Bureaucrats - Can't live with them; can't ...


One more thing about Sir Armagil Waad (or Wade to use modern spelling) before we move on. I mentioned that he served in the government during the reigns of King Henry VIII and Queen Mary. I need to add that he also served under Edward VI after Henry's death in 1547.

He was working for a Lord Mautravers, then deputy governor in Calais, which was under British rule, in 1540 when the position of clerk to the governing council came open. Mautravers recommended Sir Armagil for the post, which he served in until 1546. 

Being clerk of the council, as best as I can make out, meant you were in charge of all the paperwork the council produced, a prodigious task given that government even back then ran on paper. About a year after returning to France, Sir Armagil became third clerk of the Privy Council. 

Now, in my head, when I hear the word "privy," I immediately think of the old-time word for the outhouse. Obviously this is not the meaning we're dealing with. No, the Privy Council -- the word "privy" meaning private -- served as the close group of the King's advisors who essentially ran the government. 

The Council comprised a varying number of members depending on who reigned at the time, and developed from other advisory councils appointed by previous English rulers. Although previous kings had "privy councils," meaning close advisors, King Henry VIII seems to be the one who turned the concept into an institution. 

When I say the Privy Council ran the government, you may well have asked, "Well, what about Parliament?" Although Parliament had been around for a few hundred years by this point, it didn't really have much authority beyond supporting the king's wishes.

That hadn't changed much by Henry's time. In fact most of the members of the Council were also members of one of Parliament's houses, and they conveyed the wishes of the king and the Council to Parliament to act on. 

The officers of the first formal Council was made up of the:

  • Lord chancellor of England
  • Lord high treasure of England
  • Great master of the king's household and lord president of the Council (same person)
  • Lord privy seal
  • Lord great chamberlain of England
  • Lord high admiral of England
  • Lord chamberlain of the king's household
  • Lord warden of the Cinque Ports and treasurer of the king's household (same person)
  • Comptroller of the king's household
  • Master of the king's horse
  • Vice chamberlain of the king's household
  • King's secretary (two people held this office)
  • Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations (whatever that is) and
  • Chancellor of the Court of First Fruits and Tenths
Whew. What a mouthful of titles. Reminded me of the first Downton Abbey movie where the king's butler insisted on being known as the "royal page of the back stairs."

The office of first clerk of the Council held prestige, and Sir Armagil eventually rose to that position during Edward VI's reign until Edward's death. When Mary became queen, he lost his office, probably because he supported the Protestant Elizabeth.

Here, as in Calais, the office of clerk had charge of the Council's paperwork -- letters, reports, petitions and the like -- which were mostly collected monthly, bundled, and put in a chest that accompanied the ruler whenever he/she traveled. When the chest filled up, the oldest bundles were removed and sent to the State Paper Office for storage. 

All this sounds incredibly boring, and probably was, but being a clerk meant that Sir Armagil gained a post in Parliament and possible his knighthood. Oh yeah, and his efforts and those of men like him helped preserve important pieces of English history. You may not like bureaucrats and paper pushers, but they are important in the grand scheme of things.

If you ever want to find out more than anyone other than, say, a historian might want to know about the Privy Council, its development, responsibilities, and staff check out this link: www.gale.com/intl/essays/david-j-crankshaw-tudor-privy-council-c-1540%E2%80%931603.

Image: Painting of Queen Elizabeth I's Privy Council meeting in 1604, accessed at tutor2u.net/history/reference/privy-council



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