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THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
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THE 
 
 KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 A STUDY OF THE GROWTH OF THE 
 CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION 
 
 R. H. GRETTON 
 
 s 
 
 FORMERLY DEMY OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "a modern history of the ENGLISH PEOPLE" 
 
 LONDON 
 G. BELL & SONS LTD. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction . . . . . . vii 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. First Traces of Departments : 1066-1377 . i 
 
 11. The Rise of the Secretaries : 1 377-1688 . 25 
 
 III. Ministerial Responsibility : 1688-1800 . . 68 
 
 IV. The Rise of the Modern System . . loi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The history of the Departments of Government, 
 though inevitably affected at certain points by the 
 main current of Enghsh history, provides nevertheless 
 a subject not unsuitable for treatment by itself. 
 Moreover, the light thus thrown from an angle, as 
 it were, upon the main current illuminates it by 
 emphasising certain tendencies of our constitutional 
 history and the particular character of our national 
 development. 
 
 For instance, the Government Departments kept 
 in active operation almost to our own day the principle 
 that officials charged with the work of government 
 are personal servants of the King. Theoretically 
 they are so now ; but until the end of the eighteenth 
 centmy they received their pay as officials of the 
 Royal Household ; their office premises were .stUl 
 considered to be " lodgings out of Court," for the 
 convenience of business grown too large to be trans- 
 acted with comfort under the Court roofs. The 
 following pages will show how naturally and inevitably 
 this had come about. Before a ParUament existed 
 there had had to be an Administration ; and only 
 the Royal Household could provide enough men to 
 carry on the necessary operations, of receiving and 
 checking the revenue, issuing commissions, registering 
 fines and inquisitions, superintending the King's 
 estates, and performing aU the mechanical work of 
 writing and sealing the various instruments by which 
 the King's commands were conveyed. When ParUa- 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 ment came into being, it could not possibly have 
 conceived of any mutual responsibility between itself 
 and those employed in these tasks. ParUament was 
 not concerned with government, but with the giving 
 of advice, or the exercise of a certain control, — 
 practically limited to a control of taxation, but 
 occasionally exerted in other directions. The carr5dng 
 out of commands, the enforcement of laws, devolved 
 upon the King, and those whom the King might 
 appoint. So clearly was this the case that, when 
 first legislation began to be directed to the maintenance 
 of a navy, there was no thought of providing for a 
 staff of pubUc servants to attend to naval require- 
 ments. What is true of the Navy tmder Richard II. 
 is true of the Army imder Charles II., and of the 
 Secretaries throughout their development. ParHament 
 had not had to face the beginning of the work of 
 administration ; and it never seemed to be aware 
 of the steady growth of that work until it was forced 
 to take account of it, at the end of the eighteenth 
 century, by the incessant demand for more money 
 for the revenue. The processes by which the House 
 of Commons slowly obtained in practice the allegiance 
 of Ministers, while repudiating in theory the sUghtest 
 responsibiUty for them or their administrative 
 existence, are dealt with in subsequent pages. It is 
 sufficient to remark here that the clearness with 
 which these facts come out in the course of investi- 
 gating the history of our Departments is of no little 
 assistance to our understanding of the famous struggle 
 between George III. and his Ministers in the latter 
 half of the eighteenth century. To modern genera- 
 tions, so accustomed to the association of Ministers 
 with Parliamentary majorities that earUer conditions 
 
INTRODUCTION ix 
 
 have been forgotten, George III.'s insistence on his 
 right to appoint his own Secretaries of State has the 
 aspect of an ingenious attempt to turn a mere theory 
 of our constitution into a political weapon. To 
 come upon that struggle in an investigation of the 
 growth of Government Departments is to realise 
 that it arose when the day was hardly past in which 
 a Secretary of State was as Httle tmder obligation 
 to Parliament as the King's Private Secretary is 
 to-day. And although, by the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, the position of Secretaries of 
 State had become very much the same from a con- 
 stitutional point of view as it is now, not untU 1848 
 did the last trace of their earlier standing disappear. 
 In that year Estimates for the salaries of the Civil 
 Service were laid before Parhament ; and the cost 
 of civil government was entirely removed from the 
 Consolidated funds. In other words, it became open 
 to PaxUament to survey every year the whole extent 
 of the service. 
 
 Another point of general interest is that a study 
 of this subject leads to the reflection that govern- 
 ment, as a continuous operation bearing on the 
 daily life of the ordinary inhabitant of these islands, 
 is little more than a himdred years old. From this 
 statement one must except, of course, the work of 
 the Treasury ; the collection and administration of 
 the revenue has been a continuous operation longer 
 than any other activity of official life. Apart from 
 the revenue, however, there is something very 
 incidental and, so to speak, fragmentary about the 
 way in which matters of home administration appear 
 in State records. So long as the King's peace was 
 kept and the King's taxes paid, a Secretary of State 
 
X INTRODUCTION 
 
 was mostly occupied, right up to the nineteenth 
 century, in dealing with foreign affairs. As Sir 
 William Anson has remarked : " The Secretaries of 
 the eighteenth century represented the Foreign Office 
 cut in two, with some miscellaneous business assigned 
 to that portion which dealt with the Southern pov/ers 
 of Europe." ^ Legislation on certain domestic affairs 
 can, of course, be found in the records of Paxhament 
 at every period of its existence. But it was always 
 spasmodic legislation. Take, for example, the various 
 statutes which were aimed at maintaining a moderate 
 level of market prices for the consumer ; the mere 
 fact that these statutes appear so often shows that 
 there was no real administration of them when 
 passed. They became dead letters because there 
 was no home government in omr modern sense. A 
 municipal corporation here and there might take 
 action, or a private person might give information 
 to the justices, and thus set in motion the statutes ; 
 but there was no organisation for carrying them 
 into effect. A company of merchants wishing to 
 trade together might obtain a Royal charter or Letters 
 Patent, if they could bring sufificient influence to 
 bear, or were inclined to pay a sufificient sum of 
 money. But there was no legal , machinery of easy 
 and general apphcation under which they could find 
 authority for their corporate existence. Again, there 
 was legislation on the subject of pauperism ; but 
 practically it amounted to very Httle save forbidding 
 people to be poor. There are two main characteristics 
 of domestic legislation before the nineteenth century. 
 Either it was widely and vaguely repressive, Uke 
 the early poor laws, and the laws against wholesale 
 ' Law and Custom of the Constitution, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 164. 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 trading (forbidden because of the command it gave 
 over prices charged to the consumer) ; or it was 
 impossibly assertive, Uke the EHzabethan Statute of 
 Labourers. In either case, the explanation to be 
 offered is the same. There was no steady departmental 
 administration of home affairs, and therefore, if 
 Parhament had any considerable grievance or difh- 
 culty to face, the only method open to it was to 
 pass a sweeping law and put within reach of the 
 King's justice the processes which had caused the 
 aggrieving circumstances to arise. Unless there was 
 some such grievance, moreover, there was no occasion 
 for domestic legislation. 
 
 Hence arises the further reflection that, whether 
 or no the country is governed on a truly democratic 
 basis, this change at least has come about since the 
 Reform Bill — that government nowadays means an 
 organisation for carrying on continuously all sorts 
 of accommodations, conveniences, amehorations of 
 the daily life, the daily work and business of the 
 public at large. The whole work of the Home Office, 
 the Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, 
 the Board of Agriculture, and the Board of Education, 
 and much even of the work of the Colonial Office and 
 the India Office is of this kind; and with the ex- 
 ception of so much of the duty of the Home Office 
 as concerns prison administration, it may all be said 
 to be work that never entered the purview of an 
 official of the State a hundred years ago. Democracy 
 may still be rather the theory than the fact of 
 administration in Great Britain, but since the Reform 
 Bill — if not because of it — the nation has taken to 
 looking after its own well-being, and considers this 
 activity an equal work of State with the direction 
 
xu INTRODUCTION 
 
 of foreign relations and the maintenance of armed 
 forces. 
 
 It may be gathered from these observations that, 
 strictly speaking, there are only two periods in the 
 history of the Departments of Government, the 
 division between them occurring at the time when 
 the salaries of the Secretaries of State, the officials 
 of the Treasmy, the Privy Council, and the Committee 
 of Council for Trade, together with the payment of 
 the staffs of their offices, were placed before ParUament 
 in Estimates, and no longer regarded, even formally, 
 as part of the monies provided for the maintenance 
 of Court officials. It will be more convenient, how- 
 ever, to take our subject in four main divisions : — 
 
 i. From the Norman Conquest to the accession 
 of Richard II., a period in which the depart- 
 ments were slowly forming themselves in the 
 Royal Household, but with imperfectly defined 
 duties, and httle responsibiUty. 
 ii. From 1377 to 1688, a period in which the 
 increase of the royal power steadily gave 
 importance and independence to the operations 
 of the departments. 
 
 iii. From 1688 to the end of the eighteenth century, 
 the period in which the responsibiUty of 
 Ministers of the Crown to ParUament was 
 gradually enforced. 
 
 iv. The reforms of the nineteenth century, which 
 finally created a public Civil Service out of the 
 old Civil Government grants to the Crown. 
 
THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS : 1066-1377 
 
 The many controversies as to the effect of the Norman 
 Conquest upon the national life of England have at 
 least this common groimd — that, whatever of local 
 organisation and customary law the new system may 
 have absorbed rather than abolished, the centralising 
 of government, which is of the essence of our subject, 
 was a Norman principle. We are therefore not called 
 upon to go back beyond the Conquest for our starting- 
 point. 
 
 It has been held by a distinguished authority that 
 the Curia of the Norman Kings, a " group of officials, 
 the holders of the new political offices," is the germ from 
 which have developed the Departments of Govern- 
 ment.i But this is only true in so far as the official 
 duties alone of some members of the Curia are re- 
 garded. The Curia soon became a kind of inner 
 Council of State ; and it is not to a Council that we 
 must look for the earliest appearance of our subject. 
 The distinguishing mark of the modern system of 
 government is that it consists in the conveyance of the 
 King's commands by certain constitutional processes ; 
 
 ' Anson, 11. i. 12. 
 
2 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 and that was never the duty of a Council. A Council 
 might advise, might formally associate itself with 
 acts, might initiate and even at a later period give 
 orders ; but it did not transmit orders. That duty 
 fell upon certain officials, who were during a great 
 part of our early history unimportant in standing, and 
 indistinguishable, for a long time in fact, and for some 
 time longer in theory, from the Crown itself. This 
 difference of function is very much to our purpose, 
 because the whole tendency of constitutional develop- 
 ment in England has been towards fixing responsi- 
 bility upon the Crown, and removing it from those 
 who were found to be practically impossible to bring to 
 book — the Lords of the Council. It is the history of 
 departments, not the history of executive power, that 
 concerns us ; and we must not be misled by the 
 consideration that the Ministers of to-day are the 
 executive of Government. It is true that executive 
 responsibility can be found to reside largely, during 
 the Angevin, Plantagenet, and Tudor reigns, in the 
 Lords of the Council, and cannot be traced in the 
 duties of those whose official titles make them the 
 forerunners of our modern Ministers. But the Lords 
 of the Council lost power ; and the fact that this 
 ebbed from the Council's hands, and passed into 
 another channel, implies that all the time there was 
 developing, alongside the Council, a kind of functionary 
 who was to be capable in due course of becoming the 
 new channel of power. 
 
 This development may be seen from another point 
 of view. If the Curia had been the true germ of our 
 Departments we should expect to find them existing 
 as appendages, first of the Curia, then of the Privy 
 Council, and then of Committees of the Council. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 3 
 
 Instead of that, we find them taking shape so dis- 
 tinctly clear of the Council that, as the latter weakens, 
 the former grow more important. The very reason 
 why Cabinet government was able to oust the Privy 
 Council so quietly from its position, was that the 
 executive machinery existed independently of the 
 Council. When the nominal wielders of this machinery 
 were men of force, the Council had no hold at all upon 
 power. There will therefore be more profit than 
 might at first sight appear in giving attention rather to 
 the unimportant forertmners of modern Ministers than 
 to the important people who exercised in earlier 
 times so many of their functions. 
 
 The Original Secretaryship 
 
 We find these minor functionaries existing first as 
 subordinates of two of the great officers of the Norman 
 system. The three great officers were the Justiciar, 
 the Chancellor, and the Treasurer.^ The duties of the 
 Justiciar need not concern us much ; for, since they 
 consisted in representing the King when the latter was 
 absent from the kingdom, or merely from a CoimcU 
 (or, as in the early years of Henry III., during a 
 minority) they would not be likely to develop depart- 
 mental activities different in kind from those develop- 
 ing under the Sovereign. The two other officers were 
 the King's channels of action — the Chancellor in 
 matters of general administration and justice, and the 
 Treasurer in matters of finance. The Chancellor was 
 
 1 Anson, ii. i. lo. 
 
4 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 the King's secretary, and as such held the Seal. He 
 was in close personal attendance on the King, and was 
 responsible for the form given to every act of the 
 King that required to be recorded. From his duties 
 most of the Departments of Government have issued ; 
 but under the Norman Kings his work was too varied 
 and too little organised to give us any definite starting- 
 point. 
 
 The Exchequer, the First Department 
 
 The Treasurer, on the other hand, is foimd from 
 the earliest date in charge of a department. The 
 revenue was a matter which had to receive continuous 
 and organised supervision ; and was also a subject not 
 needing detailed authorisations by the King. M achinery 
 is therefore at once set up. At its head was the Court 
 of the Exchequer of Account, consisting of the 
 Chancellor, the Treasurer, and a board of great 
 councillors, the Barons of the Exchequer. The actual 
 receipt of revenue was in the hands of the Treasurer 
 and the King's Chamberlain. It must be noted that 
 for some centuries after the first organisation of govern- 
 ment by the Normans it is impossible to trace any dis- 
 tinction between the King's use of money for what we 
 should now call his Household, and what we should 
 now call public administration. Government being 
 but slowly divided into spheres, justice, patronage, 
 naval and military affairs, foreign relations, were all 
 subjects for clerks in the King's Household, who looked 
 for their maintenance to the same paymasters as those 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 5 
 
 whom we should now call Household officials looked 
 to. Hence the association of the King's Chamberlain 
 with the Treasurer. 
 
 The revenue was so wholly in the King's hands that 
 money was usually paid into the King's Chamber, 
 and accumulated there under the charge of the 
 Chamberlain and the Cofferer. But at the same 
 time the Exchequer had an office of its own, a fact 
 which emphasises its priority among the departments. 
 Whether it was separately housed from the very first 
 is uncertain ; but since there is record, as early as 
 1155, of a payment for " repairing the house of the 
 Exchequer," ^ it is quite likely that the department 
 was given an office at the time of its formation. It 
 would consist of a house within the royal precincts at 
 Westminster. The reason for allotting a permanent 
 office would be, no doubt, that the collection of revenue 
 called for regularity ; and regularity would be impos- 
 sible of attainment if the officials of the Exchequer 
 moved about with the Court, Uke the other great 
 officials. Moreover, in this sphere of government, 
 earlier than in any other, papers would require to be 
 preserved. The taxable capacity of all places in the 
 kingdom would need to be kept on record ; and the 
 rolls, of each year would be a check upon the pay- 
 ments of the next. Hence the Exchequer became 
 the first depository of archives ; and gradually came 
 to serve for other documents than financial ones 
 alone.* 
 
 ' Pipe Roll, 31 Henry I., p. 4. 
 
 ■ See, e.g., the case of the Papal Bulls on p. 11. The preserva- 
 tion of Domesday Book may be advanced as an additional argument 
 for believing that the Exchequer had an office from the beginning ; 
 it would have been less likely to survive in any other place than a 
 permanent office. 
 
6 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 We shall be somewhat hampered throughout the 
 discussion of our subject by the fact that the service 
 of the Crown was for so long regarded actually, and 
 not merely in the formal sense of to-day, as the service 
 of an individual. Its details are therefore involved 
 in an obscurity only a little less dense than that 
 surrounding the lives of private persons of the early 
 stages of our history. The position of the Sovereign 
 led naturally to a certain publicity in even his minor 
 affairs, but it is largely on accidental references that 
 we have to rely. There was no public service of 
 government in the modern sense, and consequently 
 no responsibihty for making public the numbers, the 
 salaries, the duties, of any of the officials of govern- 
 ment. They were part of the establishment of a vast 
 household. A nobleman of any importance would 
 have his chamberlain, his esquires and gentlemen, his 
 treasurer, his steward, his secretary. The Sovereign 
 had these officials, with the difference that the estate 
 they administered was the kingdom. But that was a 
 difference in degree, not in kind ; and several hundred 
 years were to elapse before it even began to be a 
 difference in kind. For the early centuries after the 
 Conquest we have a service quite as privately organised 
 as that any great subject lord, managing what we 
 should now regard as pubUc affairs. 
 
 The King's Clerks, an Early Civil Service 
 
 However, the difference in degree sufficies to give 
 us a starting-point. It is clear that the two principal 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 7 
 
 officials of the King— the Chancellor and the Treasurer 
 —must have required a staff of clerks, and it would 
 seem probable that from the first the position of these 
 clerks approximated to that of an organised service. 
 There certainly existed late in the twelfth century a 
 class of men in the Royal Household who were described 
 as " King's clerks," and were employed in various 
 subordinate duties. They appear to have become by 
 that time an estabhshed profession. In the Pipe Roll 
 for 1189-90 is an entry of a payment of ;^55 by the 
 Archdeacon and Provost of Beverley as a gift to the 
 King " in order that they may be in the guardianship 
 and protection of the King, like his royal clerks." 1 This 
 seems to argue that the clerks had a position of long 
 standing and recognised privileges. It would, indeed, 
 be no more than reasonable to suppose that they came 
 into existence together with the great officers. The 
 Chancellor and the Treasurer would at once require 
 men to draw up and copy out documents for signature 
 and sealing, and to keep the rolls of receipts and 
 payments at the Exchequer. Now since these two 
 officers, living and having their board at Court, were 
 supplied with their attendants and servants from among 
 the royal retinue, it is most likely that their clerks also 
 were provided for them, and that the " King's clerks " 
 formed from the beginning a grade in the household of 
 the Norman Kings. This arrangement would be ad- 
 vantageous to both sides. The Chancellor and the 
 Treasurer would not be responsible for the support of 
 the clerks they employed ; and the clerks on their side 
 would be free from anxiety as to the possible fall and 
 dismissal of their superiors, and would have a fair 
 expectation of continuous employment. 
 
 1 Pipe Roll, I Richard I., p. 78. 
 
8 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 But^ we have not to rely entirely upon suppositions 
 for proof of the early existence of a grade of royal 
 clerks. There are other evidences throughout the 
 twelfth century, though of a rather fragmentary kind. 
 Some, for instance, are provided by the signatures of 
 witnesses to charters. Thiis a charter of Henry I., of 
 the year 1107 or 1108, bears the names of Richard de 
 Capella and John of Bayeux.^ Richard de Capella 
 is said by Eadmer to have had charge of the Great 
 Seal under the Chancellor,* which, as we shall see later,^ 
 was a duty allotted to responsible individuals among 
 the royal clerks. John of Bayeux was a natural son of 
 Odo, the Conqueror's half-brother ; and the fact that 
 he was a King's clerk * implies that this position was in 
 some sense a privileged way of obtaining a livehhood. 
 Other evidences can be found in the Exchequer Rolls. 
 The clerks as a rule do not appear to have drawn any 
 regular payment ; their lodging and board at Court 
 were the provision made for them, and for money they 
 would seem to have depended on fees, as they did 
 later. Now arid then, however, as in the case of 
 " Roger the clerk " in 1130-31,^ and " Aimeric the 
 clerk " in 1155,* payments are recorded in such 
 context as to lead to the conclusion that the recipients 
 were King's clerks. 
 
 There is also a curious entry in the earliest document 
 of regulations for the Royal Household, which distinctly 
 implies the existence of a staff of clerks under the 
 Chancellor. This document is part of The Black Book 
 
 ' Pipe Roll Society Publications, vol. x. p. 4. 
 ' Eadmer (Rolls Series), p. 290. ' See, e.g., pp. 13, 16. 
 
 * See Mr. J. H. Round's notes to this charter in the Pipe Roll 
 volume just quoted. 
 
 ' Pipe Roll, 31 Henry T., edition of 1844, p. 150. 
 ' Ibid., i Henry II., edition of 1844, p. 114. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 9 
 
 of the Exchequer, and would appear to belong to the 
 reign of Henry II. It is a statement of the wages and 
 diets allowed to various officials. The first official 
 mentioned is the Chancellor, and immediately following 
 him is " Magister Scriptorii," the Master of the Writing 
 Room. Clearly this functionary miost have been Head 
 Clerk to the Chancellor, with a body of clerks working 
 under his eye. He has tenpence a day, besides diet, 
 the Chancellor's salary being five shillings a day. 
 
 This same entry contains a reference to one 
 " Robertus de Sigillo,"— Robert of the Seal, who was 
 apparently Magister Scriptorii at an earlier date. 
 Such a description gives support to Eadmer's account 
 of Richard de Capella. 
 
 For the most part the clerks in the early days would 
 have been little more than scribes and copyists. But 
 with the settlement of the kingdom and the spread of 
 the King's justice, and the growth of the complicated 
 system of pardons, protections, commissions, etc., by 
 which the Exchequer was aided, the amount of writing 
 to be done would increase, and at the same time 
 formulas would expand and become elaborated. 
 Since the position of a King's clerk, with its compara- 
 tive security of livelihood and prospects of advance- 
 ment, would naturally attract capable men, the 
 increasing complication of business would fall into 
 hands adequate to deal with it ; and probably the 
 tendency of certain necessary acts of government to 
 become formalised would be actually hastened by 
 the existence of this class of experienced clerks. 
 
 By the time that we have much documentary evid- 
 ence of their duties, the capability of the clerks is 
 obvious, from the nature of the work they could be 
 called upon to undertake. They suppUed some of 
 
10 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 the earliest ambassadors ; it was a frequent occur- 
 rence for King's clerks to be entrusted with missions 
 to foreign courts. One of the first references to the 
 clerks in the Patent Rolls is in letters patent of 1218 
 granting a sum of twenty marks yearly to " ova beloved 
 and faithful clerk, Philip de Hadham ; " and he 
 received this salary because he was engaged on the 
 King's business at Rome.^ Again, there were clerks 
 as well as high officials at the court of the Exchequer 
 of Account. In the Dialogus de Scaccario we find 
 places allotted to the Chancellor's clerk, the clerk of 
 the Chamberlain, and the Head Clerk of the Ex- 
 chequer. 
 
 Separation between Chancellorship and 
 Secretaryship 
 
 But a more important fact is that by this time the 
 staff of clerks was being drawn upon to fulfil duties 
 which had originally been discharged by the Chancellor. 
 He was becoming more and more occupied with the 
 administration of justice, and could no longer act 
 efficiently as the King's Secretary. At what period 
 this began to happen cannot be definitely known ; it 
 is not impossible, when we consider how much the 
 Chancellor was responsible for, that from the very 
 first he had had occasionally to be replaced by a clerk 
 in attendance on the King. It is rather curious — 
 and the fact has no little bearing on the development 
 of our Constitution — that, as the Chancellor fell away 
 
 1 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1216-25, p. 154. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS ii 
 
 from secretarial duties, no one should have thought 
 of these duties as constituting a new office of State. 
 The explanation probably is that, justice being in 
 the hands of the Chancellor and finance in those of 
 the Treasurer, there was little else of continuous 
 executive government (if the phrase be allowed) 
 which would have offered any prospect of profit or 
 power. The Barons and their fellows seemed to 
 themselves, no doubt, to have a more valuable position 
 as great Barons than they would have as officials of 
 the Crown ; to transmit the King's commands would 
 have been work having little attraction for men who 
 could modify those commands, or even dictate what 
 they should be. Consequently those duties of the 
 King's clerks, which were subsequently to undergo 
 such astonishing development, make their first appear- 
 ance very humbly, and with so little sign of change 
 that it is extremely difficult to trace the beginnings. 
 
 There is a certain entry in the Red Book of the Ex- 
 chequer which might be interpreted as an indication 
 that as early as the reign of King John, a clerk was 
 practically in the position of Secretary to the King. 
 The entry is to the effect that in 1315 John de Sandale, 
 Chancellor at that date, deposited in the Exchequer, 
 for preservation among the archives, a number of 
 Papal BuUs of the period of King John. There were 
 twenty-four of them ; and it is noted that " they were 
 found among the memoranda of John Fraunceys, 
 formerly a King's clerk." ^ The fact that a King's 
 clerk had in his possession such a number of important 
 documents, looks as if he must have been in some 
 position of trust about the King's person, as a secretary 
 would be. If he had been merely in attendance on 
 
 * Red Book, edited by Hubert Hall, p. 1642. 
 
12 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 the Chancellor of the day, the Bulls would have been 
 deposited in the proper place at the proper time. 
 
