PRIVY PURSE 



6343 



PRIVY SEAL 



Edward II the barons again came 

 to the front, and the king sought to 

 counter their offensive by develop- 

 ing a council which was called con- 

 cilium continuum, secretum, or 

 privatum. Now the council might 

 be held in Parliament or out of 

 Parliament, and there was little 

 difference between the great coun- 

 cil in Parliament and the body 

 which, in Henry VIII' s reign, 

 came to be called the House of 

 Lords. Hence the great coun- 

 cil in Parliament merged in the 

 House of Lords, while the great 

 council out of Parliament was 

 summoned less and less often, until 

 it flickered out of existence on the 

 eve of the Great Rebellion. 

 The Council Organized 



The small royal council con- 

 tinued, however, to develop, and 

 by Richard II' s reign it was 

 known as the privy council. It 

 governed during the minority of 

 Henry VI, but suffered from the 

 subsequent decline in royal author- 

 ity, and the Wars of the Roses 

 broke out because the privy coun- 

 cil foundered between the factions 

 of York and Lancaster. Its history 

 for some time after 1485 is exceed- 

 ingly obscure ; Henry VII at 

 first governed personally with such 

 advice as he chose to take from 

 councillors who were not appar- 

 ently organized in a body, but 

 before the end of his reign there 

 was a president of the council, 

 and it was completely reorganized 

 under Henry VIII, to whom so 

 much of the British constitution 

 owes its modern form. 



From 1540 it possessed a regular 

 staff of clerks and other officials ; 

 and its records became both regular 

 and abundant, and from it most 

 of the existing administrative 

 system has developed. It had two 

 main functions during the 16th 

 and 17th centuries. Firstly, it sat 

 " at the council board " to act 

 as a council of state, discussing 

 and advising the crown on all 

 matters of policy and taking ad- 

 ministrative action ; and secondly, 

 reinforced by judicial and other 

 assessors, it sat on Wednesdays 

 and Fridays in a room known as 

 the star chamber (q.v. ), which was 

 better adapted than " the council 

 board " for the functions of a 

 court of law. Besides these func- 

 tions it controlled similar sub- 

 ordinate bodies, which might al- 

 most be called committees of the 

 privy council, namely, the councils 

 of the N., of Wales and its Marches, 

 and the Irish privy council. Later 

 on there developed other commit- 

 tees of the privy council 



The privy council consisted oi a 

 selection of the " ordinary " coun- 

 cillors of the crown who only 



survive to-day in the K.C.'s ; but 

 in its turn, owing to the growing 

 complexity of government and 

 other causes, the privy council 

 tended to increase in size. Under 

 Henry VIII twenty was about the 

 average number. Northumberland 

 added to its numbers for partisan 

 reasons, and Mary carried the pro- 

 cess further until there were over 

 fifty. In her reign an inner ring 

 already began to appear, but Eliza- 

 beth restored the efficiency of the 

 privy council by reducing its 

 numbers to twenty or even fewer, 

 and they remained at this figure 

 until the Restoration. Then they 

 increased again, and " inner rings " 

 began to appear, like the Cabal. 



This tendency resulted in the 

 moderncabinet, and the privy coun- 

 cil was gradually reduced to formal 

 business. It retained, however, one 

 function of importance in the 18th 

 century, and continued to debate 

 and to determine the fate of Irish 

 bills, which, by Poynings' Law, had 

 to receive its sanction before they 

 could be introduced into the Irish 

 parliament. This function dis- 

 appeared with the establishment 

 of Grattan's parliament in 1782, 

 but the executive activity of vari- 

 ous committees of the privy coun- 

 cil continued long after the func- 

 tions of the main body had been 

 absorbed by the cabinet, and de- 

 partments like the boards of edu- 

 cation, trade, and agriculture are 

 still technically committees of the 

 privy council. 



The Judicial Committee 



Of these committees the most 

 important is the judicial commit- 

 tee of the privy council. The Long 

 Parliament abolished the court of 

 star chamber in 1641, but the 

 civil jurisdiction which the privy 

 council had exercised " at the 

 council board " survived and 

 expanded until the judicial com- 

 mittee has become the most im- 

 portant law court in the empire. 

 It is the supreme court of appeal 

 for all civil cases arising in the em- 

 pire outside the British Isles, and 

 within them it is the supreme 

 court for ecclesiastical appeals, al- 

 though ecclesiastical prejudice ham- 

 pers recourse to it. The judicial 

 committee may thus have to adju- 

 dicate upon religious disputes of 

 hill tribes in India, involving local 

 customs, Mahomedan or Hindu 

 law; on cases from South Africa 

 or British Guiana involving points 

 of Roman-Dutch law or native 

 customs ; on constitutional disputes 

 between provinces in the Dominion 

 of Canada or states in the Common- 

 wealth of Australia ; and on powers 

 claimed by the Dominions them- 

 selves. In form it is not a court 

 at all, and its members sit without 



any judicial trappings, state, or 

 dignity, except that which the im- 

 portance of their business gives 

 them. Technically, they are en- 

 gaged in giving advice to the 

 crown, and that advice, when ten- 

 dered, has more effect than the 

 decisions of any law court in the 

 world. No other body does so 

 much to give the empire its legal 

 and constitutional unity. 



Apart from these committees the 

 privy council has ceased to dis- 

 charge any but formal functions, 

 and membership has become an 

 honorary distinction, conveying 

 the style " right honourable," and 

 frequently conferred upon men 

 without any qualification to per- 

 form the duties once assigned to 

 the privy council. 



Privy Councils in the Empire 



In addition to this privy council, 

 which, from being one for England 

 alone, has come to be one for the 

 whole empire, with ministers of 

 the crown in Canada, Australia, S. 

 Africa, and elsewhere among its 

 members, there is a privy council 

 for Ireland. To it ministers and 

 others connected with the govern- 

 ment of that country belong, while 

 its membership is conferred also as 

 an honour on those who have done 

 the state- service. In Canada a 

 privy council has been formed for 

 the Dominion on the English 

 model. Scotland had a privy coun- 

 cil until the union of 1707, when it 

 was merged in the English one. 

 Privy councils or their equivalent, 

 councils of state, exist in some for- 

 eign countries, and before the Re- 

 volution France had one very like 

 that of England. 



Bibliography. Constitutional His- 

 tory of England, W. Stubbs, 1884- 

 1903; The Privy Council, A. V. 

 Dicey, 1887; The Privy Council 

 under the Tudors, Lord E. Percy, 

 1907; The King's Council in Eng- 

 land during the Middle Ages, J. F. 

 Baldwin, 1913. 



Privy Purse. Money granted to 

 the king and queen from the civil list 

 for their own personal expenditure. 

 Under the king's direction the ex- 

 penditure of this money is managed 

 by the privy purse office, at the 

 head of which is the keeper. In 

 1910 the amount was fixed at 

 1 10,000 a year. See Civil List. 



Privy Seal. In the United 

 Kingdom, 1 a seal used by the 

 sovereign. It is second in import- 

 ance to the great seal, but is now 

 rarely used. This seal was used on 

 warrants requesting the lord chan- 

 cellor to affix the great seal, and 

 for documents which were not of 

 sufficient importance to require the 

 great seal. The necessity for the 

 former was abolished in 1884. The 

 keeper of this seal is known as the 

 lord privy seal (q.v.). 



