority of appointment when no 

 other principle of classification is applicable in 

 the individual instances. Privy-councillors are 

 appointed by the sovereign without either patent 

 or grant, and are subject to removal at his dis- 

 cretion. By the common law, the Privy-council, 

 as deriving its whole authority from the sovereign, 

 was dissolved ipso facto upon the demise of the 

 crown ; but, in order to prevent the incon- 

 venience of having no council in being at the 

 accession of a new prince, it was enacted (6 

 Anne, chap. 7, sect. 8) that the Privy-council shall 

 continue for six months after the demise of the 