 Some support for the view that this is not too early 
 a date for the beginnings of the office of Secretary, 
 may be found in the existence, at " the very beginning 
 of the thirteenth century," ^ of a second seal. If this 
 " lesser seal, in the shape of a Private or Secret Seal," 
 had been found necessary, it may be assumed that 
 the Great Seal and its keeper, the Chancellor, had 
 become removed from immediate attendance on the 
 King, and the conveyance of his will by them had 
 stiffened into constitutional formality. Before long 
 the Privy Seal in its turn was to be restricted in use 
 by formalities ; but at first it was most likely at the 
 King's disposal entirely, representing his will in a 
 personal rather than a constitutional sense ; and the 
 clerk in charge of it would therefore probably be in 
 the position of a Secretary.^ 
 
 By the date of the Dialogus de Scaccario there is a 
 different kind of indication that something like a 
 secretaryship may have been growing up. Among 
 those mentioned as sitting ia the Exchequer of Account 
 are " quidam a rege missi." The rather casual nature 
 of this phrase may fairly lead to the opinion that these 
 were not persons of importance ; and they may have 
 been some of the King's clerks, sent by him as his 
 secretaries to take part in the busiaess. Another 
 slight indication may be gathered from the fact that 
 during Henry III.'s minority the Justiciar had a clerk 
 
 ' Hall, Formula Book of Diplomatic Documents, p. 91. 
 
 " As late as 1391 a King's clerk was Keeper of the Privy Seal ; see 
 Hall, op. cit., p. 105, quoting a Signet Letter addressed, " A notre 
 trescher clerc, Mester Edmond Stafford, Gardein de nostre Prive 
 Seal." 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 13 
 
 attending on him in the capacity of secretary,^ and 
 was not dependent for that service on the Chancellor 
 or clerks attending the Chancellor. 
 
 The King's Secretary 
 
 Half-way through the thirteenth century we come 
 upon definite evidence that the change had quietly 
 taken place. The attendance of a clerk or clerks 
 upon the King had so entirely replaced the old secre- 
 tarial duties of the Chancellor that a new title appears. 
 John Maunsell is described as " Secretarius noster," 
 in the commission for negotiating an alliance with 
 Spain in 1253 ; and again in 1254, when he is em- 
 powered as " Secretary " to give assent to the marriage 
 of Prince Edward with Eleanor of Castille.* His 
 position about the King is also seen in his being put 
 in custody of the Great Seal in 1247 ^^^ 1249.^ He 
 may have been succeeded as Secretary by Henry de 
 Wengham, who had custody of the Seal in 1255, and 
 was one of the executors of Henry III.'s wUl.* In 
 June 1258 these two are mentioned as members of 
 the King's Council.^ Moreover, the advancement they 
 obtained, Maunsell as Chancellor of London and 
 Provost of Beverley, and Wengham as Bishop of 
 London, shows that the secretaryship was already a 
 post not without distinction. 
 
 We must not, however, be misled by the use of the 
 
 » Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1216-25, p. 597' 
 
 2 Feeder^, i. i. 177, 185. ' Nicolas, Obs., p. 11. 
 
 * Fcedem, i. i. 213. * Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1247-58, p. 637. 
 
14 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 word " secretary " or the mention of the Council into 
 thinking of the change that had taken place as a great 
 one. For a hundred years or more after this date there 
 is little virtue in the new title, and it is not always even 
 used. No more had happened than that one of the 
 clerks had been singled out by the King to be usually 
 in attendance for writing documents and taking 
 instructions. It is very doubtful if the post can be 
 regarded as a distinct one at all. It was so easily 
 abandoned when the King wanted a man to send on 
 some special mission abroad or at home,^ or when the 
 Secretary himself saw a tempting opportunity of 
 Church preferment, that we are prevented from think- 
 ing of the office as a fixed one. It would seem that the 
 King merely found it more convenient (as he naturally 
 would) to be in the habit of employing as a rule one 
 particular member of his staff of clerks ; but, if he 
 needed that clerk for other work, he fell back on 
 another for the writing duties. 
 
 In the reign of Edward I. there is again a King's 
 clerk who is referred to as Secretary and a member of 
 the Council. He was Francis Accursii, " ConsUiarius 
 Famiharis et Secretarius noster." * A man of dis- 
 tinction in learning, Doctor of Civil Law, and formerly 
 a student at the University of Bologna, he received a 
 grant of forty marks yearly at the Exchequer " in 
 consideration of his past services and of future services 
 which he has bound himself to do. " * He, hke Maunsell, 
 acted as an ambassador ; in 1275 he is proctor for 
 
 ^ Maunsell, besides the commissions already noted, had one iu 
 1257 as justiciar for the city of London on one of the occasions when 
 London was "taken into the King's hand" by suspension of the 
 mayor and sheriffs (Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, i. go). 
 
 ' Fcedera, i. ii. 173. » Cal Pat. Rolls, 1272-81, p. 460. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 15 
 
 the King at the Court of France in some business then 
 pending ; ^ and in 1278 he goes to Rome with another 
 man on the King's affairs.^ His forty marks yearly 
 was evidently the formal salary, for in 1379 i* appears 
 that he was in receipt of a sum of more than £100 for 
 " his maintenance in the King's service." * 
 
 Two of Accursii's successors were John de Vescy 
 and Antony Bek, who are referred to in a charter of 
 Edward II. as " Domini Regis patris nostri Secre- 
 tarios." * It is not quite clear from this phrase whether 
 they were Secretaries together, or in succession ; but 
 it is not unlikely that they acted together. The office 
 was comparatively so unimportant in standing, and 
 yet at times no doubt so pressed with work, that two 
 of the clerks may have shared the duties. On the 
 other hand it may be remarked that the name of de 
 Vescy — the first name of a man of family that we meet 
 in the list of Secretaries — suggests that the office, 
 however imcertain in standing, was not without 
 possibilities of dignity. The description of another 
 of Accursii's successors, John de Benstede, as " ipsius 
 Domini Regis Secretarius," * also suggests that the 
 office was regarded as a confidential one. 
 
 Duties and Emoluments of King's Clerks 
 
 At this same period we begin to have a clearer view 
 of the extent to which the grade of King's clerks was 
 
 » Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1272-81, p. 94. » Ibid., p. 278. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 374. • Fcedera, i. ii. 208. 
 
 » Ibid., I. iii. 216. 
 
i6 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 drawn upon as a kind of Civil Service. Thus in 1275 
 " Master Thomas Bek, King's clerk," is Keeper of the 
 Wardrobe, and as such has control of certain expenses 
 of the Household.1 Again, Master W. de Perton, 
 King's clerk, is clearly in the position of a modern 
 President of the Board of Works ; he has a writ of 
 aid in 1277 for going to the counties of Lincoln and 
 Leicester to obtain with the counsel of the sheriffs as 
 many masons and carpenters as he can get, and to 
 conduct them whither he has been enjoined.^ Another 
 interesting development may be seen foreshadowed in 
 the position of John de Kirkeby, also a King's clerk. 
 In 1276, and in various later years, he received the 
 Great Seal, on the Chancellor's going out of the 
 kingdom ; ^ but he is nowhere described, like Maimsell, 
 as the King's Secretary. The Seal was deposited under 
 Kirkeby's own seal at the Wardrobe,* and on the 
 return of the King and Chancellor from abroad in 1279 
 Kirkeby and Bek, Keeper of the Wardrobe, dehver the 
 Seal to the Chancellor.^ It is probable that in Kirkeby 
 we have the first approach to the position of Clerk of 
 the Crown, who remains to this day the chief official 
 of the Lord Chancellor. He appears in these instances 
 to be rather acting for the Chancellor than for the 
 King ; and this is supported by other references to 
 him. Thus he goes on commissions of oyer and 
 terminer ; ^ he inquires into petitions for pardons,' a 
 duty especially devolving upon the Chancellor, and the 
 origin of the Chancellor's supremacy to-day in Equity ; 
 and agreements for the alienation of land are entered 
 
 ^ Cal. Pat.-RoUs, 1272-81, pp. 99, 280. 
 
 » Ibid., p. 213. » Ibid., p. 136. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 259. 6 Ibid., p. 316. 
 
 • Ibid., pp. 181, 433, etc. ' Ibid., p. 328, 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 17 
 
 into before him.^ It is dangerous at this early date 
 to be too ready to formalise the positions of King's 
 clerks ; they seem, for instance, to have been sent 
 somewhat indiscriminately on judicial commissions ; 
 but taking Kirkeby's duties together we may aUow 
 ourselves to detect the first crystallising of a distinct 
 office. 
 
 With the reign of Edward II. we get some light upon 
 the way in which the increasing staff of King's clerks 
 was provided for. Being generally men of good 
 education but modest origins, they would be for the 
 most part in Orders ; and the Patent Rolls of this 
 period contain numerous grants to King's clerks of 
 Church preferments, such as prebends, and deaneries. ^ 
 At the same time the systeni of fees would provide 
 for many clerks in the more legal parts of the business 
 of government ; a grant for life of the office of chiro- 
 grapher before the Justices of the Bench was evidently 
 a valuable grant, and, as it is not accompanied by any 
 warrant to the Exchequer, it is to be supposed that its 
 value resided in the fees.' So would the value of the 
 office of Keeper of the Hanaper of the Chancery ; and 
 that of the recognisance of debts for a port town.* 
 Again, one of the King's clerks is appointed " escheator 
 on this side Trent." * The Keeper of the Wardrobe 
 is still a King's clerk, and he has other King's clerks 
 as clerks in his department.* Some King's clerks are 
 
 » Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1272-81, p. 266. 
 
 » e.g. Ibid., pp. 375, 114, 534. etc. 
 
 » Ibid., 1313-17, p. 14. The duties of the chirographer were the 
 making out and engrossing of the indentures or chirographs of 
 fines ; see Report from Select Committee on Sinecure Offices (1834), 
 Appendix, p. 8. 
 
 *Ibid.,p.T. ' /6»rf., p. 647. 
 
 • Ibid., pp. 348, 306. 
 2 
 
i8 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 specifically described during this reign as " members 
 of the King's Household " ; ^ this may perhaps mean 
 that those of the clerks who were not attached to any 
 office from which they derived fees received main- 
 tenance at Court tinder this description. 
 
 The office of King's Secretary under Edward II. 
 presents some puzzUng aspects. It might, as we have 
 seen in the case of Francis Accursii, and that of John 
 Maunsell, be associated with the work of an Envoy. 
 But for some time to come the post, merely as a post, 
 is obviously a minor one at Court. Thus William de 
 Melton, who had been King's Secretary in 1308, has 
 become Keeper of the Wardrobe in 1315.^ On the 
 other hand, the rank of King's clerk might lead to the 
 highest offices. John de Sandale, King's clerk, was 
 Chancellor in 1314, and at the same time was acting as 
 Treasurer.* Yet even in such a document as an 
 indemnity for a bond for repayment of a loan to the 
 King, in which he appears with great lords like Aymer 
 de Valence and Hugh le Despenser, the description 
 " King's clerk " is all that is attached to his name.* 
 Moreover, the personal seal of a King's clerk had 
 validity ; we have seen the Great Seal deposited under 
 the seal of one of them ; and money could be drawn 
 from the Exchequer for officials on the King's business 
 on the authority of a Bill of the Wardrobe sealed with 
 the seal of the King's clerk who was Keeper of the 
 Wardrobe.^ 
 
 It would seem, from certain forms observed in the 
 Patent RoUs of this reign, that a further step in the 
 coping with pubUc business was being taken by the 
 
 ' Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1313-17, pp. 163, 170, etc. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 209. 3 Ibid., pp. 114, 209, 333. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 102. 6 Ibid., p. 45. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 19 
 
 beginning of a sort of countersigning of the Royal 
 Sign Manual bj? the clerks. At least, that is a per- 
 missible way of regarding the issue of warrants, grants, 
 etc., " by the King on the information of " one of the 
 King's clerks. There is the more justification for 
 regarding this as a sort of countersigning, when it is 
 observed that only a very small number of the clerks' 
 names appear in this way, and the same ones appear 
 over and over again. Before the middle of the next 
 reign it is even possible to discern that these clerks 
 had more or less regular spheres of duties. Thus 
 we find the business of the King's works, the mustering 
 of workmen, etc., usually " on the information of 
 John de Bello Campo " ; preferments in the Church, 
 licenses in mortmain, etc., usually " on the information 
 of Thomas de Brembre " ; legal commissions, pardons, 
 etc., usually " on the information of Richard de 
 Norwico," The spheres are not quite distinct ; but 
 there is enough regulcirity to make the exceptions 
 noticeable. 
 
 Chancery finally Separated 
 
 Meanwhile the Chancellor's functions had been 
 departing finally from the secretarial duties which had 
 originally belonged to his position. Under Edward III. 
 we find the Chancery a fully-grown judicial department. 
 The staff are still described as " King's clerks " ; but 
 from the peculiarly precise nature of the references 
 to them — " the King's clerks in the Chancery of 
 England of the first (or the second) form," ^ — as well 
 
 ' Cat, Pat. Rolls, 1354-58, p. 432- 
 
20 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 as from the work in which they are engaged and the 
 appointments they usually receive, it is fairly clear 
 that by this time the clerks of the Chancery formed 
 a separate, self-contained body. They had ceased to 
 be reckoned with the general Household, and were 
 provided for in " the expenses of the household of the 
 Chancery." ^ Before long their severance from execu- 
 tive functions is further emphasised by the description 
 of them no longer as " Krag's clerks " but as " clerks 
 of the Crown in Chancery " ; ^ and the duties and 
 emoluments of the chief among them were specifically 
 defined. We may from this point regard their situation 
 as belonging rather to the history of the Judicature 
 than to that of Government Departments in the visual 
 sense. 
 
 The Exchequer completely Departmentalised 
 
 In another direction also the change in the duties 
 of the Chancellor had had its effect. It tended to 
 departmentalise the Exchequer. The Chancellor no 
 longer sat in the Exchequer of Accoimt ; ^ and, as 
 the office of Justiciar had disappeared, the Treasurer 
 remained the only one of the three great Norman 
 officials who stiU performed duties at the Exchequer. 
 In other words, the department is left to its proper 
 head. It is true that the Board (if we may so describe 
 it) of great Councillors, the Barons of the Exchequer, 
 still survived. But on their side also changes were 
 
 ' Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1354-58, p. 357. 
 
 ' Ibia., 1413-16, p. 12. » Anson, 11. i. 174. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 31 
 
 taking place, and their relation to the department was 
 being releixed. It may be said in general of this period 
 that jurisdiction was a more profitable source of fees 
 than administration, and was also on the whole a more 
 gratifying exercise of power. Now the Barons of the 
 Exchequer had necessarily had juridical functions 
 for the trying of revenue cases ; and they preferred 
 this side of their duties to that which concerned the 
 auditing of accounts. By ingenious extensions of 
 its functions the Court of Exchequer had enough 
 business to transact to make the Barons law officers, 
 rather than Treasury officials, and the business of the 
 Treasury fell from this time onwards into what might 
 be called strictly departmental hands. 
 
 The change is marked by the promulgation in 1328 
 of The Ordinance of the Exchequer.^ A piece of re- 
 organisation and regulation of this magnitude implies 
 that a new state of affairs had arisen, demanding new 
 machinery. In several branches an increase of the 
 number of clerks is ordered ; special clerks are to be 
 appointed to superintend the sections of the depart- 
 ment which dealt with fines, with forfeited lands, etc. ; 
 and in all branches minute instructions are laid down 
 for the conduct of revenue business.^ The natural 
 deduction is that the King felt some necessity for 
 replacing the control of the Chancellor and Barons 
 by setting up an automatic system. As long as the 
 Sovereign had representatives at the Exchequer who 
 
 • Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 848. 
 
 • One of the regulations, forbidding clerks of the Exchequer to 
 act as attorneys in any plea, may be noted for two reasons. First, 
 it supports the view expressed above that judicial business in con- 
 nection with the revenue offered a considerable source of money- 
 making ; and secondly, this regulation would further the severance 
 between the executive department and its judicial excrescence. 
 
22 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 were there not primarily for financial purposes, but 
 for purposes of general policy, he could, so to speak, 
 overlook the various processes. But when those 
 representatives ceased, in different degrees, to be 
 active in finance, confidence in the Exchequer could 
 only be secured by making sure that it was working 
 on stipulated lines. This is especially seen in the 
 provision for audit. " Four sufficient men with their 
 clerks " were to be appointed under one of the Barons 
 of the Exchequer to audit the accounts of the various 
 persons, such as the Keeper of the Wardrobe, the 
 Chamberlain,, etc., who had the power of issuing 
 warrants for payments from the Exchequer. It is 
 also seen in the rule that the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer by his clerks is to make counter-rolls of the 
 expenditure. The mention of the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer at this date shows that the department 
 already had a separate seal, since the Chancellor was 
 appointed to control the use of the seal.^ This is 
 one more sign of the complete severance of the Lord 
 Chancellor from the Department. 
 
 First Civil Ofificials for the Armed Forces 
 
 We have thus arrived at a stage at which it is possible 
 to trace fairly clearly the outlines of two purely 
 official departments of government — the Secretaryship 
 and the Treasury. We may now add the first signs 
 
 1 Anson (ii. i. 174) dates this change at the end of the fourteenth 
 century ; but it is clear from the Ordinance that it must be placed 
 as early as 1328. 
 
FIRST TRACES OF DEPARTMENTS 23 
 
 of two more of capital importance — the permanent 
 civil staffs of the armed forces of the Crown. Under 
 Edward III. appear a " clerk of the ships, galleys, 
 barges, balingers, and other the King's vessels " ; ^ 
 and a " clerk of the Wardrobe, of armour, shot, 
 gunpowder, etc." * These are the two officials who 
 are to develop into the Comptroller of the Navy 
 and the Master-General of the Ordnance, and ulti- 
 mately into the Admiralty and the War Office. 
 Their titles show that they were both drawn from 
 the ordinary staff of King's clerks, merely taking 
 over certain special duties, as the King's Secretary 
 had done. 
 
 It has, of course, to be remembered that there was 
 no such thing as a standing army or armed naval force. 
 The army was raised as it was required by feudal 
 service, and later by musters under Commissions of 
 Array for each county ; and the armed naval force 
 was a proportion of these musters put on board ship.' 
 The upkeep of the King's castles fell originally on the 
 feudal lords, and, later, on the different localities, 
 which were not infrequently glad, for their own sake, 
 to keep such defences in repair. But it is obvious 
 that, although the personnel could thus be provided 
 as need arose, and the fortresses kept ready, yet 
 cannon must have had to be kept and accounted for, 
 some store of powder and shot accumulated, and 
 armoiir held in store. One of the King's clerks would 
 come in time to make tally of such munitions ; and 
 as possessions of the King's they would come under 
 
 ' Nicolas, Royal Navy, vol. 11., Appendix, p. 475. 
 » Ibid., p. 478. 
 
 » As late as the reign of Henry VIII., the navy was generally 
 called " the ships in the King's Majesty's army on the sea." 
 
24 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 the general head of the Wardrobe.i Hence the 
 appointment of a clerk of the Wardrobe to take charge 
 of these matters. 
 
 In the case of the navy, although the personnel was 
 equally provided as need arose, and even ships were 
 collected in an emergency by a sort of impressment of 
 vessels in or near the ports, and although the provision 
 of guns and ammunition did not need to be made 
 separately for the navy, yet there would be istores 
 of rope, sails, etc., to be accumulated for repairing 
 damaged ships. Moreover, since ships were less 
 stable than fortresses, it would be desirable to keep a 
 few with their sailing complements in commission. 
 Hence the necessity for the appointment of a Clerk of 
 the Ships. From the time of Richard II. there wcis 
 a statute, constantly renewed, allotting certain dues 
 on foreign wines, woad for dyeing, etc., to the main- 
 tenance of a navy — the first specific appropriation 
 of national revenues. This would be principally for 
 acquiring ships and fitting them out. The wages of 
 crews appear in Wardrobe accounts ; * and special 
 rewards (such as Henry V. gave to the masters of his 
 ships) were paid at the Exchequer by warrants under 
 the Great Seal.* 
 
 1 One of the items in an account rendered by John de Sleaford, 
 clerk of the Wardrobe in 1372, runs : " Found in the said private 
 wardrobe of the king, two great guns of copper" (Nicolas, Royal 
 Navy, II., Appendix, p. 477). 
 
 ^ Nicolas, Royal Navy, 11., Appendix, p. 475. ' Ibid., p. 514. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES : 1377-1688 
 
 The importance of the next three hundred years in 
 constitutional history is reflected in the changing 
 status of the King's Secretary. Firstly, he ceeises to 
 be entirely a private servant of the King ; as the 
 Crown increased its prerogative after the weakening 
 of the great lords in the Wars of the Roses, the Secretary 
 is brought within range of the perpetual watchfulness 
 of the Commons, and from the occasional charges 
 against holders of the office it is clear that they were 
 in a position which enabled them to take part in 
 political movements, and to be of value to the plotters 
 of such movements. Secondly, the Secretary has in 
 his possession an instrument of power, the Signet ; 
 and the prescribing of formaUties for the use of it show 
 that the power was not unimportant. Finally, he 
 ceases to be a mere clerk ; the standing and character 
 of the men who held the office undergo a gradual and 
 profound change. 
 
 The change, indeed, is not steadily progressive. We 
 are apt to find the secretaryship in one reign a post for 
 which a man of ambition thought it worth while to 
 surrender other appointments ; and in another reign 
 to come upon details which give it a humbler position. 
 The general tendency, however, is towards a greater 
 dignity in the office. 
 
26 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 The Signet 
 
 The reign of Richard II. makes a convenient starting- 
 point for this stage of our inquiry. It appears to be 
 the first reign in which the use of the Signet becomes 
 at all frequent or important. This may well be 
 because by this time the Commons had had sufficient 
 experience of the use of the Privy Seal for interference 
 with the course of law to cause them to devise regula- 
 tions for its employment.^ The Privy Seal being on 
 this account removed from the King's absolute 
 disposal, as the Great Seal previously had been, the 
 Signet became the King's first-hand medium of indicat- 
 ing his pleasure ; and as it was in the keeping of the 
 Secretary, an ambitious man might easily see oppor- 
 tunities inherent in its guardianship. The oppor- 
 tunities would be both legitimate and illegitimate. 
 As early as 1391 the Signet was a recognised means of 
 setting in motion the Privy Seal, and thereby the 
 Great Seal, for letters patent ; and it would also seem 
 to have been an effective means of drawing money 
 from the Exchequer.^ The illegitimate opportimities 
 can be most easily inferred from the fact that before 
 the middle of the fifteenth century the Signet was 
 brought under regulation. 
 
 At first, however, its importance was not under- 
 stood ; and the struggles between Richard II. and 
 the Commons with regard to the appointment of 
 Ministers of the Crown did not include the Secretary. 
 
 * Anson, ii. i. 157. 
 
 " Hall, Formula Book of Dipl. Doc, pp. 97, 105. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 27 
 
 The Chancellor, the Privy Seal, and the Treasurer 
 were the officials whose nomination the Commons 
 wished to have the power of sanctioning. The 
 Secretaries of this reign appear to have been men of 
 the type of their predecessors, and to have followed 
 much the same course of progress. Thus Robert 
 Braybroke, Secretary in 1379, passed on, Uke John 
 de Sandale, to be Chancellor ; and finally to Church 
 preferment.! John Bacun, who was Secretary in 1384, 
 had begun as a King's clerk, risen to be Keeper of the 
 Jewels, and then Chamberlain of the Exchequer ; ^ 
 and it is interesting that he thought it good to leave 
 this post (which must have involved some profitable 
 fees) for the Secretaryship. Yet here again, as in the 
 case of John de Sandale, the title seems to have been 
 as yet of small accoimt ; Bacim is sometimes described, 
 while holding the Secretaryship, merely as " King's 
 clerk." 3 
 
 During the next two reigns the only apparent change 
 is that the Secretaries begin to be associated with the 
 Privy Council. Under Henry IV. a Secretary, John 
 Prophete, was a Privy Councillor at the time of his 
 appointment.* Under Henry V. WiUiam Alnewick, the 
 Secretary, was present in the Privy Council, apparently 
 by virtue of his office, not having been previously a 
 member of the Council.^ 
 
 The reign of Henry VI. offers more subject for 
 
 1 Nicolas, Obs., p. 14. Nearly three hundred years later Pepys 
 set eyes on this Secretary. In the Great Fire of London Bray- 
 broke's body (he had been Bishop of London) fell out of its 
 sepulchre in St. Paul's Cathedral into St. Faith's Chapel, and there 
 Pepys saw it, looking like a brown mummy ; "a great man in his 
 time," he remarks (Pepys's Diary, Nov. 12, 1666). 
 
 » Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1381-85, p. 517. ' Ibid., p. 440. 
 
 « Proc. P. C, ii. 78. ' Ibid., ii. 315. 
 
28 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 comment. To begin with, we have the first instance 
 of a second Secretary being appointed.^ He was 
 required for dealing with French business. John 
 Rynel held the post in 1433 (the earliest mention of it), 
 and Gervais de Vulre, or Volore, some years later.* 
 
 Agam, from what we know of William Beckmgton, 
 who was Secretary about 1439, the post is clearly 
 becoming more dignified. In his journal of the 
 embassy treating for peace with France, he is seen 
 taking his full share of the negotiations ; and it is also 
 interesting to see that his title is more uniformly 
 employed, and therefore presumably more honourable. 
 He refers to himself as " Bekynton, Secretarius," as 
 if the description were fully as important as his 
 temporary standing in the embassy.' 
 
