The Imperial Privy Council in the Seventeenth Century. Henry Frederick Schwarz , John I. Coddington

1943 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-320
Author(s):  
C. C. Eckhardt
2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Bryan Yirush

In 1773, with the empire on the brink of revolt, the Privy Council gave the final ruling in the case of the Mohegan Indians versus the colony of Connecticut. Thus ended what one eighteenth-century lawyer called “the greatest cause that ever was heard at the Council Board.” After a decades-long battle for their rights, involving several appeals to the Crown, three royal commissions, and the highest court in the empire, the Mohegans' case against Connecticut was dismissed. The dispute centered on a large tract of land (~20,000 acres) in southeastern Connecticut, which, the Mohegans claimed, the colony had reserved for them in the late seventeenth century. Concerned that the colony had violated its agreements, the Mohegans, aided by powerful colonists with a pecuniary interest in this tract of land, appealed to the Crown for redress. As a result of this appeal, what had been a narrow dispute over land became part of a larger conflict between the Crown, the colony, and the tribe over property and autonomy in the empire.


1965 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-123
Author(s):  
Joseph W. Houppert

Modern biographers of Thomas Lodge have presented a remarkably clear record of his activities, both as writer and physician. However, the period of Lodge's second exile still remains obscure. Although Lodge's biographers agree that because of his Catholicism he fled to the continent during the first decade of the seventeenth century, none has been able accurately to record these years abroad. For example, Lodge's recent scholarly biographer, Charles Sisson, says that this second exile may have begun as early as May 8, 1604. But this statement is inaccurate, for on January 9, 1605/06 Lodge was indicted in London for recusancy, along with Ben Jonson and Edmund Boulton. Professor Sisson also argues that ‘Lodge was allowed to return [to England] early in 1611, as appears from an Act of the Privy Council of 28 January 1611, protecting him from indictment for recusancy, and from the letter dated 17 January 1611 in which he expressed his thanks to Sir Thomas Edmondes for help in bringing about his repatriation.’ But Lodge had returned to London as early as September 21, 1609 as will appear below.


1997 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Nielsen

In 1587 the English Privy Council issued its first Book of Orders for the relief of dearth, a program of grain-market control that included forced delivery of private stocks to local markets in crisis periods. The policy has been described as an effective response to irrational hoarding and credited for a significant reduction in English grain-price variance. In contrast, I find support for an alternative profit maximizing model of storage. The occurrence of similar price stabilization in other European markets in the early seventeenth century is also demonstrated, suggesting English policy was not the cause.


1859 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 336-338
Author(s):  
Joseph Robertson

A letter from a General in service to King William III to a member of the Scottish Privy Council. General Mackay discusses Scotland's religious affiliation and their loyalty to the crown in the late seventeenth century.


Author(s):  
Jacqueline Rose

This chapter explores how the lack of a fully developed system of British councils contributed to friction in the seventeenth-century dynastic union. British councils were occasionally mooted, involving joint mutual representation of Englishmen and Scots on each kingdom’s privy council, or an additional new British council to resolve disputes. At their most ambitious, such notions involved a wholesale rethinking of the British — even European — state system. However, they were rarely implemented, and many writers on union did not discuss British councils. This conclusion explores why counsel, rather than councils, was left to do the work of lubricating the multiple monarchy, and how its failure to do so exploded in both English and Scottish resentment of foreign counsels in the years around 1700. The two decades after the Revolution of 1688 were a liminal period in which old and new ideas about counsel, parliamentary power and fiduciary monarchy blended.


1979 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. G. James

At the close of the seventeenth century the English House of Lords played an important role in government. It was the highest court in the kingdom as well as the upper house of the legislature; and, as A. S. Turberville observed, the Lords still considered themselves the “hereditary counsellors” of the crown. The prestige of the peerage was such that well into George I's reign most leading ministers were, or sought to become, peers. Although over twice as large as a century earlier, the English House of Lords retained its exclusive character with a total membership of only 165-169 lay peers plus twenty-six bishops. Furthermore, thanks to William III's bipartisan creations, the upper house remained more or less evenly balanced between Whig and Tory sympathizers so that it acted as a counterweight to party fluctuations in the Commons. In addition, a number of peers exerted extensive control over elections to the Commons.The Irish House of Lords between 1692 and 1727 did not constitute so influential a part of the Irish government, yet in most respects it resembled its English counterpart. It too served as a high court, with all members (as in England) joining the law lords in considering and rendering judicial decisions. As counsellors to the lord lieutenant (viceroy) Irish peers and bishops were, in fact, more active since they provided about half the membership of the Irish privy council. Unlike the English privy council, that in Ireland was a relatively small functioning body, meeting regularly with the lord lieutenant to review all proposed legislation.


Author(s):  
Jacqueline Rose

Arguments about good and evil counsel were central to political argument in England on the eve of Civil War. This chapter explores counsel’s continuing significance for one genre of royalists who continued to use it after 1642 both to depress parliament’s claim to sovereignty and to refute calls from their own side for Catholic or Presbyterian–Covenanting alliances. Men like Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, wanted a prestigious privy council, yet consistently gave counsel outside it owing to their emphasis on the conciliar oath to provide secret, morally sound, advice. They complained about malign advisers, but also criticised monarchs for bad decisions. Seeking moral rather than institutional restraints on monarchy, they demonstrate how, in the mid-seventeenth century, institutional councils were less important than counsel —a diffuse element of friendship and sociability as well as a quotidian political activity.


1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Anthony R. J. S. Adolph

Horses by Papists are not to be ridden,But sure the Muses horse was ne’er forbidden.For in no rate-book was it ever found,That Pegasus was valued at five pound.John DrydenThese lines, written at the end of the seventeenth century, were a wry comment on the ban on the ownership of horses valued at over five pounds which was imposed upon Catholics from 1689 by the Whig ministry of William and Mary and which remained in force, in theory, until the abolition of the penal laws in 1844. Like most of the penal laws its application had all but ceased by the middle of the eighteenth century but in the period under consideration the Privy Council made considerable efforts to ensure the enforcement of the ban. It did so sometimes through a genuine fear of Jacobite uprising and subversion, on other occasions to stir up a renewed paranoia about popery (and thus encourage loyalty from all Protestants) and always to try to weaken the resolve of Catholics to retain their faith. Alexander Pope tells the story of Thomas Gage of Shirburn who had his team of Flemish coach horses seized by the authorities in 1715. Visiting London, he became so jealous of the sight of other people’s coach horses passing by that he apostatised then and there and took the Oath of Abjuration.


2004 ◽  
Vol 77 (198) ◽  
pp. 481-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dougal Shaw

Abstract In the seventeenth century, St. Giles' was Edinburgh's main church, located, where it still stands today, at the heart of the capital. Yet, during the course of protracted negotiations between 1628 and 1633, Charles and his Scottish privy council vacillated over the suitability of St. Giles' as a venue for the monarch's impending coronation. It remained the favourite in the running until a late stage, before ultimately losing out to Holyrood abbey. This article reconstructs and analyses the story of the church's rejection. It suggests that a caucus of influential Edinburgh citizens mounted a negative campaign to resist the church's selection, anticipating the Caroline court's favoured brand of religious ceremonial. An analysis of Edinburgh's political infrastructure, empowered by absentee monarchy, underpins this reading. It is further substantiated in the closing part of the article by an account of the events that took place at St. Giles' in the immediate aftermath of the coronation. The article concludes by discussing how this particular case study confirms and confounds different strands of early modern British historiography.


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