The King's Councillors in Fifteenth–Century England

Abstract

In the late fourteenth century the kin' council in England came to have its own secretariat. The oldad hocarrangements for writing its documents were replaced by a paid ‘clerk of the council’ charged to write records of business done and preserving some sort of council archive; by the early fifteenth century it had become normal practice to record not only many decisions but the date and the names of those present at the time; and these arrangements continued unbroken through the fifteenth century and were considerably expanded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Sometimes, and this is the exception rather than the rule,somedecisions were entered in books or journals, such as the ‘Book of the Council’ covering the years 1421 to 1435, but the normal method of recording decisions was in the form of endorsements on draft documents or petitions, sometimes in the form of memoranda. In 1500 many thousands of these documents must have existed on the files of chancery and the privy seal, particularly the privy seal, where they had been sent to authorize the issue of letters giving effect to council decisions. Since then, unfortunately, most have been destroyed or dispersed. Some, in general the more striking items, were taken from the files by Sir Robert Cotton, came to the British Museum, and were published by Sir Harris Nicolas in the 1830‘s. The others, the more numerous, are in the Public Record Office in various collections, and are almost entirely unpublished.