 The Secretaries in Politics 
 
 Further, during this reign we have the first clear 
 instEinces of political influence being attached to the 
 Secretaryship. In 1432 the Duke of Gloucester's 
 dismissal of royal officials included the Secretary, 
 with the Chamberlain, the Steward, the Dean of the 
 Chapel, and the Almoner.* It is worth noting that 
 the Signet was dealt with ceremoniously. It was 
 sealed up in a bag under Gloucester's seal and delivered 
 to the Treasurer of the Exchequer. Again, in 1451 
 Gervais de Volore is included among those, headed by 
 
 1 Proc. P. C, iv. 187. 2 jhi^^ y 33g_ 
 
 ' See Beckington's Journal, published by The Camden Society. 
 * Proc. P. C, iv. no. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 29 
 
 the Duke of Somerset and Alice Pole, Duchess of 
 Suffolk, who were impeached by the Commons in a 
 petition to the King for " misbehavyng about your 
 royall persone, by whose undue means your possessions 
 have been greatly amenused, your lawes not executed, 
 and the peas of this your Realm not preserved nother 
 kept." ^ Another of Henry VI. 's Secretaries, Thomas 
 Mannyng, was in the long list of those adherents of 
 Henry who were attainted of high treason after the 
 accession of Edward IV. ^ 
 
 Equally significant of the rise in the status of the 
 Secretary is the higher position he begins to take in 
 the Royal Household. Under Edward III. he ranked 
 with the clerks of the Privy Seal ; * and a himdred 
 years later, in Henry VI. 's Ordinances for the Royal 
 Household, he remains in much the same place, being 
 placed after the Physician in the provision for his 
 maintenance ; and he and his two clerks are allowed 
 only two yeomen to attend them.* Still, with two 
 clerks under him, the Secretary was considerably in 
 advance of his early status as merely one of the clerks 
 himself. 
 
 The Secretary's Department 
 
 Under Edward IV. the Secretary's establishment, 
 both in size and in precedence, is seen to have made 
 a notable advance. The Secretary is ranked next to 
 
 ' Parlt. Rolls, v. 216. 
 
 ' Pfoc. P. C, vi. 361 ; ParU. Rolls, v. 477. 
 
 ' Nicolas, 06s., p. 13. * Proc. P. C, vi. 223. 
 
30 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 the Knights of the Household, and before the Chaplains. 
 The passage dealing with him and his staff in the 
 Liber Niger is worth remark, because it shows us 
 distinctly the circumstances of the Secretary at this 
 date. He has by now four clerks, and " sufficient 
 writers of the King's Signet," the clerks presumably 
 being drawn from the general body of " King's clerks " 
 and having some responsibility, while the " writers " 
 would be mere copyists. The Secretary has further 
 " a gentleman to attend on him," and he " hath into 
 this court three persons wayters on him for all that 
 office." 1 He did his work in the Court premises " in 
 the King's chamber or hall." He had, like other 
 officers of state, his appointed diet at Court — " three 
 loaves, two messes of great meat, half a pitcher of 
 wine and two gallons of ale " ; and he had " one 
 torch, one percher, two candels wax, three candels 
 peris' in the winter season and three tallwood rushes 
 and litter." Parchment, paper, and red wax were 
 supplied to him by the office of the great spicery. 
 
 It will be observed that in this passage the 
 Secretary's establishment has twice the number of 
 clerks it had in the previous reign. The work of the 
 Secretary has, in fact, grown so extensive that the 
 second Secretary, though nominally still Secretary 
 for France, is practically sharing the general duties. 
 Edward Hatclyffe was Secretary in 1464, " our Secretary 
 and Councillor " ; and Oliver King was " the King's 
 first and principal Secretary in the French language." 
 But it was particularly arranged that King was to 
 receive Eill kinds of bills and warrants whatsoever 
 
 ' It may be added that he was a person of sufficient consequence 
 to be exempted from the regulations of the Sumptuary Law of 1482, 
 so far as concerned the wearing of cloth and fur. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 31 
 
 addressed to the Chancellor or to the Privy Seal, 
 together with all letters as weU in Latin as in English, 
 and to receive the accustomed fees.^ As yet there 
 is but one Signet ; King was to have custody of it 
 when Hatclyffe was absent. Since the delivery of 
 the Signet was the only formality of the appointment 
 of the Secretary (he was in any case in the Crown 
 employ as a " King's clerk ") the second Secretary 
 was appointed by patent.^ That such an instrument 
 was considered necessary is one more proof that the 
 secretaryship had taken a long step away from the 
 mere clerkship, from which in earlier centuries it was 
 hardly to be distinguished. We are, in fact, reaching 
 the end of the period during which the Secretary was 
 only the chief of the grade of King's clerks ; and 
 approaching that in which the ofifice is a distinction 
 coveted by men of rank and men of genius. 
 
 A clear sign of change is the carrying over of 
 the secretaryship from one reign to another. Thus 
 Oliver King was Secretary again under Henry VII. ; 
 and a later Secretary of Henry VII., Dr. Rout- 
 hale, Bishop of Durham, continued his duties under 
 Henry VIII.' It must be concluded that the office 
 was beginning to have an importance of its own. 
 
 Secretaries given Duties in Parliament 
 
 The reign of Henry VIII. is a very striking epoch 
 in the history of government departments. In every 
 
 » Fcedera, v. iii. 69. ' Nicolas, Obs., p. 28. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 30. 
 
32 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 direction the administrative official becomes more 
 firmly established, his work more highly organised. 
 Since the officials of Government were the King's 
 officials, it is a natural consequence of their higher 
 development that the mainsprings of the machine 
 should be the King's Treasurer and the King's 
 Secretary. 
 
 In a broad way the immense difference in the posi- 
 tion of the Secretary can be gauged by the fact that 
 Thomas Cromwell rose to power by means of the 
 secretaryship. In a lesser degree it can be seen in 
 the security with which a Secretary could remonstrate 
 with no less a person than Cardinal Wolsey. Dr. 
 Pace, one of the Secretaries with Cromwell, writes 
 to Wolsey to complain of an irregularity by which a 
 document had been communicated by the Lord Mayor 
 of London directly to Wolsey, instead of being sent to 
 the Secretary, who would then communicate it, to- 
 gether with the King's pleasure thereon, to Wolsey .^ 
 
 More important, however, is the direct evidence of 
 the Statute regulating precedence, passed in 1539. 
 Here the Secretary is given definite duties of attend- 
 ance in Parliament. The sixth clause of that Statute 
 provides that the King's chief Secretary, if a Baron 
 of Parliament, shall sit before and above aU other 
 Barons, and if a Bishop, before and above all other 
 Bishops. But it further provides that " if any person 
 or persons which at any time hereafter shall happen to 
 have any of the said offices of Lord Chancellor, Lord 
 Treasurer, Lord President of the King's Council, 
 Lord Privy Seal, or Chief Secretary, shall be under 
 the degree of a Baron of Parliament, by reason whereof 
 they can have no interest to give any assent or dissent 
 
 1 Nicolas, Obs., p. 31. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 33 
 
 in the said House, that then in every such case such 
 of them as shall happen to be under the said degree 
 of a Baron shall sit and be placed at the uppermost 
 part of the sacks in the midst of the said Parliament 
 chamber." ^ The first point to notice in this passage 
 is that the Secretary has risen to be ranked with four 
 of the greatest officers of State. The second is that 
 his work is now of such importance that he is to sit 
 in the House of Lords, even if he is not a member of 
 the House. This comes out stiU more specifically in 
 regulations of a few years later. It was ordained by 
 these that when the King or the Speaker was present 
 in the House of Lords, both of the Secretaries were 
 to be on the woolsacks ; on other days they were to 
 sit alternately, week by week, one in the House of 
 Lords and one in the House of Commons ; but if 
 important matters were before the Commons, both 
 might be sitting there. 
 
 Itis hardlynecessaryto speculate ^whether it was con- 
 templated, in these arrangements, that the Secretaries 
 should not sit in the Commons unless they happened 
 to have membership of that House. For from this 
 time onwards the Secretaries are men of such standing 
 that they would be more Hkely than not to be members 
 of the House of Commons, unless they were members 
 of the House of Lords. Thomas Cromwell, Wriothesley, 
 Paget, Petre, Walsingham, Davison, Herbert, Cecil, 
 Coke, Calvert, Conway, Windebank, Vane, Digby, 
 Falkland, ArUngton, Morrice, Trevor, Coventry, 
 Sunderland, Leolin Jenkin, and Godolphin — these 
 are names of Secretaries between the accession of 
 Henry VIII. and the Revolution ; and they may 
 
 1 31 Henry VIII., c. lo. 
 
 ' As Nicolas does in his Observations, p. 36. 
 
34 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 serve to show what kind of office the secretaryship 
 had become. 
 
 Causes of the Secretaries' Advancement 
 
 How, it shotQd be asked at this point, had such a 
 change come about ? Firstly, the Council, owing to 
 the weakening of the great lords in the previous 
 century, had become, though still nominally a check 
 upon the Crown, in reaUty an " administrative machine 
 of vast power, entirely in the hands of the Crown." ^ 
 Secondly, the struggles of the House of Commons for 
 the hberty of the subject had very largely taken the 
 form of restrictions upon the use of the seals and 
 regulations for the authentication of the Royal Sign 
 Manual. Thirdly (though this is a point that has more 
 force in the later part of the period now imder discus- 
 sion), the anxiety of the Commons being rather to keep 
 the Crown from illegal taxation than to criticise the 
 expenditure of the lawful revenue, a body of officials, 
 rendered necessary by the increasing organisation of 
 government, grew up dependent on the Royal will ; 
 and the most intimate channel of that will found the 
 threads in his hands multiplying. 
 
 Let us take these points in more detail. 
 
 I. The Weakening of the Council 
 
 It is at this stage that the importance of avoiding the 
 mistake of deriving the departments of Government 
 * Anson, II. i. 24. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 35 
 
 from the Curia begins to weigh heavily. The fact that 
 the officials of State were not servants of the Council 
 made all the difference to their position now. They 
 were servants of the Crown. Acting in that capacity 
 as intermediaries between the Crown and the Council, 
 they came to the Council with messages of a certain 
 command, but took from it messages that could only 
 be in the main of advice. How rapidly this process 
 began to take effect may be seen by the attitude of the 
 Secretaries after the death of Henry VIII. When we 
 find Sir William Petre, one of the Secretaries, pro- 
 ducing, at the accession of Edward VI., " orders and 
 regulations for the despatch of public business and for 
 matters to be brought before the King and Council," ^ 
 we see already existing a power of initiation of policy 
 which might, either imder an inactive King, or by the 
 increase of work beyond what even the most energetic 
 King could deal with, become an avenue to executive 
 control. That the Secretaries were acting as more 
 than mere members of the Coimcil is also impUed in the 
 fact that Paget, the other Secretary, was almost at the 
 same moment defending himself against a charge 
 of " over-assumption of power " ; and shortly after- 
 wards he takes upon himself to remonstrate with 
 the Protector Somerset on his manner in Council, and 
 to complain of his system of government.^ 
 
 If, on the one side, the Secretaries reached to power 
 by being something more than mere members of the 
 Council, yet the fact that they were members of it had 
 very great results. The " administrative machine " 
 was to such an extent in the hands of Henry VIII. 
 that it hardly mattered what individuals of its com- 
 
 1 Cal. St. Pap. Dom., 1547-80, p. 2. 
 ^ Ibid., 1547-80, pp. 2, 10, 19. 
 
36 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 position were or were not present. Hence we actually 
 find executive orders of the Council signed by the Lord 
 Chancellor and the two Secretaries alone. There 
 could be no clearer indication of the direction which 
 the responsibilities of government were taking. It 
 may be true that any effectiveness in such orders lay 
 in those who signed being members of the Coimcil ; 
 but it is equally true that the reality of their power lay 
 in their being the Secretaries, since such acts were not 
 genuinely acts of the Council at all. 
 
 II. The Regulation of the Signet 
 
 This point is interesting, because it puts us upon 
 the track that is to end in the Parliamentary responsi- 
 bility of Ministers of the Crown. The first regulations 
 for the seals which concern the Secretaries are of the 
 year 1443. It was then ordered, as a precaution 
 against interference by the Crown with the course of 
 law, that in the granting of petitions, bills, etc., when 
 the King made any such grant it was to be delivered to 
 his Secretary, who was to prepare letters for carrying 
 it into effect, sealed with the King's Signet, and 
 addressed to the Keeper of the Privy Seal, from whom 
 they were to pass to the Chancellor as authority for 
 the use of the Great Seal.^ From further regulations 
 made by statute in the reign of Henry VIII.^ we 
 perceive, not only the growing constitutional import- 
 ance of the Secretary's office, but, incidentally, the 
 size to which it had already grown as a department, 
 and something of its practical organisation. Thus 
 the preamble recites : " The King's clerks of his 
 
 » Nicolas, p. I . s 27 Henry VIII., c. 1 1 . 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 37 
 
 Grace's signet and privy seal, giving their daily attend- 
 ance for the passing and writing of his Majesty's great 
 and weighty affairs . . . having for their entertain- 
 ment and their clerks no fees or wages certain for 
 those offices, other than such fees as cometh and 
 groweth out of the said signet and privy seal." The 
 wording of this shows (i.) that the order of King's clerks 
 still survived, apart from the clerks of the Crown in 
 Chancery ; but it survived as a superior rank, there 
 being also simple " clerks " — no doubt the " sufficient 
 writers of the King's Signet " mentioned in the reign 
 of Edward IV. ;^ (ii.) that the staff of these second- 
 grade clerks was not provided for officially, but the 
 Secretary or Lord Privy Seal had to appoint and pay 
 them ; (iii.) that the Signet was now of at least equal 
 importance with the Privy Seal, being in fact mentioned 
 before it ; an indication of the dechne of the latter into 
 a merely intermediary position is given by the fact 
 that for some time Cromwell appears to have held 
 both offices together.^ After this preamble the 
 statute orders that " any gift grant and other writing 
 signed with the royal sign manual shall be in any wise 
 first and before the same grant be passed under any of 
 the King's said seals or other process made of the same 
 brought and delivered to the King's principal Secretary 
 or to one of the King's clerks of his Grace's signet for 
 the time being, to be at the said office of the Signet 
 passed accordingly." Letters of warrant are to be 
 " subscribed with the hand of the clerk and Sealed with 
 
 1 See p. 30. 
 
 ^ Sir Harris Nicolas was informed by an official of the State 
 Paper Office that from 1536 to 1539 there is no trace of any other 
 Secretary, and abundant traces of Cromwell performing the duties 
 after he had become Privy Seal (Nicolas, p. 32). 
 
38 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 the King's Si^et " and sent to the Lord Keeper of the 
 Privy Seal ; and one of the King's clerks of the Privy 
 Seal, on examination of the letters by the Lord Keeper, 
 is to address " from the office of the Signet " a warrant 
 to the Lord Chancellor to use the Great Seal. Several 
 points in this passage call for remark. There is 
 evidently so much formalised business in the Secre- 
 tary's hands that his clerks' signatures were valid on 
 documents under the Signet ; which implies that the 
 Secretary himself had larger business on his shoulders, 
 and was no longer a subordinate with little more than 
 registration duties. Again, the Office of the Signet 
 has come into being, to last until the inquiry into 
 sinecure offices in 1832. This by itself is a notable 
 fact in the history of the secretaryship, but it becomes 
 much more notable from the evidence afforded by this 
 statute that the Privy Seal had developed no such 
 official department ; the clerks of the Privy Seal 
 forward documents to the Great Seal from the Office 
 of the Signet. 
 
 At the early stage of this inquiry it was remarked 
 that the intention was to look for the germ of our 
 Departments of Government not in the Curia, or 
 group of great officers under the Norman kings, but 
 in another direction. Now we have seen that as soon 
 as the Chancellor began to depart from his secretarial 
 attendance on the King the Chancery lost touch with 
 the executive. The Great Seal became a formal 
 instrument, and power ran by the channel of another 
 official, the keeper of the Privy Seal, who took that 
 day-to-day place in the carrying out of the King's 
 commands which the Chancellor had left vacant. 
 Then this great officer of State in his turn — ^probably 
 because he was a great officer of State, a lord of the 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 39 
 
 Council, and as such suspected by the Commons and 
 weakened by ambitious kings — ^finds his office so 
 Umited by regulations as to become almost shadowy. 
 In Henry VIII.'s reign he has sunk to little more than 
 a supervisor of the Signet. He has been passed in the 
 race for power by the obscure official, who remaining 
 so close to the King's person as to be hardly assailable 
 save in the company of the King, is boimd to rise 
 in status by that gathering of the threads into the 
 royal hands, which the Tudor sovereigns were able to 
 achieve. Another of the great Norman officials, the 
 Treasurer, had diminished in status. By the very 
 early enforcement of the rule that, although the King's 
 revenues were at his sole disposal, not even he could 
 withdraw money from the Treasury without the formal- 
 ities of the Seals,^ the Treasurer, apparently placed in 
 a detached and somewhat independent position, was 
 in fact being placed in a position in which the Secretary, 
 as the mainspring of the Seals, was not far from com- 
 manding him. It is still formally true that executive 
 power resides in the Council ; but the other channel 
 is growing more and more ready to receive it ; and the 
 reign of Henry VIII. is our first considerable justifica- 
 tion for following that channel, rather than pursuing 
 the history of the Privy Council. In a nation proving 
 itself to have a peculiar gift for constitutional monarchy, 
 the significant developments occur rather by a process 
 of digesting into the constitution the personal acts 
 and the personal attendants of the Sovereign, than by 
 devising a system of counter-balances. The Council, 
 once it had passed beyond the narrow Norman 
 hmits, would come under the latter category. It 
 slowly declines because of its artificiality ; while the 
 
 • Anson, ii. ii. 143. 
 
40 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 Secretaries, an inevitable growth from the reality 
 of the business to be done, as surely come to the 
 front.i 
 
 One further change during this reign remains to be 
 noted. Hitherto only one Signet has been in existence. 
 The second Secretary has not been quite on the same 
 level as his fellow ; and the letters patent nominating 
 a successor to Dr. Richard Pace in 1536, when Cromwell 
 was Secretary, describe this successor, Peter Vannes, 
 Canon of Salisbury, as " Coadjutor Secretary."^ But 
 soon after 1539 the secretaryship seems to have been 
 held by two persons of equal title and rank. Thomas 
 Wriothesley and Ralph Sadler were appointed to keep 
 two Signets and two books of warrants. Both were 
 to be lodged in the King's palace, and they shared the 
 duties in Parhament under the regulations already 
 mentioned.* It appears that the actual salary of 
 a Secretary was 80 marks a year ; * but it must be 
 remembered that they were allotted their own chambers 
 
 ' The table of the Signet fees established by 27 Henry VIII. 
 c. II, shows the wide grasp of the office : — 
 
 For warrant upon a biU for te/es or reward . . lad. 
 
 For warrant for gift of any office . . . 2od. 
 
 For warrant for pension, annuity, or wages . 2od. 
 
 For warrant for a special Uvery or other perpetuity . 6s. 8d. 
 For warrant upon every bill for a conge dester, royal 
 assent, restitution of temporalities, donatives, 
 advocations, presentation, or other ecclesi- 
 astical matter . . . .3s. 4d. 
 For warrant upon a placard, licence, pardon, or 
 
 sherifE's reward . . . . 2s. od. 
 
 For warrant upon a denizen . . .3s. 4d. 
 
 For warrant for keeping of an ideot . . 2od. 
 
 For warrant for keeping a ward . . .33. 4d. 
 
 These fees were for writing the warrant ; the Seal fees were in 
 
 addition. 
 
 ' Fasdera, vi. iii. 6. ^ Nicolas, p. 35. ' Fcedera, vi, iii. 177, 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 41 
 
 in the Palace and servants from among the Royal 
 Household ; and they had also an allowance for diet, 
 amounting under Henry VIII. to £813 a year.i 
 
 III. The Growing Officialism 
 
 Not least of the approaches made by the Secretaries 
 in and after the reign of Henry VIII. towards executive 
 power was due to the considerable advance in the 
 organisation of the armed forces of the Crown. This 
 is for the moment the most interesting aspect of the 
 third point mentioned above, in connection with the 
 question of how the change in the Secretary's status 
 had come about. The fact that the Commons were 
 more concerned to check illegal taxation than to 
 supervise the expenditure of the money lawfully finding 
 its way to the King's Treasury meant that, as adminis- 
 trative officials were needed, they were simply pro- 
 vided by the Royal Household. We have seen the 
 original allocation of King's clerks to the supervision 
 of the ships of the navy and the checking of ordnance 
 and munitions. 2 Before the end of the reign of 
 Henry VIII. there were two well-organised depart- 
 ments for these affairs. 
 
 The Ordnance, as appears from an order of the Privy 
 Council for rendering account of the munitions of 
 Calais, was under a Master of the Ordnance, who had 
 as his subordinates a Clerk of the Ordnance (chiefly 
 responsible, if we may judge by the analogy of the 
 naval department, for the financial part of the work 
 and for the accounts), and a Surveyor of the Ordnance. 
 Each castle had its separate Master of Ordnance.' 
 
 ' Regulations of the Household, p. 192. 
 
 ^ See p. 22. ' Proc. P. C, vii. pp. 137-8. 
 
42 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 In regard to the navy, a warrant of the Privy Council 
 for the payment of certain monies in 1546 shows us that 
 there was a Comptroller of the Ships with two clerks, a 
 Surveyor of the Ships with two clerks, and a Clerk of the 
 Ships, whose duty (and title very shortly afterwards) 
 was that of Treasurer of the Ships.^ It is interesting 
 to add that Deptford had already taken its place in the 
 economy of the navy ; a minor official was " the Keeper 
 of the King's Storehouse at Deptford Strond." ^ 
 
 One of the chief changes of Henry VIII. 's reign was 
 that the victualling of the navy was no longer charged 
 upon the ports providing the ships. Commissioners 
 were sent out to buy provisions at market prices. 
 The army on service was stiU victualled by the old 
 system of isstiing protections in return for undertak- 
 ings to provide bread, beer, etc., for the army.* But 
 Henry VIII. victualled the navy himself, the reason 
 primarily being, no doubt, that he could see a prospect 
 of a return for his money. An indenture between 
 him and Sir Edward Howard, Lord High Admiral, 
 sets forth that Howard is to receive wages and " victuall 
 money " for his fleet from such Commissioners as the 
 King should appoint, and that, since the King had 
 victualled the fleet at his own costs and charges, he 
 should have half the prize money and all the artillery 
 captured.* Whatever the motive, the arrangement 
 must have added to the efficiency of the fleet, since 
 it enabled Howard to be free of any complicated 
 collection of victuals ; his orders were, to resort from 
 time to time with his navy " to the Cowe between 
 the Isle of Wight and England, there to remayn 
 till they have their vitaylles and wagies." So 
 
 ^ActsP.C.,i.p.s68. ' Ibid, i. p. s6g. 
 
 ^ Fosdera, vi. i. 206. « Ibid., vi. i. 31. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 43 
 
 Spithead also begins to come into the navy's 
 history.^ 
 
 The general control of the navy rested, like all 
 executive power, formally in the King and Council. Its 
 practical direction, however, was largely in the hands 
 of the King's Household officers. Thus one of the 
 earliest extant minutes of the Privy Council directs 
 Sir John Roos, one of the admirals of the King's fleet, 
 to " certify in the Chancery " the number of his ships ; 
 and letters giving sailing orders were sent imder the 
 signet. 2 So far was this the case that when the 
 Secretaries become really important persons under 
 Henry VIII. they may be found constantly giving 
 orders and instructions on army and navy business, 
 without any apparent reference to the Council.' 
 
 The Secretaryship's Inherent Opportunities 
 
 The reign of Elizabeth is as striking an epoch in 
 the history of the Secretaryship as the reign of 
 Henry VIII., though for a different reason. Henry 
 VIII. gave statutory powers and responsibiUties to 
 the office in connection with the Houses of Parliament, 
 and so prepared one line of the subsequent development 
 of Ministries. Under Elizabeth the change was more 
 subtle and more profound. The tenvire of the Secre- 
 taryship by Cecil showed to what an extent a man 
 of commanding personality and deliberate purpose 
 could go behind the forms of government by the 
 
 ' Foedeya, vi. i. 33. " Nicolas, Royal Navy, i. i88. 
 
 ' Cal. St. Pap. Dom., 1545, passim. 
 
44 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 Sovereign in Council, and could in effect control policy, 
 by the closeness of his association with the Crown, and 
 place the Council in the position of merely sanctioning 
 his designs. 
 
 There will be no need here to labour the point of 
 the reality of Cecil's power ; it is a commonplace of 
 history. Yet how little the office had changed in 
 theory, and how much therefore the quaUty of power 
 in it depended upon the character of the holder, is 
 very apparent from the various volumes of Cecil's 
 correspondence. His boldest and most comprehensive 
 schemes of policy are in the form of memoranda 
 for proposals to be made to the Council ; in points of 
 detail he procures letters from the Queen conveying 
 the commands he wis'hes to give. Again, he keeps his 
 hand on affairs in Ireland by getting the Queen's high 
 officials there to write private letters to him, and letters 
 on less private matters to the Lords of the Council.^ 
 On a question of obtaining suppUes for an army he 
 writes to the Commander-in-Chief, sketching out for 
 him a letter to the Queen quite different from the letter 
 which the officer has already written to Cecil himself 
 on the subject. This is a clumsy and roundabout 
 method of government, and one which less capable 
 and less ambitious successors could not manipulate. 
 But that it was real can be gathered from a casual 
 remark in one of Cecil's letters to his friend Carew, 
 then Lord President of Munster. On the occasion of 
 Herbert's appointment to be joint Secretary, Cecil 
 advises Carew to write to Herbert sometimes : " This 
 will take from him any opinion that you neglect him, 
 and may prepare his mind to respect you hereafter 
 
 1 Letters of Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew {Camden Soc, 
 1864), p. 16. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 45 
 
 when peradventure death, sickness, or other accident 
 may throw you into his hands as now you are in 
 mine." 1 
 
 The Secretaries and Official Correspondence 
 
 In using such sources as Cecil's correspondence and 
 the diary of Francis Walsingham, another of EUzabeth's 
 Secretaries, we are enabled to put our finger upon one 
 obvious opening for the exercise of power. The 
 Secretaries dealt with the letters and dispatches on 
 affairs of State. As they had the receipt of arriving 
 correspondence they could easily arrange (as we have 
 seen CecU doing) to keep certain letters to themselves, 
 or to have other versions of them, dictated by them- 
 selves, sent in their place. It would be natural for 
 officials absent on affairs of government to make sure 
 that the Secretaries imderstood them and supported 
 them, since their standing with the Crown and the 
 Council depended in this way upon the goodwill of 
 the Secretaries ; and thus the latter would acquire, 
 however unofficially, a considerable voice in policy. 
 How far the Secretaries had an equally free hand 
 in the outgoing correspondence is not so easily seen. 
 Walsingham's Diary gives details of the receiving and 
 sending of letters almost every day ; but there are no 
 means of distinguishing between letters written by 
 instruction of the Queen or the Council aud letters 
 written on his own authority. Sometimes it would 
 almost seem that he dispatched instructions and 
 
 1 Letters of Cecil to Carew, p. 58. 
 
46 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 commissions without the intervention of higher 
 authority ; he certainly supplements formal commis- 
 sions with private advices.^ 
 
 In the references to home affairs it is as difficult to 
 decide how much the Secretaries did on their own 
 authority and how much on instructions. They seem 
 to have had the power of issuing passports for travel- 
 ling between England and Scotland ^ (a very important 
 power at the time), and of forbidding Scots people to 
 use the English ports.* Their signatures were sufficient 
 warrant to the Lieutenant of the Tower in his dealings 
 with state prisoners. But perhaps the most significant 
 fact in this connection is that the Secretaries examined 
 prisoners themselves. This may fairly be taken as 
 implying a large meeistire of responsibility. 
 
 One small detail concerning the Signet in this 
 reign seems to throw light on the changing position of 
 the Secretaries, though only, it must be admitted, 
 by conjecture. A warrant of Elizabeth's reign to the 
 Graver of the Mint orders the making of " two signets 
 of gold with the royal arms and scriptures," one of 
 which is to remain in the keeping of Francis Walsing- 
 ham.* It is curious that nothing is said as to the 
 destination of the other. If the two Secretaries kept 
 one each, there would be no reason for thus specifying 
 the keeping of one. The simplest explanation would 
 be that the other was kept at the Office of the Signet. 
 This leads us to the conclusion that Cecil did not have 
 a Signet in his charge ; from which we might go on to 
 
 1 Walsingham's Journal, under dates July and August 1575. 
 
 • See the account of a visit paid by a German nobleman to Eng- 
 land in 1584 : Royal Hist. Soc. Transactions, ix. 
 
 ' Walsingham's Journal, under February 1575. 
 
 * Cal. St. Pap. Dom., 1547-80, p. 476. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 47 
 
 deduce that the affairs on which he was engaged were 
 not, strictly speaking, those of a Secretary, but those 
 of an adviser. He has, in fact, by leaving his Signet 
 at the Office of the Signet, already made the separation 
 between the theoretical and the practical aspect of 
 the Secretary's duties upon which the later trans- 
 formation of the Secretaries into responsible Ministers 
 was founded. 
 
 Something of the same kind is impUed in the new 
 style which the Secretaries acquire luider Elizabeth. 
 In a Commission of 1601 Cecil and Herbert are given 
 the title of " Secretaries of State," ^ and from this date 
 it is always used.^ The change is not merely one of 
 nomenclature. A title of this kind implies that the 
 Secretaryship, though still part of the Royal House- 
 hold, is to be regarded henceforth as part of the 
 machinery of Government — a constitutional rather 
 than a personal service. 
 
 Oflfices of the Armed Forces 
 
 The two departments for the armed forces had made 
 a further advance in organisation by being lodged in 
 office premises. Hitherto the clerks attending to 
 this business had presumably done their work in 
 rooms allotted to clerks at Court, as the Secretaries 
 
 1 Fcedera, vii. ii. 5. 
 
 2 Yet the curious tendency of the Secretaries' title to revert to 
 humbler forms is not quite at an end ; in Charles I.'s Commission 
 setting up the Privy Council Committee for Colonial affairs. Coke 
 and Windebank are called " Privie Secretaries." 
 
48 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 used to do.i Now they had outgrown such accom- 
 modation. In 1558 there is a reference to " the 
 furniture of the Office of Ordnance." ^ A year or two 
 later the Lord Treasurer writes to Cecil that " the 
 storehouse at Crossed Friars must be had." * Now 
 the Office of the Navy Board was in Crutched Friars 
 at the beginning of the eighteenth century ; * and it 
 may be concluded that this was the same house, 
 and that the Navy Office dates from Ehzabeth's reign. 
 The fact that it is spoken of as " the Storehouse " 
 need not disturb us. Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of 
 the Navy from Henry VIII. 's reign till well on in 
 the reign of Elizabeth, and Edward Bashe, WilUam 
 Holstock, and others who were Comptrollers of the 
 Navy (that post absorbing the General Surveyor of 
 Victuals in 1562), were chiefly concerned with stores, 
 victualling, and so on ; and were the forerunners of 
 the Navy Board. That the department was not yet 
 very exact in its working may be gathered from the 
 fapt that the Privy Council warrants for money for 
 naval affairs are sometimes made out to Gonson, who 
 pays sums over to Bashe, and at other times to Bashe 
 direct. In one of the Lord Treasurer's letters appears 
 a " Treasurer of the Army," to whom £22,000 has been 
 sent, " out of which the ships must be paid." Later 
 on there is a warrant to this same official. Sir M. Brown, 
 to dehver " out of the Queen's treasure in his hand 
 £1000 to Edward Bashe, surveyor of the victualles 
 for the seas." Presumably he must have been 
 Treasurer of the Ordnance Office. 
 
 The Lord Treasurer, be it noted, addresses letters 
 about payments and details of organisation, not to 
 
 1 See p. 30. 2 Cat. St. Pap. Dom., 1547-80, p. 121, 
 
 s/Md., p. 148. » See p. 60. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 49 
 
 the Council, nor to the Sovereign, but to the Secretary. 
 True, the Secretary was Cecil, whose personality was 
 too great to allow us to take a measure of the normal 
 position of a Secretary from the affairs he handled. 
 But it is also true that, owing to the almost casual 
 way in which the departments of the armed forces 
 had grown up, the Secretaries seem always to have 
 exercised in the concerns of those departments a freer 
 hand than they exercised elsewhere. 
 
 The Secretaries and the Privy Council 
 
 It is rather difficult to see how the practice of 
 appointing Committees of the Cotmcil for certain 
 business affected the Secretaries at this period. The 
 practice began under Edward VI., and was continued 
 by Mary and Elizabeth,^ but it is not quite clear 
 whether the Committees were permanently in exist- 
 ence. They were appointed to examine into the 
 business and revenues of the Admiralty (the various 
 naval departments are not infrequently referred to 
 under this general name long before the^ first actual 
 putting of the Admiralty into commission), the House- 
 hold, the Wardrobe, the Ordnance, the Mint, etc.* 
 From the nature of references to the " Foreign Com- 
 mittee " in Charles I.'s reign it would seem that this 
 was a permanent body,* while on the other hand it 
 is likely that the Committee which is to be found 
 setthng matters of pay for the troops would be a 
 
 1 Anson, ii. i. 67. ^ Cal. St. Pap. Dom., 1547-80, pp. 61, 120. 
 
 ' Ibid., 1639-40, p. 526. 
 
 4 
 
50 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 temporary one. This practice of doing business through 
 small bodies chosen out of the full Council was in the 
 end to produce the conditions most favourable for 
 the Secretaries' final attainment of power. For the 
 moment it was probably less to their advantage than 
 Henry VIII. 's more personal rule. 
 
 Yet the reign of Charles I. is not without importance 
 for our purpose. For one thing, we find the Secre- 
 taries issuing warrants under their own hands to the 
 Clerk of the Signet.^ Again, there are such cases as 
 that of Robert Bewick, who is placed under a bond 
 of ;^iooo " for his appearance before the Council or 
 Secretary Windebank when called for, to answer such 
 matters as shall be objected to him." ^ This is a 
 striking proof that the Secretary's authority could 
 on occasion be regarded as concurrent with that of 
 the Council. The way, too, in which the Secretaries 
 endorse petitions and letters of business addressed to 
 the Council with replies initialled by themselves is 
 significant.* 
 
 The Secretaries and Foreign Affairs 
 
 But what chiefly emerges in this reign is the degree 
 to which foreign affairs were beginning to lie in the 
 hands of the Secretaries. From the very first they 
 had been peculiarly connected with the King's business 
 abroad, being often sent on embassies and missions. 
 Even as late as the reign of Henry VIII. we find one 
 
 '■ Cat. St. Pap. Dom., 1639-40, p. 530. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 477. ' See, e.g., ibid., pp. loi, 121. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 51 
 
 of the Secretaries, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, 
 sent to the Court of France — and very much bored 
 by his exile. Under Charles I. the Secretaries are in 
 constant correspondence with English Ministers abroad. 
 Much of this correspondence was unofficial — or at 
 most semi-official — in tone ; the interest of it is that 
 the Ministers abroad so plainly kept their eyes, not on 
 the Foreign Committee of the Council, but on the 
 Secretaries. They look to them for advice, as well 
 as for news of home affairs ; they report to the 
 Secretaries details which the latter may, or may not, 
 communicate officially. Most interesting of all, we 
 have at the beginning of 1640 the division of foreign 
 affairs between the Secretaries, which gave them the 
 distinctive titles they bore until the end of the eighteenth 
 century. Secretary Vane writes, under date February 7, 
 1640, to Sir Thomas Roe, then at the Diet of Ratisbon : 
 " Secretary Coke having desired to retire and put the 
 seals into His Majesty's hands, the next day he bestowed 
 them upon me with the ciphers. His Majesty has 
 since made a division of his foreign affairs between 
 Secretary Windebank and myself, Spain, Flanders, 
 and Italy being entrusted principally to the care of 
 the former, and France, Holland, Germany, with the 
 Kings and Princes of the Baltic Sea, to mine ; yet so 
 as not to exclude each other from corresponding with 
 all His Majesty's Ministers, and to us both they are 
 to send severally their ordinary despatches ; but His 
 Majesty's commands to his Ministers are to be des- 
 patched in his circle by him, so in mine by me." ^ 
 
 ' Cat. St. Pap. Dom., 1639-40, p. 433 (see also p. 332). This is 
 the first division of duties that I have been able to find. Sir William 
 Anson speaks of the division as existing " from the Revolution 
 until 1782 " (Law and Custom, 11. i. 164), but it clearly began earlier. 
 
52 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 Roughly speaking, these are the spheres of the Secre- 
 tary for the South and the Secretary for the North in 
 the eighteenth century, except that France was later 
 assigned to the South. 
 
 Although the Secretaries were technically equal, 
 there was evidently a customary seniority. One of 
 Windebank's clerks, writing at the time of Coke's 
 retirement, says : " Methinks we should not fail of 
 the diet and seniority in secretaryship, though the 
 other will have precedence as being treasurer." ^ The 
 meaning of the reference to " the diet " is that the 
 allowance for diet was divided unequally between 
 the Secretaries ; under William and Mary the senior 
 received £730 and the junior £292 ; and no doubt 
 there was a similar difference under Charles I. to which 
 the clerk refers. Apparently there was also an 
 implication of seniority in the nature of the business 
 attended to by each Secretary. Thus later in the 
 same letter the clerk writes : " I do not find that we 
 have much more sign of seniority, Mr. Treasurer 
 having full as much of the foreign business as Secretary 
 Coke had." (Vane combined for some years the 
 offices of Secretary and Treasurer.) This passage 
 would imply that the foreign business was regarded as 
 the more important ; and that in turn supports the 
 view just expressed that the Secretaries felt their 
 power most strongly in that direction. 
 
 One further point may be gathered from the letter 
 concerning the division of duties. Windebank had 
 what was afterwards called the secretaryship for the 
 South. It was Windebank before whom Bewick was 
 to appear. As it was the secretaryship for the South 
 which later on included home affairs, it is not, perhaps, 
 
 * Cal. St. Pap. Dom., 1639-40, p. 365. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 53 
 
 going too far to see that assignment of duties already 
 beginning. 
 
 The Secretaries and the Commons 
 
 Inevitably the constitutional struggles of this reign 
 tended to sharpen and define the responsibilities of 
 the Secretaries. For the first time that position, 
 intermediary between the Crown and ParUament, 
 which had been given them by Henry VIII. , becomes 
 vital. It was the Secretaries who had the task of 
 conveying the King's financial demands to the 
 Commons, of explaining the necessities of the Ex- 
 chequer, and proposing Bills of Aid. And this leads 
 us for the first time to the operation of Parliamentary 
 considerations in the appointment and dismissal of 
 a Secretary. Vane, who had succeeded Coke, stood 
 for a forcing policy in the Commons, as against the 
 more concessionary attitude of Strafford. He de- 
 manded the extreme measure of twelve subsidies, and 
 announced to the House that a refusal would be 
 followed by a dissolution. He was dismissed from the 
 Secretaryship when Charles, taking heart from loyal 
 speeches in the Commons, thought that less threatening 
 methods might suffice.^ 
 
 The chief interest of such passages is that we have 
 in them (though the Commons really failed to perceive 
 it) the germ of the solution of the problem with which 
 the Commons had been struggling for centuries, namely, 
 
 ' See Gardiner, History of England, 1603-42, vi. 242 ; vii. 34 ; 
 ix. 87, 112, 113 ; X. 94- 
 
54 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 the bringing to book of those responsible for acts of 
 Government. They had wrestled with the vague form 
 erf the Privy Council, only to find themselves in the 
 strong hands of the Tudors. They had regulated the 
 use of the Seals, only to find that behind the formal 
 processes remained some more or less unreachable 
 personality setting the processes in motion. They 
 could perhaps hardly be expected to see that, in the 
 presence of the Secretaries in their own House, they 
 had the weapon they had so long been seeking. 
 Probably one reason why they were slow to recognise 
 what had happened was that it was not clear to them 
 that the financial difficulties they were dealing with 
 were not temporary, or due entirely to the poUcy or 
 caprices of an individual King. They could not 
 foresee that in the breaking down of the old financial 
 supphes a situation had arisen in which the Crown 
 would be under the constant necessity of explaining 
 itself to the House, through the mouth of members 
 of the House. Yet that is the change of which the 
 work of the Secretaries in this reign gives us the first 
 sign. Another sign may be detected in the doubled 
 responsibihties which the Secretaries were undertaking. 
 Coke was a member of the Navy Commission as well 
 as Secretary ; Windebank was a Commissioner of 
 the Treasury. 
 
 The Secretaries, it may be added, were stiU Hving 
 within the Court for the purposes of their business. 
 But they had for sc«ne time now been men of a class 
 who would obviously have residences of their own in 
 London. Consequently we come upon passages which 
 indicate that the Secretaries did not necessarily hve 
 entirely at Court. The rooms allotted at Court would 
 therefore tend more and more to become office pre- 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 55 
 
 mises, and the way would be prepared for moving the 
 Secretaries' department into offices of its own. 
 
 Departments under the Commonwealth 
 
 Under the Commonwealth the secretaryship, as 
 would be expected from the circumstances of its rise 
 to importance, suffers in most respects a decUne. The 
 office becomes that of Secretary to the Coimcil of 
 State, and in place of the men of family and standing 
 who had been holding it, we find one Frost appointed 
 to it, with an allowance of 40s. a day ; his son is 
 appointed his assistant at 20s. a day, and he has 
 26s. 8d. a day for four clerks. John Milton is em- 
 ployed as foreign Secretaiy. This was a minor post 
 which had from time to time been allotted to one of the 
 clerks in the Secretaries' department ; and has caused 
 confusion to some writers, who have been led to suppose 
 that there were periods at which there were three 
 Secretaries. Milton's predecessor was a subordinate 
 of Windebank's, who carried on his duties under the 
 Commonwealth for a time. (There could be no more 
 striking proof thajn this of the firm estabhshment of the 
 Secretaries' department in the work of Government.) 
 The Secretary to the Council of State would naturally 
 have less chance of exercising, even informally, ajtiy 
 executive power than the Secretaries of a Sovereign ; 
 but Frost had clearly a good deal of power in financial 
 affairs. Warrants by him and his son for the issue 
 of money from the Exchequer are frequent.^ Other 
 1 Cal. St. Pap. Dom.. 1649-50, passim. 
 
56 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 authorities issuing these warrants are interesting, 
 because they give us a degree of departmental organisa- 
 tion beyond anything we have yet had to record. 
 Besides the Council of State itself, the Navy Com- 
 missioners and the Treasurers at War issue warrants. 
 Now the navy, requiring by the very nature of the case 
 more of a permanent nucleus than the army, had for 
 some time past had a considerable civil staff. The 
 army had nothing but the Officers of Ordnance. The 
 perpetual jealousy manifested by the Commons against 
 anything like a standing army would check the develop- 
 ment of a military department of State. The Common- 
 wealth, less hampered by this jealousy, produces the 
 first approach to such a department. Not only have 
 we these Treasurers at War, but before the period 
 is ended we have a new Secretary for military 
 affairs. This was one WUUam Clark, who began 
 by being Secretary to Monk during the time of his 
 service in Scotland. He is occasionally described 
 simply as " clerk to the General," but he gradually 
 acquires the more important title of " Secretary to 
 the Forces " ; and in the later years of the Common- 
 wealth he has become Secretary to the Council 
 of War.i 
 
 He in his turn provides us with another instance of 
 the growing officialism — and as a coroUary the growing 
 independence of dynastic changes — ^in the departments 
 of government. Clark continued in his duties at the 
 Restoration, with the title of Secretary at War. 
 
 What effect the Restoration might have had upon 
 the history of the departments of government if the 
 King had been other than Charles II., must of course 
 
 * Thomas, Hist. Notes, ii. 719, quoting the Council Book of the 
 Interregnum. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 57 
 
 be matter of mere speculation. Since it did in fact 
 bring a king not over-inclined to concern himself with 
 national affairs, the marks of the Interregnum upon 
 the departments remained as one of its most lasting 
 results. The departments had become accustomed to 
 work without dependence on the Crown ; and after the 
 Restoration the heads of them never returned to quite 
 the same dependence. We begin now to be familiar 
 with the spectacle of groups of administrators more 
 concerned with their relations to one another than 
 with their relations to the Sovereign. It is probable 
 that in any case this change would not have been 
 long delayed. The firmer establishment of Depart- 
 ments since the time of Henry VIII. had tended to 
 attract capable men ; and such men would draw more 
 and more of the daily processes of administration into 
 their hands. The Interregnum hastened the develop- 
 ment, so that the new conditions are very marked 
 after 1660. 
 
 Army Office after the Restoration 
 
 We may take first the case of the departments for 
 the armed forces, since the state of affairs in them was 
 largely responsible for the state of affairs in the others. 
 
 The army department became a wholly new thing. 
 The constant disputes throughout the reign of Charles 
 II. as to the keeping of a standing army need not 
 concern us. It is sufficient for our purpose that Charles 
 and James II. also did succeed in keeping some sort 
 of army. But the provisions for its administration 
 
58 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 are extremely important. Letters patent of 1668-9 
 placed the administration of the guards, regiments, 
 and garrisons in the hands of " the Lords of the 
 Treasury and one of our two principal Secretaries of 
 State, to whom we have referred the care and con- 
 sideration thereof." ^ In other words, here is a Secre- 
 tary of State exercising, in conjunction with the Lords 
 of the Treasury, an executive power. From this 
 warrant we may date the arrangement we find existing 
 later, by which the Secretary at War, though regarded 
 as a King's Secretary, was not ranked as a Secretary 
 of State, but as a kind of assistant for military pur- 
 poses to one of the Secretaries of State. He had an 
 ofhce of his own, as appears from accounts of writing 
 material supplied to it.* 
 
 Clark was succeeded in 1666 by Matthew Locke ; 
 and in 1676 came an important definition of the duties 
 of the Secretary at'War. In a warrant issued to the 
 Duke of Monmouth in that year, countersigned by one 
 of the Secretaries of State, it is laid down that in future 
 all warrants and orders on military affairs, instead of 
 passing the Signet and Sign Manual, shall be issued 
 under the Sign Manual countersigned by the Secretary 
 of the Forces " as by our Command." * From this 
 time forward there is "no instance upon the War 
 Office records of any warrant or order signed by the 
 King being countersigned by any military officer — such 
 countersign alone being always that of a Secretary of 
 State, a Lord of the Treasury, or the Secretary at War." * 
 It may be added that the pay of the army was in 
 civilian hands, there being a Treasurer, or Paymaster 
 of the Forces, responsible to the King for the monies 
 
 ^ See Clode, vol. i., Appendix 19. ^ ciode, vol. i. p. 71. 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 72. * See Palmerston's Memoir. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 59 
 
 allotted to him. Nor is there any apparent Hmit to 
 the control exercised ; instructions of every kind — 
 marching orders, directions to commanding officers, 
 etc. — are aU found signed by the King and initialed 
 by the Secretary at War. In 1683 a further step was 
 taken by the re-organisation of the Office of Ordnance 
 on a civU basis.^ Its staff consisted of a Master 
 General of the Ordnance, a Lieutenant-General of the 
 Ordnance, a Surveyor, a Clerk of the Ordnance (occupy- 
 ing a position which would be better described as 
 that of Secretary to the Board of Ordnance), a Store- 
 keeper, a Clerk of DeUveries, a Treasurer of the 
 Ordnance, and a Chief Clerk to the Master General. 
 The Lieutenant-General had two clerks under him, 
 the Surveyor three, the Clerk four, the Storekeeper 
 three, the Clerk of Deliveries two, the Treasurer three ; 
 and there was a subordinate staff of Storekeepers and 
 Engineers, etc.^ 
 
 Navy Office after the Restoration 
 
 Of the navy department at this time we have, of 
 course, many glimpses in Pepys's Diary. It had not 
 changed essentially since the Tudor constitution of it. 
 At the head was the Lord High Admiral ; then came 
 the Treasurer, the Comptroller, and the Surveyor of 
 the Navy. The Clerk of the Ships, or Clerk of the 
 Navy, has become Clerk of the Acts, — the office held 
 by Pepys, and later on combined by him with that 
 
 1 Palmerston's Memoir, p. 35. 
 * Clode, i. 168. 
 
6o THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 of Surveyor of the Victualling. Finally, there were 
 three Commissioners of the Navy, who seem to have 
 been concerned chiefly with provision cind inspection 
 of stores and victuals.^ The Navy Office, used, as it 
 would appear from Pepys's references, by all these 
 officials, was still in Crutched Friars, with a Victualling 
 Department at Deptford, and subordinate offices at 
 Chatham, Portsmouth, etc.^ Besides the premises at 
 Deptford, there was a Victualling Office. Pepys does 
 not mention where this was ; but as it is stated to 
 have been on Tower Hill early in the eighteenth 
 century, it may be presumed to have been there in 
 Pepys's time. Besides these offices, we have references 
 to an " Admiralty Office " at Whitehall. This would 
 appear to have been an office in the Palace premises 
 (Pepys sometimes calls it " the Duke of York's 
 chamber "), such as the Secretaries of .State had, to 
 which the officials and Commissioners of the Navy 
 Board were summoned by the Lord High Admiral for 
 consultations on naval policy at large and estimates 
 for money. When on the resignation of the Duke of 
 York in 1673 the post he had held was put into com- 
 mission, this office became that of the Lords of the 
 Admiralty, who continued to exercise this general 
 direction. As long as there was a Lord High Admiral, 
 he seems to have depended for secretarial work upon 
 the staff of the Navy Office ; but after the Lords of 
 the Admiralty were commissioned a Secretary of the 
 Admiralty appears, with a staff of seven clerks, in the 
 Admiralty Office.* 
 
 ^ Note to Pepys's Diary, under date February 2, 1660, quoting a 
 document in his hand among the Pepysian MSS. 
 2 Laws of the Admiralty, ii. 301. 
 ' Ibid., 329. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 6i 
 
 The Treasury Departmentalised 
 
 Developments in the Exchequer also call for notice. 
 They follow nattirally upon the subjects just discussed, 
 because it was the increasing tendency of the expendi- 
 ture on armed forces to become permanent which 
 principally demanded the reorganisation of Exchequer 
 business. 
 
 Up to this point we have not been much concerned 
 with financial matters. All the revenues, whether 
 the hereditary revenues of the Sovereign (like the 
 revenues from Crown domains and manors, or the 
 ancient Customs dues on wool and leather), or granted 
 to each Sovereign^ for life (like the Tunnage and 
 Poundage), or even those granted for special occasions 
 of warUke expenditure, were regarded as paid to the 
 Sovereign personally. His officials dealt with them. 
 His E^xchequer of Receipt tallied the paying in of 
 money, his Exchequer of Accoimt held audits ; and 
 both were staffed by the successors of the old " King's 
 clerks " of the Household, under the King's Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer. The Lord Treasurer is the King's 
 Treasurer, even after he has become in a sense a public 
 official.^ No distinction was drawn between money 
 used for the King's privy purse and that used for what 
 we should now call public services. 
 
 The only changes for three hundred years had been 
 changes in minor detail. Various attempts were made 
 to secure proper audit ; and as the departments became 
 more highly organised, the process of suppljnng them 
 
 * Anson, ii. i. 175. 
 
62 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 from the Exchequer became more formalised and 
 automatic, money being paid out to them on imprests 
 not needing the Great Seal, as it had long been paid out 
 to the Wardrobe and other officials of the Court. 
 
 As expenses increased various Sovereigns had tried 
 devices for enlarging their revenues without consulting 
 ParHament, chiefly by way of readjustments of the 
 taxes granted them for life. NowCharles II., confronted 
 with the same need in an aggravated form, owing 
 largely to the extravagance of his Court Hfe, could not 
 attempt any such method of meeting the need. His 
 father's fate was too present to him. He could only 
 ask Parliament for more money, and ParHament had 
 also new knowledge since the Civil War. One of the 
 greatest of constitutional changes is foreshadowed 
 in the inclination of the Commons to attach to their 
 grants in 1666-7 ^ condition that a Committee of nine 
 of their House should be empowered to inspect on oath 
 the accounts of the spending of the grants. Passages 
 in Pepys's Diary show to what a condition of muddle 
 the old system had come. The King was borrowing 
 money from " goldsmiths " on the strength of grants 
 ahead ; the Navy Office and the Ordnance relied upon 
 bills discounted on 'Change. The Commons voted 
 money for the wars with the Dutch, and it went into 
 the King's coffers. The Navy Board drew what they 
 wanted. But so could others who had at command 
 the proper processes of the Signet and the Great Seal. 
 Consequently, when the Navy Board come to make up 
 their accounts, we see the Treasurer of the Navy, and 
 Pepys, and even the Lord Treasurer himself, in despair 
 as to how they are to face Parliament on its demand for 
 accounts. The King has had for the war in two years 
 a sum of £5,590,000 ; the officials can account for only 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 63 
 
 ;f3,200,ooo ; " So what is become," Pepys asks himself 
 and posterity, " of all this sum— £2,390,000 ? " ^ It is 
 clear that some change will have to be made ; and 
 Pepys, while feeling that the Commons' idea of a 
 Committee to examine the accounts would be an 
 intolerable reduction of the King to the status of a 
 private person, can yet welcome Sir George Downing's 
 proposal to have all money specially voted paid into 
 the Exchequer alone, where it will at least be free of 
 some of the perils attending it when paid into the 
 King's Chamber. 2 
 
 This proposal had the support of the Treasurer, 
 Lord Southampton ; and thus the Treasury begins 
 to be a department engaged, not in the keeping of 
 money, but in the more important task of devising 
 means for raising taxes and recommending those means 
 to the Commons. The practice, begun on certain 
 occasions in Charles II. 's reign, of putting the Treasvuy 
 into commission, helped to break down the personal 
 character of the King's expenditure on civil government, 
 and to make it more of a public fimction. 
 
 It will be convenient to note under this head the 
 appearance of a form of raising money which was to 
 be the foundation of a great department. The estab- 
 lishment of a system of posts under Charles II. was 
 largely devised as a monopoly which should bring 
 profit to the Exchequer. At the present stage it is no 
 more than a section of Treasury work, and we have 
 only to record its commencement. 
 
 1 Pepys's Diary, Oct. lo, i665. 
 
 * Ibid., Nov. 33, 1666 ; Jan. 25, 1666-7. 
 
64 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 The Secretaries after the Restoration 
 
 It remains to consider the position of the Secretaries 
 of State under Charles II., and here too we find great 
 and rapid changes. The Secretaries have for some 
 centuries past been regularly members of the Privy 
 Council ; and we now find it laid down that upon 
 appointment a Secretary is sworn, as such, of the 
 Council.^ In the document which gives this fact there 
 appears also the statement that Secretaries of State 
 are by right made Justices of the Peace for all counties 
 of England. But more important than these formal 
 dignities is the fact that the Cabinet Coimcil, a body 
 which appears first in Charles I.'s reign, has begun to 
 supplant entirely, for executive purposes, the Privy 
 Council and the Committees of Council ; ^ and the 
 Secretaries seem always to have been present at 
 Cabinet Coxmcil meetings. These were the people who 
 settled, with the help of officials called in from the Navy 
 and Ordnance Offices, how much money should be 
 asked from Parliament, and how Parliament should 
 be induced to grant it.* They are meetings of Officers of 
 State, usually the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, 
 the two Secretaries, and one or two of the higher 
 officials of the Navy or Ordnance Boards who were 
 members of the Council. Both the Secretaries were 
 members of the first and second Boards of Admi- 
 
 1 Clode, vol. ii.. Appendix, 137, quoting a State Paper drawn up by 
 Secretary Williamson under Charles II. 
 " Anson, 11. i. 79. 
 " Pepys's Diary, passim, e.g., Aug. 26, 1666 ; Nov. 9, 1664. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 65 
 
 ralty ; 1 and when the Treasury was put in commission 
 in 1667 it was expected that they would naturally be 
 members of that Board too, but in the end they were 
 not.2 
 
 The Committee for Trade 
 
 So far had the Council, as a body, declined in power 
 that even the Committee which gives most distinction 
 to the reign, and had a lasting future, is only in essence 
 a body advisory to the Secretaries.* This is the Com- 
 mittee on Trade and Plantations. It had had some 
 predecessors, since the reign of James I., when the 
 successful plantation of Virginia added permanent 
 colonial responsibilities to the Crown. But the fact 
 that James's Committee sat at Haberdashers' HaU 
 shows that it was regarded rather as a body advisory 
 to the merchants with interests in the colony than as a 
 matter of government. Charles II.'s Committee, while 
 designed in some degree for the assistance of the great 
 privileged trading companies, which were attaining 
 their zenith, was no less intended for administrative 
 purposes. 
 
 1 Laws of the Admiralty, ii. 305, quoting the warrant of July 9, 
 
 1673- 
 
 ^ Pepys's Diary, May 22, 1667. 
 
 » When the Committee found its Commission imperfect in certain 
 particulars, it was resolved to approach the King " or one of His 
 Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State " on the subject. 
 
66 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 The Secretaries and Party Groups 
 
 There is also under Charles II. a subtle difference 
 in the private manoeuvres and intrigues of high of&cials. 
 Pepys hears on one occasion that " Sir H. Bennet, 
 my Lord Bristol, and their faction are likely to carry 
 all before them (at the Court), aad particularly against 
 the Chancellor, who is irrecoverably lost." ^ Now 
 such combinations as there had been in the reign of 
 Charles I. were combinations produced more or less 
 by the King or the Queen.^ What Pepys talks about 
 on this and other occasions is a very different kind of 
 thing. It is a formation of groups and parties which 
 must, in the end, no doubt, depend on their influence 
 with the King, but they are formed without the know- 
 ledge or connivance of the King. It is not a very 
 great point ; and under some later Kings the groups 
 are again formed or schemed for by the King. But 
 at the same time it is not a point altogether devoid of 
 importance. 
 
 Even so far as the intrigues of Charles II.'s reign 
 looked ultimately for his support, they do not look to 
 that alone. The Secretaries, the Treasurer, and the 
 rest axe beginning to feel the advance of a new respon- 
 sibility. The Commons had in older days a weapon 
 against the King's officials ; but it was only the 
 cvunbrous one of impeachment. They begin now to 
 act more directly. In the matter of supplies for the 
 King, for instance, members of the House who hap- 
 
 * Pepys's Diary, April 28, 1663. 
 
 ^ See, e.g., Gardiner's History of England, 1602-42, ix. 87. 
 
THE RISE OF THE SECRETARIES 67 
 
 pened to be officials of the Navy Board are tinder the 
 necessity of explaining the Board's demands to the 
 House. Again, the House orders the production of 
 the letters of the two Secretaries, Arlington and 
 Morrice, in 1667 on the movements of the Dutch Fleet.^ 
 From another angle Ught is thrown by such an entry 
 as this in Pepys's Diary : " My lord Keeper is utterly 
 against putting away this and choosing another 
 Parliament. . . . My Lord Arlington knows not which 
 is best for him, being to seek whether this or the next 
 will use him worst." ^ In other words, Parhamentary 
 calculations are beginning to have their place in the 
 mind of a Secretary of State, not merely as concerning 
 the business of his master the King, but as concerning 
 his own position and hold upon power. We are thus 
 prepared for a further change after the Revolution 
 of 1688, when the Commons had learned, and were 
 prepared to teach their rulers, another lesson in the 
 responsibilities of government. 
 
 ^ Pepys's Diary, Oct. 25, 1667. ' Ibid., Nov. 13, 1668. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY : 1688-1800 
 
 The hundred years succeeding the Revolution of 1688 
 are curiously instructive in regard to the English 
 habit of political development. The reality of power 
 was laid hold of by Parhament long before the theory 
 was assailed. Ministers were brought under an 
 increasing responsibility, while their subordinates, 
 secure in the old theory of Government, remained a 
 close corporation of sinecure offices and corrupt 
 appointments. Another instructive point is that no 
 one understood the changes whUe they were actually 
 taking place. At the very moment when circum- 
 stances were bringing about the dependence of 
 Ministers upon the House of Commons, that House 
 was in the mind to expel from its membership all 
 officials of the King and of Government. 
 
 It must, indeed, have seemed at the time that the 
 struggle to devise an efficient check upon executive 
 power was endless and nearly hopeless. In old days 
 the elusive element had been the King's Council ; all 
 sorts of regulations might be drawn up to limit the 
 operation of the Seals and the Sign Manual, but 
 these were, after all, mere machinery of government, 
 and men had tried in vain to call to account those 
 who set the machinery in motion. Impeachments 
 could only break for a moment the ring of officials 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 69 
 
 and favourites round the throne. The decline of 
 the Council under the early Tudor monarchs appeared 
 to clear the air. Single favourites there might be ; 
 but these were never impossible to deal with, nor 
 could they, as had been found in the case of Charles I., 
 screen the Crown. The whole lesson of the seventeenth 
 century seemed to be that in balancing against one 
 another two distinct forces — the Crown and its officials 
 on one side, and the Commons on the other — the truest 
 and most lasting steadiness of Government might be 
 reached. In other words, the responsibihty of action 
 was to lie with the Crown, the Comrnons finding their 
 duty in regulating the channels of action and pre- 
 scribing certain limits to it. It has frequently been 
 remarked that the Bill of Rights and the Act of Succes- 
 sion are almost entirely negative in their provisions. 
 It had, in f£ict, never occurred to the Commons that 
 they should govern. Government resided in the 
 Sovereign, assisted at first by an advisory body of 
 nobles and high officials, and later by an administrative 
 machine of ever-increasing complexity. To see that 
 the purse and the liberty of the subject were not too 
 heavily weighed upon by the Crown was the ideal of 
 the Commons. In consequence the Commons wished 
 to feel their hands completely free to attack delinquents 
 in administration, and to have as little connection as 
 possible with the machine. Hence at the very time 
 when in actual practice Ministers were beginning 
 to take the opinion of Parliament more and more 
 into account, the chief idea of the Commons was to 
 free themselves from the presence of Ministers and 
 officials in the House. 
 
 If we endeavour to see the matter with the feyes 
 of contemporaries, we must acknowledge that to all 
 
70 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 appearance the old ring of favoured advisers had 
 recurred in a new form. It was no longer a ring of 
 great territorial lords, whose power of raising armed 
 forces made their influence essential to the Sovereign, 
 and combinations of them against one another his 
 chief concern. It was now a ring of able administrative 
 officials, made important partly by the fact that the 
 Crown could not act except through the Seals which 
 they held, and partly by the new kind of combination 
 they represented — a combination not of armed forces 
 but of personally attached voters in the House of 
 Commons. Indeed, the newer kind of ring may well 
 have seemed worse than the old one. Great nobles 
 might rise very high in the old days, but the Crown 
 could not let them rise too high for its own safety. 
 Of&cials on the other hand were dependent on the 
 Crown for their places, and it must have seemed that, 
 so long as they pleased the Crown, there was no method 
 of pulling them down.^ The one obvious point of 
 weakness was their reliance upon personally attached 
 members of the House of Commons. It was for the 
 most part a sufficiently gross form of attachment. 
 As we have seen in a previous chapter, the bodies of 
 civilian clerks and officials which had by degrees become 
 necessary for the purposes of government, had grown 
 up in the most casual way. As long as one of the 
 great officers of State could find some new sources of 
 fees or could squeeze a little more out of the King's 
 revenues, there was no check upon his appointment 
 of underlings. This form of patronage was already 
 
 1 The Commons on one occasion in 1678 took the step of sending 
 Mr. Secretary Williamson to the Tower, imagining that he was 
 primarily a member of the House. The King at once released him, 
 an assertion that he was priparily one of the Secretaries. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 71 
 
 large, and a man appointed to one of the offices of 
 State could rely upon supporters either possessing 
 sinecures or waiting for favours to come. Hence 
 arose the persistent attempts made by the Commons 
 during the first twelve years after the Revolution to 
 exclude from the House aU those who were in the pay 
 of the Crown either as active officials, sinecure holders, 
 or pensioners. An attempt of this kind had been made 
 in 1675 ; and it was renewed in a clause originally 
 proposed in the Act settling the succession to the 
 Crown on the House of Hanover in 1700-1. The clause 
 was to the effect that no person who had a place or 
 office of profit under the Crown, or received a pension 
 from the Crown, should be capable of sitting in the 
 House of Commons. But before that Act came into 
 operation this clause had been repealed by the Act 
 of 1705, which, instead of sweeping all officials out of 
 the House, specified certain of their number as in- 
 capable of sitting there, and excluded all holders of 
 offices created subsequent to the Act. A later Act, 
 in 1742, disqualified deputies and clerks in nearly a 
 score of Government offices. 
 
 The Hold upon Finance 
 
 What, it may be asked, was the conception in the 
 mind of the Commons of the practical working of 
 government ? The first point to note here is that 
 with the Revolution the Commons acquired a new 
 hold upon the revenues of the Crown. The income 
 from the Crown domains had been reduced by various 
 
72 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 causes to little more than £6000 a year.^ The old 
 hereditary revenues granted to a Sovereign for Ufe from 
 certain duties of Customs and Excise had for long 
 been inadequate to the requirements of government. 
 In the necessity of the Crown to come to Parliament 
 for supplementary supplies the Commons had already 
 discovered a source of power, and at the Revolution 
 they laid firmer hold upon it. The former habit of 
 voting money without any control over its expenditure 
 was abajidoned, and money was specificaUy appropri- 
 ated to definite objects. From 1688 we begin to have 
 responsible accounts of public income and expendi- 
 ture ; 2 and nothing is more significant than the 
 provision in the Act of 1698 granting an additional 
 subsidy of tunnage and poundage, whereby, if the 
 subsidy amounted to more than the ^^700,000 which 
 it was intended to raise, the surplus was not to be 
 disposed of without the authority of Parliament.^ 
 With this regulation of finance, and a clause in the 
 Act of Settlement whereby a pardon under the Great 
 Seal was to be no defence against impeachment, the 
 Commons thought they had done all they could to 
 maintain their influence in affairs. They had secured 
 that the Crown must keep in communication with 
 them ; and that, since the Exchequer had to accotint 
 to them, the cotmtry could not be embarked upon 
 any serious enterprises without the Commons' consent. 
 If this seems a rather limited influence, it must be 
 remembered how very little of its modern content 
 the conception of government then carried. So long 
 as men were free to pursue their business without 
 
 ' Anson, li. ii. 134. 
 
 ^ See Return on Public Income and Expenditure (1868-69). 
 
 ' 9 & 10 Wm. III., c. 23. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 73 
 
 autocratic interference either by overmuch taxation 
 or insecurity of personal liberty, home affairs con- 
 sisted almost entirely at this time of settHng the 
 succession to the Crown. Policy was for a himdred 
 and fifty years to mean a certain line of conduct in 
 regard to affairs overseas — our relations either with 
 foreign countries or, later on, with our colonial planta- 
 tions. By regulating finance the Commons thought 
 to assure themselves of a voice at any crisis ; by 
 •guarding their power of impeachment to prevent any 
 grievous mishandling of a line of conduct to which 
 they had consented. 
 
 In the early years after the Revolution the Commons 
 seemed, however, to have failed in their object. In a 
 debate at the close of 1692 on the ill management of 
 the war, Members complained that they could not 
 ascertain upon which advisers of the Crown to fix 
 responsibility. After all, the people who had to 
 account to the Exchequer were but administrative 
 officials carrying out orders ; it seemed impossible to 
 lay permanent hold upon the persons from whom the 
 preliminaries of those effective orders came. 
 
 The Value of Parliamentary Support 
 
 The process by which the difficulty was solved was 
 already in operation, though still unrecognised. The 
 key to it is the fact that the new ring of advisers con- 
 sisted not of great lords whose position made them of 
 the Council, but of men who only entered the ring by 
 being appointed to certain ofl&ces, and those offices 
 
74 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 held during the King's pleasure. Men appointed may 
 become men dismissed. Among the elements tending 
 to dismissal, a lack of cordiality on the part of the 
 Commons towards an Officer of State was before long 
 discovered by the rivals of those in office to have some 
 effectiveness. Throughout the eighteenth century it 
 remained effectiveness of a vague and general kind. 
 No direct step could be taken against a Minister except 
 by impeachment ; his salary was the King's affair, and 
 could not be touched as long as he satisfied the King. 
 When George III. insisted on his right to appoint 
 Ministers at his pleasure, and not at that of the 
 Commons, the latter had no more real answer to him, 
 strictly speaking, than they had had to Richard II. in 
 similar circumstances. But in a general way a maji's 
 tenure of office could be made so tiresome to him and 
 his colleagues, and so worrying to the Crown, by 
 means of influencing the House of Commons against 
 him, that such influencing came to be a regular part 
 of the business of poUtics. 
 
 The Ring of Heads of Departments 
 
 When we look further at this ring of official advisers 
 of the Crown, we perceive new characteristics in it. 
 It meets no longer as a group of detached individuals, 
 but as a group of heads of active departments. The 
 departments function almost automatically ; the 
 direction in which they act is determined by the 
 decisions of the King and this group of their heads. 
 Originally, as has been remarked, the Exchequer 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 75 
 
 had been the only department in this sense. Next, 
 the armed forces of the Crown began to have their 
 permanent civil staffs ; and the Secretaries of State 
 had by this time acquired considerable staffs, engaged 
 in the day-to-day business of embassies abroad and 
 formal communications of the King's pleasure at 
 home. Therefore even before executive power in the 
 strict sense lay in the hands of the King's ofl&cials, 
 there was a good deal of practical power in the direction 
 of the standing forces, so to speak, of government. 
 
 A more striking point is the fact that this ring of 
 advisers, while dependent stiU in the main upon the 
 King's pleasure, begins to be subject in its composi- 
 tion to the purposes and inclinations of its powerful 
 members. During the reign of WiUiam III., indeed, 
 this is not very apparent. The case of Lord Normanby 
 in 1694 shows that even when a man had become a 
 member of the Cabinet he was not necessarily present 
 at all its meetings ; ^ the Sovereign summoned the 
 meetings and did not always summon every member. 
 But even in that reign certain offices were held to 
 entitle a man to be summoned, and these were the 
 offices of Lord Keeper (or Lord Chancellor), Lord 
 President of the Council, Lord Privy Seal, and the 
 two Secretaries of State. The control obtained by 
 the House of Commons over finance brings about, 
 before the reign of Anne, an interesting development. 
 The Lord Treasurer is not only a regular member of 
 the Cabinet, but is so important a member that he is 
 regarded as the chief adviser of the Crown. Or we 
 may record the same fact in another way, by observing 
 that when Harley reaches a position of influence which 
 makes his attitude the most important consideration 
 ' Anson, 11. i. 85. 
 
76 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 in the group around him, he takes the office of Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer. As the eighteenth century 
 progresses we find increasingly communications from 
 the principal man in the Cabinet to his friends or 
 political associates offering them some post with a 
 seat in the Cabinet. In other words, the appoint- 
 ments made by the Sovereign to offices which are still 
 technically offices in his own household, are only made 
 by him with reference to a number of considerations 
 which have nothing to do with his household, but 
 concern rather the goodwill and inclinations of other 
 holders of offices. 
 
 How had this state of affairs come about ? We have 
 seen that the complete decline of the Great Council 
 (for although Committees of the Council, especially 
 those for foreign affairs and for Trade, existed into 
 the eighteenth century, they were practically negligible, 
 dealing only with such business as the King and 
 Cabinet chose to lay before them) left the decision of 
 matters of state to the King and such people as he chose 
 to consult. But the King could only act through 
 certain established formalities. The last two cases of 
 attempts to override those formalities are those of the 
 pardon of Danby, when Charles II. signed the pardon 
 and then took the Great Seal out of Lord Chancellor 
 Nottingham's hands to have the pardon sealed by an 
 attendant ; and that of the use of the Great Seal 
 by Somers imder William III. for the First Partition 
 Treaty. Obviously, if these formalities had now 
 become invulnerable, it was of importance that the 
 officers charged with them should be willing to put 
 them in operation ; and thus these officers would 
 become, whatever favourites in an unofficial capacity 
 might be influencing the Sovereign, essential to consult. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 77 
 
 We may perhaps see the germ of modern Ministries 
 in an incident of the reign of Charles I. When Sir 
 John Coke was growing old and the question of his 
 successor in the secretaryship became important, the 
 Queen, desiring " a new combination," put forward 
 Sir Henry Vane, whUe Strafford urged the retention 
 of Coke.i This implies that the King was beginning 
 to find that in order to pursue a certain line of conduct 
 it was better for him to have his officers of State acting 
 in concert — in a " combination." The nature of the 
 Revolution of 1688 was of a kind to stereotype this 
 tendency. Strong and independent in many ways as 
 William III. was, it was clearly essential to him to 
 hold together his influential supporters. 
 
 Ministerial Solidarity 
 
 This principle of action through formahties reached 
 its final expression in theory as early as 1711, when in 
 a debate on the conduct of the war in Spain, Lord 
 Rochester said that " for several years past they had 
 been told the Queen was to answer for everything ; 
 but he hoped that time was over ; that according to the 
 fundamental constitution of this kingdom Ministers 
 are responsible for all." 2 How was it, then, that 
 with a theory upon which to-day the whole power of 
 Parliamentary Government rests, the Commons in the 
 eighteenth century were so far from power? The 
 truth is that Rochester's remarks were probably less 
 
 ' Gardiner's History of England, 1602-42, ix. 87. 
 " Anson, 11. i. 44. 
 
78 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 ingenuous than they sound. He wished to defend the 
 Queen from responsibility, in order to avoid strengthen- 
 ing the hands of those who were ready to bring back 
 the Pretender ; and it was at the same time quite safe 
 to put responsibility upon Ministers, because, beyond 
 the clumsy method of impeachment, there were no 
 means of punishing them, and even impeachment 
 might miss its mark owing to the difficulty of estab- 
 lishing a Minister's personal responsibility for any 
 given act, short of such a definite one as Somers's use 
 of the Great Seal. What finally brought Ministers 
 under the control of Parliament was the fact that, as 
 in previous days the Sovereign had found it useful 
 and more effective to have a certain concert of inten- 
 tion among his officials, so, when the absence of the 
 Hanoverian Kings from the meetings of the Cabinet 
 began to leave entire power to that body, its members 
 had to act in concert. At first the concert was of the 
 most informal and temporary kind. Even on such a 
 great question as that of the possible return of the 
 Pretender, a group did not necessarily hang together as 
 a whole : Sunderland, the Secretary of State, writes 
 (August 1708) : " If there is not a good spirit shown 
 in ParUament we had as good give up the game, and 
 submit to my Lord Treasurer's and Lord Marlborough's 
 bringing in the Prince. "^ When Queen Anne's inner 
 circle of intimates brought about the fall of Sunderland, 
 his colleagues remained in office, and urged Marl- 
 boroiigh to retain the command. Harley, when he 
 first took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, tried 
 to work with prominent Whigs, the Duke of New- 
 castle as Privy Seal and Somers as Lord President.* 
 Far on into the century men were offered and accepted 
 ' stanhope's Reign of Queen Anne, ii. 93. " Ibid., ii. 154. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 79 
 
 office without any implication that they must resign 
 if important measures introduced by their colleagues 
 failed, or if the First Lord of the Treasury or the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer could not get supplies 
 from the Commons. Indeed, so little was the true 
 development of collective responsibility, and its 
 importance to the Commons, understood, that Pitt 
 could imagine it to be a bad thing, and could urge, 
 in his famous cry of " men not measiu'es," that the 
 country would have its business better done if Ministers 
 were only responsible individually for their own depart- 
 ments, and a Prime Minister could offer posts to the 
 most capable men without committing them to a whole 
 line of policy. 
 
 Yet, once groups had become accustomed to acting 
 together, the next stage could not be long in coming. 
 As early as 171 1, in connection with the debate already 
 referred to. Swift writes of the possibihty of " the whole 
 Ministry " giving up their places. Yet the earliest 
 date at which this can be said to have happened was 
 1765, when, on the formation of the first Rockingham 
 Ministry, there were new Lords of the Treasury, a new 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, and two new Secretaries 
 of State. " I do not remember in my times," writes 
 Lord Chesterfield, " to have seen so much at once as an 
 entire new Board of Treasury and two new Secretaries 
 of State, cum multis aliis." ^ The case of the second 
 Rockingham Ministry was even more complete.* 
 
 1 Journal to Stella, Dec. 15, 171 1. " Letters, iv. 401. 
 
 » Hearn {Government of England, p. 196) considers this the first 
 instance of the modem theory of party government. 
 
8o THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 Department Staffs still the King's Service 
 
 But it is time to note that this stage, sufficient for 
 practical control of policy by the Commons, was 
 reached without any theoretical change in the position 
 of Ministers. They were not pubUc servants, nor 
 were their subordinates. Parliament did not pay 
 their salaries or keep up their offices or their staffs of 
 clerks. The Commons could make it so difficult and 
 tiresome for a Minister or a group of Ministers to 
 carry on the King's government that the King would 
 wish to seek for others less hampered. But the 
 Commons could give no indication to the King of its 
 wishes as to the successors of dismissed Ministers ; 
 and in fact when they attempted to do so they pro- 
 duced in George III. the resentment which led to his 
 assertion of personal Government and the long 
 political struggle centring in the names of Grafton, 
 Shelburne, and Temple. At the time when Sunder- 
 land was expected to become Secretary of State in 
 1691, the rumours concerning various people whom 
 we should now call Ministers referred to them as 
 " Court officers." ^ Moreover, even the old arrange- 
 ment by which these officers of state and their sub- 
 ordinates lived within the Court precincts and had all 
 necessaries provided there was maintained, though 
 by now, with the great increase of their work and 
 their staffs, it had become a mere formality. Thus 
 we know, for instance, that at the Navy Office houses 
 were provided for the Commissioners and the Secretary .^ 
 1 Cal. St. Pap. Dom., 1690-1, p. 350. 2 gee Pepys's Diary, passim. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 8i 
 
 The Army Department had no diarist to reveal for us 
 its minor details, as the Navy Department had in 
 Pepys ; but it is not likely that it was differently 
 treated, especially as it is certain that the Paymaster- 
 General of the Forces had a house beside St. James's 
 Park.i Most curious of all is a payment in 1737 to 
 the Under-Secretary and nine clerks of one Secretary 
 of State, and the Under-Secretary and seven clerks 
 of the other, of a sum of £1269 as " Board wages 
 during his Majesty's residence at Hampton Court, 
 July 14 to October 29." * In some accounts of the 
 reign of William III. the Treasurer of the Chamber 
 enters payments for " lodgings out of Court and 
 stationery ware furnished for the Secretaries' offices " ; ' 
 and the duration of the fiction can be seen from the 
 King's Message to ParUament in 1782, at the time of 
 the Burke reforms. In that message, complaining of 
 the inadequacy of the Civil List, among the sums 
 due but unpaid appears aa item of £155, 12s. 6d., 
 " for rent for the Secretary of State's office." * 
 
 Offices in Palace Precincts 
 
 This way of regarding the departments of govern- 
 ment as the King's affair, Parhament merely providing 
 him with a lump simi for carrying them on, makes 
 it very difficult to arrive at any material picture of 
 
 1 Cal. Treas. Pap., 173S-8, p. 163. * Ibid., p. 574. 
 
 ' Accounts contained in a MS. book at the Record OflSce, quoted 
 in Return on Pub. Income, pt. 11. p. 586. 
 * Parly. Papers, ii. p. 348 sqq. 
 6 
 
82 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 what we call the Civil Service during this stage of its 
 development. There are no detailed accounts, and we 
 have to rely on casual references, helped out by certain 
 indications that survived to our own times. The 
 provision of extensive accommodation in Court was 
 not so difficult as would seem to modem people, who 
 think of a palace in town as a single compact block 
 like Buckingham Palace. The existing state of St. 
 James's Palace gives us a better clue. There, besides 
 the main range of building, are various houses, with 
 their separate doors opening in many cases on to 
 pubUc streets and pavements, but all part of the 
 Palace. Some of them are still inhabited by Court 
 departments — ^the Board of Green Cloth, for instance, 
 and the Lord Chamberlain. Since the days of 
 Henry VIII. the Court had expanded into Whitehall 
 Palace as well ; and here there was even more extensive 
 building. In Agas's Map, of which the date is about 
 1560, the Palace can be seen covering, roughly speaking, 
 all the ground between Scotland Yard and Cannon 
 Row, north and south, and the river and St. James's 
 Park, east and^west. The main Palace buildings were 
 in the north-east comer of this space ; south of them 
 was the Privy Garden with ranges of houses round it 
 on the Westminster and the Park sides. The street 
 from Charing Cross to Westmiaster ran through the 
 middle of the Palace precincts, and this was Hned with 
 houses forming part of the Palace. In Faithome's Map, 
 of which the date is 1658, it can be seen that the western 
 part of the Palace had been considerably developed 
 during the intervening century. There is much more 
 building on the Park side, ajad another garden there.^ 
 
 1 1 have used the reproductions of Agas and Faithorne, published 
 by the London Topographical Society in 1905. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 83 
 
 Two departments, as we have already seen, were 
 elsewhere. The Navy Office was in the City ; the 
 reason for this, no doubt, was that, as the office had 
 been originally taken as a storehouse, it would be 
 more convenient to have it near the markets and 
 docks, and later on, when it became the Navy Office, 
 it would be the scene of a constant coming and going of 
 seamen and naval officers of lower grades and widows 
 and pensioners. The Victualling Department would 
 be at Deptford for similar reasons of convenience.^ 
 The Admiralty Office, as has already been remarked, 
 was at Whitehall, 2 and therefore in one of the houses 
 of the precincts. The Ordnance Office, with a gun- 
 house attached to it, was in the north-west comer 
 of the precincts, on part of the ground now covered 
 by the Admiralty buildings.^ The Exchequer was 
 still at Westminster. The Privy Seal Office was over 
 the gate at Whitehall, that is, in the gatehouse on 
 the north spanning the road from Charing Cross to 
 Westminster.* On the disposition of the remaining 
 departments we get some Hght from entries in the 
 Treasiiry books. In 1742 there is a letter to the Board 
 of Works to "settle and estimate for repairs at the 
 rooms in the Privy Garden where the Treasiuy was 
 lately kept, for fitting the same for Lord Carteret's 
 office." ^ Lord Carteret was one of the Secretaries 
 of State. The Privy Garden was, as has been said, 
 on the river side of the modern street caUed White- 
 hall ; it would seem from the maps that the old Treasury 
 
 ' See p. 42. ' Seep. 60. 
 
 * Report of Commission on Accommodation in Public Departments, 
 1868. 
 
 * Pepys's Diary, Aug. 9, 1661. 
 
 » Treasury Letter Book, xx. p. 31. 
 
84 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 must therefore have been somewhere near the fore- 
 court of the present Montague House. It is also clear 
 from this and other references that the Secretaries 
 of State had houses here for their offices. Lastly, we 
 have a first mention of a locality now serving almost 
 as a synonym for Government ; there is a reference 
 to " the Plantation Office in Downing Street." ^ This 
 was a small of&ce in which certain, clerks of the Privy 
 Council attached to the Committee for Trade and 
 Plantations did their work. Soon after the Restora- 
 tion in 1660, Sir George Downing, who had played a 
 part not entirely pleasant but useful to the Royalists, 
 was given for reward a portion of land in the western 
 precincts of Whitehall Palace,^ which he proceeded 
 to lay out for building, and as it lay conveniently 
 near the other offices in the old Palace buildings it 
 was natural for the Treasurer of the Chamber, as more 
 accommodation was needed, to rent some of the houses 
 here. When the new Treasury was built in 1737 
 (some of the old structures of the Palace being used 
 in the building),* a house in Downing Street for the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, near to the new building, 
 was taken and repaired.* In 1753 the Horse Guards 
 was built on the site of the old guardhouse of the 
 Palace. Hitherto the Secretary at War, as a kind 
 of assistant to one of the Secretaries of State, had 
 apparently had his office in conjunction with one 
 of them ; he now moved into the Horse Guards.^ 
 
 1 Cal. Treas. Pap., 1735-8, p. 498. 
 
 ^ Cal. St. Pap, Dom., i65i-2, p. 408. 
 
 ^ Lewis's, Topographical Dictionary. 
 
 * Lord Chamberlain's Warrant Book, ii. 183. 
 
 ^ Report, Ace. Pub. Dep. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 85 
 
 The Size of the Office Staffs 
 
 Of the staffs that worked in these offices we have 
 very little information earlier than 1797. Even if the 
 Court officials charged with the payment of them had 
 left detailed accounts, we should be imperfectly in- 
 formed, since so many of the civil servants of those 
 days drew their emoluments largely, and in no few 
 cases entirely, from fees for formal services or sinecures. 
 Thus Pepys, besides the comparatively small salary 
 he had as Secretary of the Navy, drew a very satis- 
 factory income from a sinecure clerkship of the Privy 
 Seal. Again, the patent for the Secretaryship cost him 
 some £40 in seahng and writing fees, and as that kind of 
 business must have been constant in the Signet and 
 Privy Seal offices, the clerks there probably had no 
 income to speak of from the Exchequer. Fees also 
 would provide much of the maintenance of the 
 Exchequer staff itself. The clerks of the Paymaster- 
 General to the Forces were paid by a poimdage on the 
 money voted for the pay of the army ; ^ and no doubt 
 the same principle was applied to a great part of the 
 Navy Office and Victualling Office staffs. A MS. book 
 of estimates of certain expenses of the Royal Household 
 in 1699 2 gives us information about some civil servants 
 who were entirely dependent on their salaries from the 
 Exchequer. The two Secretaries of State received 
 £1850 a year each ; the Ordnance Office appears to 
 have had no fees to support it, since the Master-General 
 of the - Ordnance, the Lieutenant-Gcneral, the Keeper 
 
 ' Cal. Treas. Pap., 1735-8, p. 19. ' See note 3, p. 81. 
 
86 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 of Small Arms, the Works Master, and The Master 
 Gunner all appear on this estimate. There were eight 
 paid Commissioners for Trade, with a Secretary and 
 four clerks attached to them from the staff of the 
 Privy Council. Four clerks of the Privy Cotmcil, a 
 Latin Secretary (at ;^8o a year) and a French Secretary 
 (at £66, 13s. 4d. a year), and various minor officers of 
 Works, Gardens, and Parks make up the list. Of the 
 civil staff of the Navy we have an account in 1747.^ 
 At the Admiralty there were a Secretary, a solicitor, 
 and seven clerks. At the Navy Office in Crutched 
 Friars there were — 
 
 The Comptroller. 
 
 The Surveyor. 
 
 The Clerk of the Acts. 
 
 The Comptroller of Treasurer's Accounts. 
 
 The Comptroller of Victualling Accounts. 
 
 The Comptroller of Storekeeper's Accounts. 
 
 Chief Clerk of the Ticket Ofhce. 
 
 Each of these had a staff of from two to six clerks. 
 The Comptroller had to attend to all payment of 
 ships' wages, to follow the market rates for provisions, 
 examine and audit the Storekeeper's, Treasurer's, 
 and Victualling Accounts. The Surveyor had to 
 attend to supphes of hemp, tar, canvas, boats, anchors, 
 etc. The Clerk of the Acts had to present business 
 to the Navy Board and attend its meetings. The Clerk 
 of the Ticket Office was concerned with pay of dis- 
 charged and deceased seamen. The Treasurer of the 
 Navy was in a house in Old Broad Street. His office 
 made up all the Navy accounts for the Treasury 
 officials. It included, besides the Treasurer himself, 
 
 1 Laws of the Admiralty, ii. 329, 385 sqq. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 87 
 
 a Paymaster with eight clerks, a Cashier with five 
 clerks, a Cashier of the Victualling with four clerks, 
 and two clerks extraordinary. The Victuahing Of&ce 
 on Tower HiU was occupied by seven Commissioners, 
 a Secretary, a Cashier (each with a small staff of 
 clerks), and various clerks of the " cutting house," 
 the bakehouse, the brewhouse, etc. It is easy to 
 deduce from this that the Ordnance Office, with its 
 five heads of departments, would have employed 
 between twenty-five and thirty clerks ; and the 
 Secretary at War perhaps six or seven. The Treasury, 
 with its four Lords Commissioners and a Secretary, 
 would employ about another thirty ; the Exchequer, 
 with its Chancellor, Remembrancer, four Tellers, 
 Clerk of the Pells (charged with the keeping of the 
 documents), etc., is much more difficult to gauge ; 
 but by making a comparison between the known staffs 
 of other offices at this time and their numbers at the 
 date of the first fuU return in 1797, and appl5dng it 
 to this case, we may guess the staff of clerks, in the 
 Exchequer at about thirty. The Signet Office and 
 the Privy Seal Office seem always to have had small 
 staffs of not more than four or six clerks. 
 
 The Third Secretaryship of State 
 
 The practice of government by departments had 
 thus reached, by the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 a shape quite recognisable by modem eyes. As far as 
 the departments were concerned there is Uttle left to 
 record of this period except a steady enlargement. 
 
88 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 In that point they reflect the constitutional changes 
 which were altering the position and powers of 
 Ministers. When, with the absence of George I. 
 from the Cabinet meetings and the persistent criticism 
 of the Commons, Ministers began to assume more and 
 more executive power, the mechanism of government 
 naturally expanded. Six or seven men took the place 
 of one ; and since communications were at the same 
 time slowly improving, and national activities were 
 increasing, there was more work to be done. The 
 number of high officers was not greatly increased. 
 For two periods during the century there were three 
 Secretaries of State. In 1708 Queen Anne appointed, 
 by declaration in Council, a third Secretary, owing to 
 " the pubMc business increasing " ; but she announced 
 that she intended nevertheless to continue the foreign 
 aifairs for the present in the course of dispatch they 
 were then in.^ The imion with Scotland was the 
 apparent cause of the appointment of a third Secretary, 
 and he was generally regarded as Secretary for Scot- 
 land. But the office was of short duration. On the 
 death of the Marquis of Queensberry, its holder, in 
 1711, there was so much competition between the Duke 
 of Hamilton and the Earl of Mar for the succession to 
 him that the office was suppressed.^ In 1768 a third 
 Secretary appears again. The ostensible reason — no 
 insufficient one — ^was that the aifairs of the Colonies 
 were becoming increasingly urgent and difficult, and 
 it was necessary to put over them some one of more 
 authority than the Commissioners for Trade and 
 Plantations. Moreover, a body of Commissioners was 
 not an ideal instrument for such affairs as were just 
 
 * Nicolas, p. 42, quoting the Council Register, 
 ' Thomas, Historical Notes, ii. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 89 
 
 then in progress. At the same time, it is quite likely 
 that the growth of intrigue among Ministers and their 
 rivals was such that a new office provided a fresh 
 support for those in power and a fresh bait for those 
 out of power to angle for combinations. That the 
 creation of the office is at least open to this possible 
 explanation is suggested by the fact that, when the 
 Burke reforms were set on foot, the third Secretaryship 
 was aboUshed without much outcry. 
 
 The Commons and the Public Service 
 
 Burke's reforms mark a distinct stage in the develop- 
 ment of our subject, because they began that process 
 of clearing up the details of expenditure upon purposes 
 of government which ended fifty years later with the 
 inauguration of the present system of Civil Service 
 estimates and supply. The old method of voting lump 
 sums of money to the Crown was breaking down com- 
 pletely. The Crown was perpetually finding the 
 supply insufficient ; and Parliament was perpetually 
 being irritated by demands for more coming upon it, 
 as it were, out of the dark. It is possible that the 
 departments of government might have remained 
 much longer in their old system if corruption had 
 not been so rampant. Every one was on the look-out 
 for pieces of patronage, from the private Member of 
 Parliament, whose support might be secured by pro- 
 viding him with a few Customs and Excise jobs, or a 
 few local postmasterships, to give away among con- 
 stituents, to the highest officers of State themselves. 
 
90 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 When men like the Grenvilles were appointing relatives 
 at the age of four to the reversion of clerkships in the 
 Privy Seal Office,^ it is fairly clear that the Civil 
 Service must have been supporting an immense dead- 
 weight. From time to time during the eighteenth 
 century the Treasury can be seen asking for accounts 
 of the debts of this and that department of the Royal 
 Household, such as those of the Steward of the House- 
 hold and the Treasurer of the Chamber, both of whom 
 were then charged with a host of expenses now con- 
 tained in Civil Service Supply. The Treasury Letter 
 Books are full of pressing appeals from various officers 
 for payment of their salaries. At last, in 1782, on a 
 further representation by the Crown of the amount of 
 money due but unpaid, Burke led an attack upon the 
 whole system. The result was the Act of that year,^ 
 by which a number of offices were suppressed, including 
 those of the third Secretary of State, the Commissioners 
 for Trade and Plantations (whose work was to be 
 undertaken again by a Committee of Council), the 
 principal officers of the Board of Works, of the Great 
 Wardrobe, and of the Jewel Office, the Treasurer of 
 the Chamber, the Cofferer of the Household, the six 
 clerks of the Board of Green Cloth, and the Paymaster 
 of Pensions. More important, however, were the 
 clauses by which a new system was introduced into 
 the allotment of the supplies voted by Parliament, 
 Hitherto the apportioning of various sums in such 
 accounts as existed had not been of a kind to let any 
 light in upon the mass of sinecures and jobbery. 
 Before the Revolution there is nothing that can be 
 called an account of the King's revenue. There 
 are occasional lists drawn up by the Treasurer of the 
 
 ' The Grenville Papers, i. 330. 2 22 George III., c, 82. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 91 
 
 Chamber or the Cofferer, and letters patent appointing 
 to certain offices mention the payments to be made 
 by the Exchequer. But the only responsibility of the 
 high financial officers was to see that the revenue came 
 in, and only went out under the prescribed forms. The 
 attempt after the Revolution to allocate money with 
 more exactitude gives us from 1688 continuous returns ; 
 but for the next hundred years they are made in the 
 most general fashion. ^ The items (if anything so vague 
 can be called an item) are as follows : — 
 
 Army Services. 
 Navy Services. 
 Ordnance Services. 
 Privy Purse. 
 
 Cofferer of the Household. 
 Works and Gardens. 
 Pensions. 
 Secret Service. 
 Fees and Salaries. 
 
 British Ministers Abroad and Contingent 
 Charges. 
 
 A useful proof of the vagueness surrounding the whole 
 system is the fact that, when the judicial establishment 
 begins to make a separate appearance in the reign of 
 George II., the amount of Fees and Salaries shows no 
 diminution. 
 
 ' See Return on Public Income, 1868-9. 
 
92 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 The Attempt to enforce Economy 
 
 The Burke reforms introduced a new classification 
 as follows : — 
 
 Privy Purse (including allowances to the Royal 
 
 Family). 
 The Judicial Establishment. 
 Ministers Abroad. 
 BiUs of the Royal Tradesmen. 
 Wages of the King's Menial Servants. 
 Pensions and Annuities. 
 Fees and Salaries. 
 Salaries of the Treasury and Exchequer. 
 
 It was not, perhaps, a very great change at first 
 sight. Its force lay reaUy in the order thus pre- 
 scribed for payments. There seemed to be no way of 
 dealing in detail, upon each occasion of voting money, 
 with the particulars that might be comprised under 
 " Fees and Salaries." This was probably partly 
 because the Commons still clung to the old policy of 
 keeping clear of the executive ; the best spirits of the 
 Commons could still see nothing but the possibility of 
 an increasingly venal House in any direct association 
 with the staffing and equipping of public offices. 
 Burke therefore hoped to secure economy and super- 
 vision by indirect means ; if the salaries of the Civil 
 Service came last but one upon the list, there would 
 always be a difficulty in finding money for them and 
 superfluous sinecurists might be starved out. If, 
 further, the salaries of the Treasury and Exchequer 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 93 
 
 were put absolutely last, the financial officers, to save 
 their own livelihood, would have an eye to pruning 
 down the numbers of those who came before them. 
 There was, indeed, so much apparent effectiveness in 
 this proposal that the new arrangement was delayed ; 
 but by 1786 it is in full operation in the Returns. 
 
 In one respect the Act of 1782 went too far ; it was 
 very soon found that the third Secretaryship of State, 
 whatever the circumstances of its origin, had in fact 
 rendered itself necessary, and in 1794 it was restored. 
 Two processes had been at work. On the one hand the 
 increase of business had made it necessary to depart- 
 mentalise Government to a degree hitherto unknown ; 
 and on the other hand the Secretaries of State offered 
 the most convenient, if not the only, opening for 
 enlarging the executive personnel. The only alter- 
 native was a restoration of the Board of paid Com- 
 missioners. Enough has been said of the corrupt 
 state of the service to show that the idea of a fictitious 
 Board with a President alone receiving a salary (the' 
 later device for enlarging the governing body) would 
 never have occurred to anyone. Between the restora- 
 tion of a Secretary of State and a paid Board the 
 decision was an obvious matter of finance. In the 
 King's Message of 1782 the cost of the Board of Trade 
 is put at " somewhat more than £12,600 " ; the cost 
 of the third Secretary of State at £7500. 
 
94 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 New Arrangement of the Secretaries' Duties 
 
 The third Secretary was therefore restored, and he 
 became definitely Secretary for the Colonies. At the 
 time of the abolition of the office he had been described 
 as "the third Secretary of State, commonly called 
 the Secretary of State for the Colonies." A change 
 in the formalities of government had intervened. Up 
 to the year 1782 the distinction between the spheres 
 of work of the Secretaries had been one rather of 
 convenience than of prescription. The Secretaries had 
 been, from the first appointment of more than one, 
 on an equality. It had been found convenient to 
 divide correspondence between them on certain broad 
 lines of geographical division, since the main bulk of 
 their work was in foreign affairs. The Secretary for 
 the North, deeding with the northern Powers of Europe, 
 had been (so far as there was any seniority) the senior 
 of the two ; and consequently, as more work fell on 
 the Secretaries, such matters as home affairs, colonial 
 affairs, and Irish affairs fell to the Secretary for the 
 South. Sir WiUiam Anson has shown that this was 
 not as heavy a burden as it sounds.^ Ireland had yet 
 its own Parliament and executive ; colonial affairs 
 were not very seriously taken, as the whole official 
 attitude towards|the American colonies in the eighteenth 
 century shows ; home affairs consisted of very little 
 beyond a certain amount of prison administration, 
 and even that was not very searching. But by the end 
 of the century the increase of population, the improve- 
 
 • Law and Custom, il. i. i66. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 95 
 
 ment of communications, and the consequent oppor- 
 tunity for more distinct central control, made it advis- 
 able to rearrange the Secretaries' duties. The change 
 WEis very simply inaugurated ; it appears to have been 
 done by mere direction of the King, just as the original 
 apportionment of duties for the North and the South 
 had been made. Nothing can show more clearly the 
 absence of responsibility, in the last resort, to anyone 
 but the King than the fact that no Order in Council 
 or departmental Minute records the alteration. The 
 only State Paper recording it is a circular to the 
 Ministers abroad, dated March 29, 1782, in which Fox, 
 announcing his appointment to be Secretary of State, 
 adds that the King has been pleased " at the same time 
 to make a new arrangement in the Departments by 
 conferring that for Domestic Affairs and the Colonies 
 on the Earl of Shelburne, and entrusting me with the 
 sole direction of the Department for Foreign Affairs." ^ 
 When, therefore, the third Secretary reappeared, he was 
 definitely the Secretary for the Colonies ; and as the 
 supposition was that he would not have an amount of 
 work equal to that of the other two, the War Depart- 
 ment was also attached to his office in so far as it lay 
 in the hands of the Secretary at War — that is to say, 
 general Army policy and the estimating for the year's 
 requirements. It may be noted here that the com- 
 paratively late growth of a standing army had caused 
 a difference between the Navy and Army departments. 
 The Navy, like the Civil Service, practically came 
 automatically on the Exchequer for its needs. The 
 Treasury was in effect little more than a book-keeper 
 in respect to the Navy. But it did occasionally revise 
 and reduce the estimates made by the Secretary at War. 
 
 * Anson, 11. i. 165. 
 
96 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 Development of the Post Office 
 
 In the general expansion of public of&ces one other, 
 besides those already mentioned, had developed to 
 a degree that had made its staff one of the most 
 considerable, namely, the Post Office. Technically its 
 position was no more altered than was that of other 
 offices ; it remained a means of raising revenue granted 
 to the King for life, and administered without control 
 by Parliament, except in so far as, being a form of 
 taxation, the rates of postage were fixed by Act of 
 Parhament. The development of the Post Office 
 came rather late in the century. As long as local post- 
 masters were in fact farmers of the posts, having to pay 
 a certain sum to the Exchequer, and then make what 
 they could within the limits of the fixed rates, ^ there was 
 no necessity for a large central staff in London. The 
 business was done in the most slip-shod way, and the 
 officials who were nominally postmasters-general con- 
 cerned themselves with little beyond taking fees. But 
 when the Palmer scheme of sending the mails regularly 
 by the coach-routes was laid before Pitt, and it appeared 
 to him that the confused welter of evasions, perquisites, 
 and complaints (of which the postal system chiefly 
 consisted) could be made by proper centralisation to 
 yield a useful revenue, a great organisation began to 
 grow up. Besides the office of the postmasters-general 
 with their secretary and eight or ten clerks, there were 
 the offices of the Receiver-General, the Surveyor and 
 Superintendent of Mail Coaches, the Clerks of the Roads, 
 
 » See Joyce's History of the Post Office. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 97 
 
 the Bye-Letter Office (for dealing with letters conveyed 
 by cross-country routes and not through London), the 
 Foreign Mail Office, and three or four others, each 
 with an Inspector, his Assistant or Chief Clerk, and 
 from two to six clerks.'^ Here we must recognise in 
 passing that the fee system, bad as it was, assisted in 
 the development of public offices. A good deal of the 
 cost of the Post Office was defrayed out of its revenue. 
 But its development would have been longer delayed 
 if there had not been a prospect of a useful balance ; 
 and in the existing state of correspondence there would 
 have been no balance from a largely increased organisa- 
 tion if all the staff had had to be paid out of the revenue. 
 Local postmasters paid fees on their appointment ; 
 but by far the greater part of the fees csime from the 
 sending of newspapers abroad and the receiving of 
 newspapers from abroad. So heavily were the news- 
 papers mulcted that practically every one of the upper 
 class of subordinates took money from this source, and 
 the Comptroller of the Foreign Department had no 
 salary, but a simi of £3270 a year from these fees. 
 Another whole branch of the Office lived largely on fees 
 from the publication of the Mail and Shipping List.* 
 But while it may on the one hand be said that the 
 development of public departments was forwarded by 
 the fee system, that system was inherently so bad 
 that it could not tend to real development. The fees 
 were much more often an addition to an already 
 sufficient salary than a source of income for an official, 
 who would otherwise not have had a place in the 
 office ; the Secretary to the Post Office had a salary 
 of £1200 a year, and added to that ;f3ioo a year 
 
 » See Accounts relating to the Post Office, Parly. Return, 1822. 
 ■- Ibid. 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 from sending newspapers to America and British 
 settlements. 
 
 The Civil Service at the End of the Eighteenth 
 Century 
 
 The extent of the Government service at the end of 
 the eighteenth centviry is exactly known from a 
 Parhamentary Return pubhshed in 1828. In all 
 fifty-four departments appear, but it must be re- 
 membered that several which make a separate appear- 
 ance here would to-day be sub-divisions of modern 
 departments. Thus the naval business was trans- 
 acted by five departments, the army business by 
 eight, the Exchequer by eight. The following is a 
 list of the Departments, with the staff of most of the 
 principal ones : — 
 
 Treasury . . . . 142 
 
 Secretary of State : Home . . .26 
 
 „ Foreign . . .24 
 
 „ Colonies . . .12 
 
 Privy Council Office . . . .16 
 
 „ for Trade . . 19 
 
 ^Admiralty . . . . .45 
 
 Navy Office ..... 160 
 Navy Pay Office . . . .73 
 
 Victualling Office . . . .118 
 
 ^Audit Office . . . . -33 
 
 Ordnance Office .... 353 
 
 War Office ..... 58 
 Army Pay Office . . . .24 
 
 Commander-in-Chief's Office . . .16 
 
 Adjutant-General's Office 
 Quartermaster-General's Office 
 Office for Military Boards 
 Army Medical Board Office 
 
 The Modem 
 Admiralty 
 
 The Modem 
 War Office 
 
 i. 
 
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY 99 
 
 Customs Office 
 
 
 6004 
 
 Excise Office . 
 
 
 6580 
 
 Stamps Office . 
 
 
 
 Taxes Office 
 
 
 
 Post Office : Great Britain 
 
 * 
 
 
 Ireland . 
 
 
 
 Mint Office 
 
 
 
 Alien Office 
 
 
 
 Stationery Office 
 
 
 
 State Paper Office 
 
 . 
 
 
 Comptroller of Army Accounts 
 
 
 National Debt Office . 
 
 • 
 
 
 Lottery Office . 
 
 • 
 
 
 Hackney Coach, Hawkers', 
 
 and Pedlars' Office. 
 
 
 Auditor of Exchequer . 
 
 
 26 
 
 Teller of Exchequer 
 
 
 6 
 6 
 6 
 6 
 23 
 
 Pells Office 
 
 • 
 
 Exchequer Bill Office . 
 
 . 
 
 8 
 
 It is very difficult to make any comparison between 
 these establishments and the establishments of to-day, 
 so great have been the changes in the work and the 
 character of the departments. If we take the Foreign 
 Office, as one that has least altered its duties, we find 
 that a staff of 24 in 1797 has grown to one of 129 in 
 1912. The old cumbrous machinery of the Exchequer, 
 which can hardly be said to have done any real 
 auditing in 1797 with a staff of 73 persons, has been 
 replaced by the Exchequer and Audif Department 
 with a staff in 191 2 of 208. The truth probably is 
 that, while there must have been less pubUc work 
 to be done, the staffs were inadequate to do what there 
 was, and were bound to remain inadequate so long 
 as the Commons, with whom rested the granting of 
 supplies, could not but regard the pubhc service as 
 a preserve of sinecurists and placemen. 
 
100 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 One further point must be noted. Until the work 
 of Government became genuinely a public service, 
 its responsible heads remained few in number. All 
 had grown out of the personal staff, so to speak, of 
 the Crown. The offices of the Lord Chancellor and 
 Lord Privy Seal had fallen into mere routine, so far 
 as the executive went, because they depended on 
 preliminary action by the Secretaries of State and 
 their Signets.^ The First Lord of the Admiralty was, 
 in point of fact, usually admitted to the Cabinet ; * 
 but no one would have thought of attacking him, 
 rather than a Secretary of State, on a questioh of 
 general poUcy. The Master-General of the Ordnance 
 was not of the Cabinet, and the War Department was 
 simply regarded as a sub-office of one of the Principal 
 Secretaries. The Board of Trade was no more than 
 an advisory body to the Secretary of State for the 
 Colonies ; the Post Office was subject to a Secretary 
 of State.^ It might really be said that, however 
 many departments might be enumerated in a return 
 to ParUament, there were really only four actual 
 departments of Government — the Treasury and the 
 three Secretaries of State. All the rest were in some 
 way or other branches of these. 
 
 1 See pi 38. 2 Anson, 11. i. 95. 
 
 ° Joyce's History of the Post Office, p. 223. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 
 
 The Secretaries of State had now become in all 
 essentials what their modern successors are ; and 
 there is no need to trace further the development 
 of their place in the Constitution. Yet one incident 
 may be referred to, as showing how completely the 
 Secretaries had departed from their original position, 
 and at the same time how curiously ca,sual the methods 
 of obtaining control of the machinery of Government 
 had been. In 1812 the Prince Regent appointed a 
 Private Secretary. It was, in fact, discovered that 
 Parliament had appropriated to other uses an official 
 necessary to the convenience of the Crown, and had 
 left the ruler of the kingdom without any one to 
 write his letters. This had been done, too, so entirely 
 without statutory enactment that there was ground 
 for real uneasiness at the new appointment. The 
 Secretaries of State 1 had been gradually brought to 
 acknowledge the authority of Parliament, but they 
 remained the King's Secretaries in theory, and if a new 
 Secretary was to be appoihted, how could the Commons 
 be sure that irresponsibility would not again creep 
 in ? The new office looked rather like a return to 
 difficulties of the Middle Ages, when restrictions on the 
 Great Seal were evaded by the invention of the Privy 
 Seal, and restrictions on that by the use of the Signet. 
 
102 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 A debate was raised in Parliament on the announce- 
 ment of the appointment of Colonel M'Mahon to be 
 the Regent's Private Secretary, and a motion made 
 for the production of the documents of appointment. 
 The speeches on both sides are interesting — those 
 criticising the " new office " because they show how 
 little the theory of the Secretaryship had been altered ; 
 those on the Government side because they show how 
 fundamentally the practice of it had altered — so 
 fundamentally that actual holders of State offices 
 could no longer conceive of a parallel between their 
 situation and that of a Private Secretary. Mr. Wynn, 
 who moved for the papers, maintained that the Home 
 Secretary was the King's private Secretary, and it 
 was his duty to wait on the King. Mr. Elliot said 
 he could understand a fourth Secretary of State, if 
 one were considered necessary, but what was this 
 new office ? Mr. Ponsopby remarked that a permanent 
 confidential post of this sort, involving communica- 
 tions between the King and his Ministers, must 
 ultimately be brought under Parliamentary control ; 
 Mr. Tierney denied that there could be anjH:hing 
 " private " in such an appointment. Most interesting 
 of all, perhaps, as showing how unanalysed the 
 alterations in the Secretary's status had been, was 
 the speech of Lord Folkestone. He related how he 
 had seen in Russia, in the time of the Emperor Paul, 
 a " person of low extraction," who, becoming a Privy 
 Councillor and Private Secretary to the monarch, 
 had been enabled, by his proximity to the Throne, 
 to " destroy the influence of Ministers who were 
 responsible to no ParHament, overcome a proud 
 nobility, and turn them all out of their places." 
 Substitute the Lords of the Council for " Ministers 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 103 
 
 responsible to no Parliament," and you have a very 
 fair description of what had happened — not indeed 
 in one man's hfetime, but over several centuries — in 
 Lord Folkestone's own country ; but he seemed to 
 have no idea of the analogy. 
 
 On the Government side it was replied, first by 
 Lord Castlereagh, that " Colonel M'Mahon was in- 
 capable of receiving His Royal Highness's commands 
 in the constitutional sense of the words, or of carrying 
 them into effect " ; and secondly by the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer (Spencer Perceval), that " Colonel 
 M'Mahon was incompetent to communicate the 
 pleasure of the Prince Regent in any way that would 
 authorise any subject in the land to attend to it, 
 or to act upon it with official responsibihty." ^ What 
 these two speakers meant by such dogmatic state- 
 ments was best known to themselves. There was 
 nothing to prevent the new Private Secretary being 
 entrusted with a Signet ; nor was there any statutory 
 limitation of the number or qualifications of Secretaries 
 who might countersign the Royal Sign Manual. 
 
 The motion was rejected, and the matter was never 
 raised again. For although technically there was 
 no real answer to the uneasiness of the Commons, 
 there was this practical answer — ^that the Crown was 
 unlikely to put the new official into a position in 
 which he would have to be appropriated in self- 
 defeHCr by the Commons, as the other Secretaries 
 had been, and again leave the Sovereign with no one 
 to write his letters. 
 
 ' Cobbett, Parliamentary Debates, xxii. 332-63. 
 
104 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 Double Impulse towards Reform 
 
 Before long the status of the service of government 
 was to be so deeply altered that the real possibilities of 
 such a situation as this could hardly have emerged 
 again. Reluctant as the Commons undoubtedly were 
 to undertake responsibiUty for the pubHc service, 
 they had been embarked by the Burke reforms upon a 
 course which obliged them to shoulder it in the end. 
 The first step in this process may be discerned in the 
 Return of Public Income and Expenditure for the 
 year 1802.^ In it, besides the various headings which 
 had been customary since those reforms, appears a new 
 one-^" Miscellaneous Civil Services out of Supplies " — 
 and under this head are grouped the following items : — 
 
 1. Public Works and Buildings. 
 
 2. Salaries, etc., of Public Departments. 
 
 3. Law and Justice. 
 
 4. Education, Science, and Art. 
 
 5. Colonial, Consular, and Foreign Services. 
 
 The change suggested by the second of these items 
 was not so great as it may seem to be at first sight. 
 It did not mean that the salaries of the staff of public 
 departments were at the disposal of the House of 
 Commons in any new way. It merely meant that 
 instead of charging the Consolidated Fund with 
 increased sums for the Civil Service, the supplementary 
 demands for each year were to be placed on Supply — 
 were, in other words, to be strictly in accordance with 
 
 1 See Return on Public Income, 1868-9. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 105 
 
 each year's needs, and not a permanent charge. This is 
 proved not only by the fact that the old item of " Fees 
 and Salaries " remained at its usual figure, but that the 
 sums voted under the new head varied so extraordin- 
 arily during the next twenty years. In 1802 it was 
 £42,740 ; in other years (to take a few specimens at 
 random) it was £32,000, £3000, £40,000, £9000, £25,000, 
 £13,000, £16,000, £59.000, £30,000. 
 
 But while this change of 1802 did not affect the main 
 source of income of the Civil Service, it is important 
 as inaugurating the placing of money for such purposes 
 on Supply. Hitherto no one had ever supposed that 
 money could be provided year by year for Civil Govern- 
 ment. Regarded always as one of the functions of the 
 Crown, Civil Government was supported in the same 
 way as all the other functions of the Crown. Since 
 the Restoration the custom had always been to vote 
 the King a certain annual sum for his lifetime, to 
 maintain the dignity of his Court and to carry on 
 the Government of his realm. The procedure was 
 that which is still adopted at the beginning of a new 
 reign, in the voting of the Civil List ; the difference 
 was that, vmtil the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 the Crown was supposed to govern, as well as to meet 
 its Household expenses, out of the sum provided. 
 The sum voted was no more subject to subsequent 
 discussion than the Civil List is to-daj'. Once voted 
 it had to be found annually out of the taxes specifically 
 allotted for the purpose, or, after the invention by 
 Pitt in 1787 of the Consohdated Fund, out of that fund. 
 Obviously, either the enlargement of the sum or its 
 diminution would be a serious matter, because such a 
 change would not affect a single year, but would have 
 to be as permanent as the orignial vote. Increases 
 
io6 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 were, in fact, seldom granted. Insufficiency of the 
 Civil List was met by tlreclumsy expedient of allowing 
 debt to accumulate in the salary list, and then voting 
 a lump sum to pay it off ; this avoided enlargement of 
 the- permanent burden on the taxes. It will be seen, 
 therefore, that the placing of supplementary provision 
 for salaries upon Supply was a step that opened up 
 wholly new possibilities. For the moment its import- 
 ance was that additional money could be found as 
 required ; and debt need not arise. Later on it had 
 more far-reaching importance. Year by year the 
 amounts thus laid upon Supply tended to increase. 
 The result was that the House of Commons grew 
 accustomed to voting annually considerable sums for 
 Civil Government ; and when the time came for the 
 final step the idea of removing the Civil Service entirely 
 from the Consolidated Fund, and placing it on Supply 
 wittrasnual estimates, appeared in no way subversive 
 or difficult to accept. 
 
 The persistent need for money, and the necessary 
 corollary of that in an increasing tendency on the 
 part of the Commons to demand details of the way in 
 which the money was spent, were thus a principal 
 cause of the Civil Service becoming a body of persons 
 directly employed by — since directly paid by — Parlia- 
 ment. But another cause too was at work. Legis- 
 lation was taking fresh directions under the combined 
 impulse of a new concern for the common welfare and 
 a new facility of communication between different 
 parts of the country, which tended to allow of a greater 
 centralisation of control. Fresh duties thus accrued 
 to be discharged, and the capacity of the departments 
 to meet them became matter for inquiry. Between 
 1820 and 1835 such inquiry was constantly going on. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 107 
 
 and there was a series of Retiims setting forth the 
 number of persons employed and the salaries paid in 
 public offices. A very elaborate Return was made in 
 1821, comprising all the departments except the 
 Ordnance Office, which for some reason made no return. 
 Three more full Returns of the numbers employed 
 were made in 1830, 1831, and 1833. There were also 
 Returns on particular departments, like that on the 
 Home Office in 1822, and one on the Post Office in the 
 same year. 
 
 The Service and the Fee System 
 
 We may continue to pursue first the reform in the 
 method of providing money, since that was the more 
 fundamental change. When we consider the apparent 
 slowness of the Commons to take in hand the payment 
 of the Civil Service, we must remember that it was not 
 at that time the straightforward matter which it is 
 to-day. We have seen that, from a very early stage in 
 the history of the Service, men employed in it were not, 
 as a rule, paid regular salaries. They were either 
 allowed to support themselves by a system of fees, or 
 they were given places of profit which might have 
 nothing to do with their work.^ We have also seen 
 how the fee system allowed for extensions of the 
 departments which would have been impossible, or, 
 at any rate, long delayed, if they had involved increas- 
 ing salary charges on the Civil List.* Thus from 
 necessity, ajid to some extent (paradoxical though it 
 
 ' See p. 16. ' See p. 97. 
 
io8 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 may sound) from considerations of public convenience, 
 the Civil Service had become in a measure self-support- 
 ing. The fee system was regarded as the main source 
 of income. In giving evidence before the Select 
 Committee of 1847-8, a former official of the Treasury 
 stated that the Civil List payments were designed " to 
 make up the deficiencies of the fee funds of the three 
 Secretaries of State." ^ So complete was the system 
 that there were four or five banks in London which were 
 considered the banks of the Public Offices " by arrange- 
 ment with the Treasury " ; and the custom was for the 
 Chief Clerks to keep Fee Accounts there, out of which 
 they made payments " to meet the expenses of the 
 office." * Even the heads of departments derived 
 considerable portions of their income from fees. In 
 the late eighteenth century the Foreign Secretary was 
 reckoned to take £2000 in fees ; the Lord President had 
 £2280 ; the Home Secretary had so large a sum that he 
 was accustomed to return £1500 out of it |X) increase the 
 clerks' salaries in his office.* , 
 
 There were thus three sources of income for the Civil 
 Service — the fee fund, the Civil List (paying some 
 salaries outright, and making up others which obtained 
 an inadequate share of fees), and now the " Miscel- 
 laneous Estimates out of Supplies," making up the 
 deficiencies of the Civil List. It is no wonder that the 
 Commons should be slow to perceive in the last of 
 these three — the sole source of income of the Civil 
 Service to-day — the method which ought tobe developed 
 
 1 Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure, 1847-8 : 
 Minutes of Evidence, p. g. This accounts for the form of the 
 heading in the PubUc Accounts — " Fees and Salaries." 
 
 » Ibid., p. 153. 
 
 ' See Report of Sel. Comm. on Reduction of Salaries, 1831. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 109 
 
 to the exclusion of the others. Nor is it any wonder 
 that with the old system in stable operation there should 
 have been some incUnation to transfer the theory that 
 " the King should Uve of his own " to the Civil Service, 
 and to think that the solution of the difficulty of 
 maintaining the Civil Government was to be found in a 
 better organisation of the fee system. In the Returns 
 with which we now have to deal there are signs of this 
 inchnation. 
 
 The first Return is that of 1821, and it is confined to 
 those employed at a salary of over £200 a year. The 
 object, that is to say, was rather to cast some Ught upon 
 the salary list than to investigate the efficiency of the 
 officials. The Return gives the details for 1793 side by 
 side with those for 1821, and in almost every case two 
 striking features are to be noticed. The first is that 
 the remunerations in 1793 are usually in odd sums, and 
 in 1821 usually in round figures. The second is that 
 in very many cases there is an apparently large advance 
 of remuneration. The two points are probably sus- 
 ceptible of the same explanation. The fee system 
 had, as we have suggested, become more carefully 
 organised. The process is put into words in the state- 
 ment made by the Privy Council Office for this Return ; 
 where it is remarked that formerly fees added anything 
 from £1000 to £2000 to the nominal salaries of the 
 clerks, but that since 1808 the fees had been placed 
 to a general fund from which salaries were paid at a 
 fixed rate, the surplus, if any, being carried to the 
 Consolidated Fund. This movement towards a fixed 
 rate of salary would account for both the points to be 
 noticed in the Return ; it would obviously produce 
 roimd figures rather than odd sums ; and it would 
 explain the apparent advance of salaries, since the new 
 
no THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 figures would represent the whole sum received, which 
 the old figures, in days of more casual division of the 
 fees, did not. 
 
 Even if we are at present on the track rather of 
 reform by systematising the fees than reform by altering 
 the source of income, yet this Return shows how the 
 way was unconsciously being prepared for the taking 
 over of the departments by Parliament. It would 
 have been almost impossible to change the whole 
 method of payment until there was some means of 
 airiving at a knowledge of the real salaries enjoyed. 
 The new system of dealing with the fees produced 
 statements of income making the way easy for Estimates 
 in later years. At the same time it brought sinecures 
 within range of attack, which they could hardly have 
 been while fees were treated (according to the frank 
 statement in the Admiralty section of the 1821 Return) 
 as " the private property of the Secretaries and clerks." 
 
 One other point to be noted in this Return is that the 
 last remnants of the old system of paying an official 
 a lump sum, out of which he had to provide for his 
 own establishment of clerks, had disappeared. It 
 survived in the Adjutant-General's office, for instance, 
 down to 1799, but from that date onward the Adjutant- 
 General's staff of clerks was provided for by the sum 
 for which the Secretary at War estimated each year. 
 As the Adjutant-General himself remarks in the return, 
 the old system led to the employment of mihtary 
 officers or non-commissioned officers, since, being in 
 receipt of army pay, they could be got cheaply ; the 
 new system led to the employment of civilians. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM iii 
 
 Steady Reductions of Numbers 
 
 The Return of 1832 has the interest of being the 
 last full Return before the modern system of providing 
 for the whole Civil Service by estimates laid in detail 
 before Parliament began. Throughout these Returns 
 there is a constant indication of demands for reductions. 
 The staffs of public departments had risen consider- 
 ably between 1797 and 1815 ; the number of persons 
 had increased from 16,267 to 24,598, and the salaries 
 paidfrom £1,374,561 tO;f3,202,439. Whatthe Commons 
 had to do, if they could, was to find out how much of 
 this increase was necessary ; and by pressure upon 
 the Lords of the Treasury they had succeeded by 
 1832 in arriving at what was eividently the needfiil 
 staff ; for the Returns show but little change in the 
 later years of the period. Some early reductions had 
 been followed by renewed increases, but the only 
 serious ones had been in the Customs department. 
 The reason for them there is pretty clear. After 1827, 
 when the number of persons employed had been 
 reduced to 22,912, the reductions are only by a few 
 hundreds, \mtil in 1832 the figure reached is 21,305, 
 with a salary list of £2,819,622. This may roughly 
 be takeft as the Civil Service of which Parliament 
 was now to make itself the master. A minor detail 
 of some interest is that in the shape of the Return 
 there is a sign of administrative reforms tending to 
 greater efficiency in the combination of certain depart- 
 ments hitherto separate but dealing in reality with one 
 branch of affairs. The various naval departments 
 
112 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT ' 
 
 are put together under the head of the Admiralty, and 
 two of the mihtary departments under that of the 
 War Office. The former of these two groupings 
 represents a real change already legalised. In 1832 
 an Act was passed by which the Navy Office and 
 Victualling Office ceased to be distinct departments, 
 and became sub- divisions of the Admiralty, each being 
 more orless assigned to one of the Lords of the Admiralty. 
 Thus the general policy of the Navy, the construction 
 and maintenance of ships, the pay, clothing, and 
 feeding of the men, were at length controlled from a 
 single office by a single Board, of which the head was a 
 Minister responsible to Parhament. Only one naval 
 concern remained outside this arrangement — the pro- 
 vision of guns for the fleet. This remained in the 
 hands of the Ordnance Office, the idea presumably being 
 that as that office must continue to exist for the Army, 
 it would be the reverse of a simplification to make a 
 second ordnance authority in the Admiralty. The 
 curious result of this in our own day is that, since the 
 Ordnance Office has been absorbed in the War Office 
 the cost of making and testing guns for the Navy is on 
 the War Office estimates. Possibly some different 
 arrangement might have been made if the Army 
 administration had been reformed at the same time 
 as that of the Navy. But with the exception of 
 placing the Office for Military Boards, which dealt 
 chiefly with the clothing of the troops, under the War 
 Office, no ftirther change was made at this time. It 
 probably appeared less in need of alteration, since 
 much of its separation, no more practical or justifiable 
 than the separation existing in the naval administra- 
 tion, was rendered less obvious by the fact that the 
 officials responsible for detached duties were not 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 113 
 
 created for the purpose, but had assumed the duties as 
 coming under the heads of their other duties. The 
 reason may have been that, owing to the distrust and 
 suspicion with which the growth of a standing army had 
 had to contend, the authorities felt it wise to call as 
 little attention as possible to that growth, and therefore 
 avoided creating departments. Thus the Commis- 
 sariat business Was transacted by the Treasury, and 
 the forces kept on the Home establishment were in the 
 depajtment of the Home Secretary. 
 
 The Civil Service in 1832 
 
 The departments on the Retiurn for 1832 are as 
 follows : — 
 
 Departments. 
 
 Treasury . 
 
 Secretary of State : Home 
 Foreign 
 „ ,, Colonies 
 
 Privy Council Office 
 
 „ for Trade , 
 
 Audit Office 
 Admiralty 
 Ordnance Office 
 Customs Office 
 Excise Office 
 Stamps Office 
 Taxes Office 
 Post Office 
 Mint Office 
 War Office 
 Army Pay Office . 
 Commander-in-Chief's Office 
 
 8 
 
 Number Em-ployed. 
 
 "5 
 
 30 
 
 39 
 
 33 
 
 17 
 
 25 
 
 95 
 723 
 824 
 
 9459 
 6377 
 
 458 
 
 275 
 1815 
 
 30 
 87 
 54 
 26 
 
114 
 
 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 DepaHments. Number Employed 
 
 Quartermaster-General's Office . 
 
 24 
 
 Adjutant-General's Office 
 
 28 
 
 Judge Advocate General's Office 
 
 7 
 
 Army Medical Board 
 
 13 
 
 Chaplain General's Department . 
 
 I 
 
 Chelsea Hospital .... 
 
 162 
 
 AUen Office , . . . 
 
 8 
 
 Stationery Office .... 
 
 . 36 
 
 Register of Colonia,! Slaves Office 
 
 4 
 
 State Paper Office 
 
 6 
 
 Army Accounts Office 
 
 28 
 
 National Debt Office 
 
 32 
 
 Auditor's Office, Exchequer 
 
 20 
 
 Teller of the Exchequer . 
 
 6 
 6 
 6 
 6 
 13 
 
 It »» • • • 
 Clerk of the Pells Office . 
 
 Exchequer Bill Office .... 
 
 II 
 
 Auditors Land Revenue Office . 
 
 II 
 
 Barons of Exchequer, Scotland . 
 
 34 
 
 Woods and Forests Office 
 
 91 
 
 There were in addition nineteen departments in Ireland, 
 but with the exception of the Chief Secretary's, the 
 Privy Council, and Privy Seal Offices, they were mostly 
 military departments. 
 
 This Return was speedily followed by an important 
 and long overdue reform. The Exchequer accounted 
 for no fewer than ten separate departments on this 
 list — the offices of the Auditor, the National Debt, 
 the four Tellers, the Clerk of the Pells, the Exchequer 
 Bills, the Auditors of the Land Revenue, and the 
 Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland. Yet with all 
 this the continued existence of the Exchequer was no 
 more than a habit of government, and it had become 
 a bad habit. The real knowledge of finance, of the 
 taxable capacity of the country, and of the currents 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 115 
 
 of expenditure, had passed to the Treasury. The 
 Exchequer was nominally the office of receipt, of 
 account, and of payment. In no one of these direc- 
 tions was its action either complete or efficient. With 
 the development of the banking system it would have 
 been absurd to accumulate treasure in a Government 
 department. The revenue business was already 
 largely done by banks, and a considerable source of 
 the Civil Service income, the Fee Fund, never went 
 into the Exchequer at all. In regard to its accountant 
 duties the Exchequer was even more ridiculous. 
 Three different stages of reform were all in existence 
 at once, and all of them were inefficient. The Tellers 
 dated from the days when the striking of wooden 
 tallies was the only form of checking accounts ; the 
 Clerk of the Pells from days when the parchment rolls 
 began to be kept in a form which rendered their 
 preservation a further check upon receipts. Both 
 these forms of audit were at their best mechanical ; 
 they involved no real revision of what had been going 
 on in financial matters. They lent themselves there- 
 fore easily to the support of sinecurists ; the Tellers 
 and the Clerk of the Pells had for a long time past 
 been men of family and influence, and the work of 
 their offices had been Uttle more than to calculate 
 the percentage of fees due to these distinguished 
 placemen. In 1780 an Audit Office had been estab- 
 lished, with the intention that it should do the real 
 work of accounting ; it had fallen under the prevaiUng 
 spell and become another source of fees milking the 
 revenue. The third nominal duty of the Exchequer — 
 that of making payments— had become unimportant. 
 The Army and the Navy both had their separate 
 Pay Offices, the Civil Service drew but a portion of its 
 
ii6 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 income from the Exchequer, and as for other pay- 
 ments the system of Treasury Warrants had become 
 so exact that a department to attend to them after 
 they were made out was quite unnecessary. 
 
 In 1834 the whole Exchequer estabUshment was 
 swept away without difficulty. The Bank of England 
 was made the office of receipt of the revenue. An 
 Auditor and Comptroller-General with an efficient 
 staff took over the business of account. A Paymaster 
 of the Civil Service was appointed, to be merged 
 two years later, with the Army and Navy Pay Offices, 
 in the office of the Paymaster-General, who attends 
 to the payment of salaries in all departments. 
 
 The New Conception of Government 
 
 We may now turn to the other line along which 
 the impulse for refoim was acting — namely, the 
 creation of new public duties and the centralising 
 of control. 
 
 The appointment of a third Secretary of State in 
 1794, and the new apportionment of duties between the 
 two others, whereby one became specifically Secretary 
 for Home Affairs, were perhaps the first indications of 
 an increasing concern for the internal well-being of the 
 country. A Home Secretary, it must have been 
 presumed, was likely to have enough to do, in dealing 
 with the administration of justice, the control of 
 prisons, the Post Office, etc., to occupy a whole depart- 
 ment. It is doubtful whether his duties at that time 
 would be considered full work for a department 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 117 
 
 now. In 1816, indeed, after the Home Secretary had 
 been relieved of some of his duties by the appointment 
 of a Private Secretary to the Prince Regent, the 
 question was raised whether the remaining duties were 
 enough to justify the existence of a Secretary of State. ^ 
 But already social reforms were under way which 
 rendered such a question unpractical. The first 
 Factory Act, concerning the health of children in 
 cotton mills, had been passed in 1802 ; and in the next 
 thirty years Committee after Committee inquired 
 into factory conditions. As the sense of responsibiUty 
 in such matters increased, it became necessary to bring 
 depai'tmental administration to bear, and the Home 
 Office was obviously the department to exercise con- 
 trol. In 1829 the police system was set on foot ; and 
 although in general the control of the police forces 
 was given to local authorities, the MetropoUtan Force 
 fell to the Home Secretary's governance ; and in any 
 case his responsibility for the justices and municipalities 
 made him in some measure concerned for the whole 
 poUce force of the country. Reports had to be made 
 annually to him, as they are at this day. In 1835 the 
 Municipal Corporations Act reformed all the principal 
 municipal authorities of the kingdom, and again duties 
 were added to the Home Office, the Secretary of State 
 being required to give his sanction to bye-laws. The 
 Factory Act of the same year founded the immense 
 system of inspection which remains one of the principal 
 duties" of the Home Office. 
 
 So rapid was the development of all kinds of national 
 activity that, far from being superfluous, the Home 
 Office soon became insufficient to cope with the work 
 that was perpetually arising. When gas had come 
 
 ' Hansard, First Series, xxxiii. 893. 
 
ii8 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 into common use, and towns were all setting up water 
 supplies ; when the advance of steam and machinery 
 was giving an immense impulse to trade, and joint-stock 
 companies were being constantly formed ; when the 
 carriage of coal for the factories was bringing the canals 
 to the zenith of their prosperity — it was inevitable that 
 Parliament should decide to exercise some control over 
 all these developments. Such matters, especially, as 
 the supply of gas and water and transport facilities 
 could not be left to unregulated monopoly. They 
 must have developed with such speed that it was 
 impossible to think of handing them over to the Home 
 Secretary ; and, as it happened, another authority was 
 in existence which might be empowered to deal with 
 them — the Board of Trade. Nothing could show more 
 clearly how far reform had already gone than the 
 erection of the Board of Trade in a shape to deal with 
 new responsibilities. There was no question of paying 
 more officials than were absolutely necessary, and 
 not the least hint of sinecure salaried Commissioners, 
 who had been the ruin of the old Board.^ An Act of 
 Parliament in 1826 provided that it should be lawful 
 for the Sovereign by warrant under the Sign Manual, 
 countersigned by a Lord of the Treasury, to pay to the 
 President of the Committee of Council for Trade and 
 Plantations a sum not exceeding £2000 a year. In this 
 simple way an office which had hitherto been little more 
 than an advisory body became a full-sized department 
 under a responsible head. The staff was increased, so 
 that the salary list of the office, which had been but 
 £3928 in 1797, was nearly ;f 10,000 in 1832. Duties came 
 upon the new department from the improved con- 
 ception of the national welfare as thickly as they came 
 
 ' See p. 93. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 119 
 
 upon the Home Office. Besides the subjects mentioned 
 the Boajrd of Trade was placed in control of new 
 procedure in bankruptcy, of the granting of patents, 
 and the keeping of the standards of weights and 
 measiires ; and in control also of the harbours of 
 the kingdom. In 1840 the progress of railways had 
 created a new monopoly power calling for control, 
 and the Board of Trade was given fresh authority, 
 to be enlarged still further in 1850 and the years 
 immediately following, when the concern for human 
 welfare in factories turned to the case of seamen and 
 shipping, and laid upon the Board responsibilities in 
 connection with the measuring and registry of ships, 
 the qualifications of masters and mates, competent 
 manning of vessels, and the safety of passengers and 
 crews. 
 
 The Board of Trade had taken working shape just in 
 time to serve as the model of other departments which 
 the stirring of the public conscience rendered necessary. 
 The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 required central 
 superintendence of the new local authorities which it 
 set up. At first a body of Commissioners were 
 appointed ; but in 1847 a Poor Law Board with a 
 President and a Parliamentary Secretary was created. 
 Similarly, in 1848 the Public Health Act, setting up 
 another network of local duties in connection with 
 matters of drainage, water supply, prevention of 
 nuisances, etc., created a Public Health Board. 
 
 The essence of the difference between the old advisory 
 character of the Board of Trade and its new executive 
 character, copied in these later Boards, was the estab- 
 lishment of a paid President. A Committee of the 
 Privy Council, strictly constituted, must be under the 
 control of the Lord President of the Council ; and, since 
 
120 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 he has no executive functions, the decisions of such a 
 body could only issue in action by a Secretary of State 
 or by the Treasury. The creation of a paid President 
 permitted of the attachment to his office by statute 
 of power to make Orders and Regulations. But it 
 should be noted that, before this step was taken, an 
 attempt had been made to give more value and responsi- 
 bility to the old advisory work of the Committee by 
 attaching a salary to the office of Vice-President ; this 
 had been done in 1817.^ That precedent was followed 
 when, in 1834, the affairs of Elementary Education 
 were first taken more seriously in hand. The system 
 of elementary education was stiU, at this date, mainly 
 unofficial ; it was organised by voluntary societies, 
 and (as we have seen) the share of the government 
 had been limited to a very clumsy and vaguely limited 
 provision of grants of pubhc money. Something had 
 to be done to assist the work of the Treasury, both 
 by justifying the grants (on which there had been only 
 the most primitive checks) and by securing some means 
 of estimating the requirements to be made of the 
 Treasury. Obviously, however, this kind of work 
 could be reconciled with the functions of the older kind 
 of Committee of Council, being essentially advisory. 
 Therefore, when such a Committee was appointed in 
 1834, it was not modelled on the new Board of Trade, 
 but followed the fine of the Act of 1817, the Lord 
 President being the head of the office, with a paid 
 Vice-President. 
 
 It would be impossible to exaggerate the extent of 
 the change involved in the steps thus briefly sum- 
 
 ^ 57 George III. c. 66. The Vice-President, with a salary of 
 ^2000, was changed in 1867 (by 30 and 31 Victoria, c. 72) into a 
 Parliamentary Secretary with a salary of ;£i500. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 121 
 
 marised. It was in essence a change from negative 
 to positive legislation on behalf of the community, and 
 that means a change from control of the public 
 welfare to control by the public welfare. Take any 
 of the old statutes on domestic affairs, from the early 
 laws against engrossing and forestaUing to the Bubble 
 Act of 1720 ; the common characteristic of them is 
 repression. The same might even be said of the 
 Elizabethan Statute of Labourers ; positive though it 
 sounds, its real nature is the checking of the labour 
 market. In other words, older legislation was confined 
 to giving such directions as coiald be carried out by the 
 officials of the King's justice, and necessarily so con- 
 fined. The official world was not at the disposal of 
 any other person. Distinctions could not be drawn 
 between the good and the evil of any development of 
 activity which had proved capable of evil. Dealings 
 in gross tended to a command of prices, therefore all 
 such commercial energy must be forbidden. Joint- 
 stock trading for merchant enterprises proved to have 
 drawn capital, in the case of the South Sea Bubble, to 
 a degree over which individuals could not be trusted 
 to have control ; therefore all joint-stock companies 
 must be prohibited. This was the sense of official 
 government ; it was not the sense of the community. 
 Dealing in gross grew up in spite of law ; joint-stock 
 companies continued in the same way to exist, without 
 waiting for the repeaJ in 1825 of the Bubble Act. In 
 the onrush of commercial, humanitarian, and municipal 
 legislation during the first half of the nineteenth 
 century, the sense of the community was substituted 
 for the sense of official government. Parliament became 
 not the voice only, but the hand of the community. 
 Probably in that rush of legislation it hardly realised 
 
122 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 what it was doing, any more than it had realised the 
 change of the century before, when it brought officials 
 into responsibility to itself. But in truth it had 
 entirely abandoned its old position of detachment from 
 administration. It had called into existence new 
 departments, and made them virtually independent 
 of the Secretaries of State, if not quite co-ordinate 
 with them. It had assigned duties, given powers, 
 undertaken payments. 
 
 The Final Change of Control 
 
 It has been necessary to dwell upon this point, 
 because the result was that at the next stage a step of 
 great importance was taken, as has often happened 
 in our constitutional history, without any discussion 
 of principle. The habit of administration preceded 
 the formal undertaking of it ; and this habit had grown 
 up as unconsciously as the habit of expecting Ministers 
 to account for their actions in Parliament had grown 
 up. Hardly a word of debate accompanied the 
 ultimate changes in the control of the public 
 services, which took place in 1848 and 1855. The 
 former was a change in the method of providing 
 money for the Civil Service, the latter a change 
 in the method of making appointments to the 
 service. 
 
 The reform of 1848 was quietly effected, being the 
 logical conclusion of a gradual process. We have seen 
 the appearance of certain " Miscellaneous Estimates " 
 out of Supply for the Civil Service, and have also seen 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 123 
 
 that they were merely supplementary pa3mients. The 
 main bulk of the cost of the service came out of fees and 
 the Consolidated Fund, and was therefore not subject 
 to debate at all.^ The Estimates, such as they were, 
 did not correspond to what we now understand by that 
 term. The Treasury collected estimates from each 
 department, but did not send them on in detail to the 
 House of Commons, nor were they printed.'' As the 
 cost of the service increased, more and more permanent 
 charges came on to these Miscellaneous Estimates ; 
 and certain changes in classification were introduced 
 in 1824, 1837, ^-nd 1843.' At last, in 1847, a Select 
 Committee was appointed, which commented adversely 
 on the combination of permanent expenses with 
 temporary and casual ones under the head of " Miscel- 
 laneous Estimates," and recommended that " for the 
 future the votes for Civil Establishments at home and 
 abroad ... be arranged under the head of Civil 
 Estimates and presented separately to the House." 
 
 The change was accomplished in 1849, ^^^ the Votes 
 in the House of Commons took the shape they bear 
 to-day. But the first debate of anything lilce the 
 modern kind on departmental affairs may be dated a 
 year earher. In 1848, the great year of convulsion 
 on the Continent of Europe, DisraeU took the oppor- 
 tunity of a vote of £57,500 " to complete the amount 
 required for salaries and expenses at the Foreign Office," 
 to call attention to the action of the Foreign Secretary 
 in regard to Italy.* 
 
 1 See evidence of Sir A. Spearman, of the Treasury, before the 
 Select Committee on Miscellaneous Expenditure, 1847-8 : Minutes 
 of Evidence, p. 4. 
 
 " Sel. Comm. Misc. Exp. : Minutes of Evidence, p. 7. 
 
 » Ibid., pp. 5, 7. 9. ' Hansard, Third Series, ci. 147. 
 
124 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 From this time forward each department could be 
 discussed separately, and any item could be struck 
 off the estimates separately or reduced. The old close 
 corporation had ceased to exist. One minor result of 
 the change, which has been little noticed, may be 
 mentioned here. Letters Patent became unnecessary 
 for most of the posts to which appointments had usually 
 been made by that means. The value of the Letters 
 Patent consisted not so much in the claim they con- 
 stituted to the occupation of a post, as in their being a 
 warrant for the payment of salary by the Exchequer. 
 Of course, they had a value in the first respect ; but for 
 long now the service had been so settled that no man 
 once appointed had any difficulty in holding his office 
 for life. The true value of the Patent lay in the title 
 to take certain emoluments from the Exchequer or to 
 enjoy certain fees. Patents had not been issued for 
 the vast number of subordinate posts which had arisen 
 as the service developed. Clerkships originally paid 
 out of the lump sums allotted to high officials had from 
 time to time been placed on the Exchequer Money Book 
 by arrangement with the Lords of the Treasury. But 
 posts of rather more profit, like the Secretaryship to 
 the Navy Office and other offices, had been given by 
 Patent ; and it had become customary for the Secre- 
 taries of State to receive Patents. In their case the 
 object would certainly be to secure payments. As we 
 have seen, the only necessary act for the purpose of 
 establishing their authority, was the delivery of the 
 Signet.i A Patent had been given to the second 
 Secretary while only one Signet was in existence, and 
 afterwards a custom grew up of giving a Patent as 
 well as the Signet. From the time when salaries were 
 ^ Seep. 31. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 125 
 
 paid by the Estimates, and became a matter of course, 
 the Patent ceased to have value, and though it was 
 as a rule issued for a short time longer it was seen to be 
 quite unnecessary in the case of Lord John Russell, who, 
 being appointed Foreign Secretary in 1852, and not 
 expecting to hold office for long, did not take out a 
 Patent on account of the expense of the process, which 
 involved seaUng fees. Other Ministers showed a dis- 
 position to avoid the expense, and since 1868 Patents 
 for the office of Secretary of State have never been 
 issued.^ 
 
 The Reform of the Staff 
 
 The reform of 1855 was not quite such a simple 
 process as that of 1837. Although salaries were now 
 paid by Parliament, nothing had been done to alter the 
 constitution of the staff. It was inevitable that, once 
 the Civil Service had become a body of public, officials, 
 there should be a disposition to insist upon the appoint- 
 ments to the Service being of a more public character. 
 A number of Committees were engaged between 1848 
 and 1854 in investigating the conditions of appointment 
 and the general state of the Service. They found a good 
 many remnants of the comfortable old systehi still 
 existing. In the Treasury there was a kind of examina- 
 tion of candidates before appointment, and a year's 
 probation before the appointment was confirmed ; in 
 certain other offices there was some examination, but 
 no probation ; in others, such as the Colonial Office, 
 ^ Anson 11. i 168, note. 
 
126 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 probation but no examination.^ Even where the 
 examination was enforced, it was only an examination 
 under the direction of the heads of the department, and 
 the Commission plainly had the impression that it was 
 a verj' perfunctory affair. In some cases appointments 
 were given by proxy to youths who had not finished 
 their education. The setting up of the permanent 
 Civil Service Commission, to hold in future combined 
 examinations for the various departments and to make 
 appointments on the results, immediately followed 
 the report of this inquiry. This reform had the force 
 of being recommended, not merely on the general 
 grounds of the impropriety of the old methods, but 
 on the very sensible ground also that those methods 
 worked necessarily on too narrow a field of supply of 
 candidates. A youth must be brought to the notice 
 of the heads of the departments before they could 
 consider his fitness for a post. The removal of favourit- 
 ism was only a secondary effect of the new arrangement; 
 the more important effect was that it cast a wider 
 net over the nation's resources of intelligence and 
 capability. 
 
 Exposure of the Old Conditions 
 
 The condition of work in the public offices reflected, 
 of course, some of the disadvantages (from the point 
 of view of the national business) of the methods of 
 appointment. Much work was left undone, or ill done, 
 because the Service proper was jealously confined to 
 
 ^ See Reports of Committees of Inquiry into Public Offices, 1854. 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 127 
 
 the upper grades, and the lower grades were occupied 
 for the most part by writers and copyists who were not 
 allowed to regard their appointments as permanent. 
 Again, the bad old system left its mark in the attitude 
 of the highest rank of permanent officials. When 
 sinecures were rampant, the natural tendency of 
 those who could not actually obtain a sinecure was to 
 approach as near to one as possible. Thus the 
 Committees of Inquiry found the chief officials — the 
 Permanent Secretaries and Principal Clerks — extra- 
 ordinarily detached from the rest of the staff, and 
 leading an existence that often had little to do with 
 the work of their departments. In the Treasury the 
 clerks in the highest posts were frequently directors 
 of insurance companies, banks, and commercial 
 companies, and absented themselves during office 
 hours to attend board meetings. Or again, in the 
 Colonial Office, the Chief Clerkship was frankly regarded 
 as a situation of " honour, emolument, and com- 
 parative repose," and therefore suitable as a kind of 
 pension for past services. 
 
 Other defects in the Service arose from various 
 causes. One was undoubtedly that, so long as the 
 Commons (not without good reason) looked upon the 
 cost of government as largely a field of corruption, no 
 proper request for extensions could be preferred. Thus 
 departments of old standing were always being saddled 
 with new duties, and became more and more inadequate 
 to deal with the increase of work. The Treasury 
 was in the worse case. Not only was it dealing with 
 odd pieces of other departments' work (like the army 
 commissariat) but, as municipal government took its 
 more active shape after the Act of 1835, and again as 
 the Government had been forced to recognise and assist 
 
128 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 private efforts in elementary education, the Treasury 
 found masses of new correspondence falling upon it. 
 The list of subjects within its competence which the 
 Treasury handed in to the Committee comprises every 
 department of government ; and though in many cases 
 the work probably amounted to little more than drawing 
 up warrants or money letters, as the final stage of 
 business transacted elsewhere, in other cases, such as 
 those already mentioned, and also matters of public 
 health and the poor law, the Treasury was doing the 
 bulk of the work of newly constituted, and Hi-staffed, 
 Boards. The War departments, the Admiralty, and 
 the offices of the Secretaries of State seem to have 
 oifered small surface for comment to the Committees ; 
 they had been working long enough and responsibly 
 enough to reqtiire no more than a new mode of entrance 
 for new candidates. The Board of Trade was in a 
 sorrier case. Of late there had been many develop- 
 ments of national life that affected it. Railway 
 legislation, merchant shipping legislation, the rise of 
 joint-stock companies, and a new respect for statistics 
 had all from time to time caused additions to the 
 duties of the Board ; and machinery had been added 
 for dealing with each separate subject. Progress 
 had apparently been too fast to allow of co-ordination 
 of these accretions, and there was no security against 
 a correspondence on the same subject being carried 
 on by two sections of the office at once. Education 
 had been so half-heartedly taken up by the authorities 
 that the Committee of Council, which had been 
 appointed in 1839, ^^^ ^^ idea of duties beyond 
 allotting grants to those who complied with certain 
 conditions ; and part of the duty of the overbiurdened 
 Treastiry consisted in sending out separate money 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 129 
 
 orders to every one of some 2200 teachers and 6180 
 pupil teachers. 
 
 Other minor offices were passed by without much 
 comment. The Poor Law Board and the Board of 
 Health had grown up in consequence of recent 
 legislation ; and local government as yet meant so 
 little that there was no reason why anyone should 
 perceive the possibiUty of combining such depart- 
 ments as these into one larger office. Such corre- 
 spondence of the time as can be said to concern local 
 government — correspondence with municipalities, 
 county treasurers, quarter sessions, clerks of the 
 peace, and police authorities — was carried on by the 
 Treasury. 
 
 Circumstances outside the work of these Committees 
 brought about just now a combination of the detached 
 departments of Army administration. The Crimean 
 War had exposed grave weaknesses in the administra- 
 tive system. After the naval departments had been 
 united there was a natural inclination to ask why the 
 piecemeal growth of the system should be perpetuated 
 in the Army. Yet (perhaps because of the strong 
 objections that had been raised earUer to a similar 
 inclination) the &-st step was rather one of re- 
 organisation than combination. It seems to have 
 been thought that, if one person were made responsible 
 for all the subdivisions of the civil administration 
 of the army, the desired end might be attained. 
 Consequently, instead of a downright transfer such 
 as had taken place in naval administration,^ a fourth 
 
 1 It may be worth pointing out that the Admiralty was a Board, 
 and the duties of different departments could be assigned to 
 difEerent members of it. A combination of departments under 
 a new Secretary may have seemed less easy to effect. 
 
 9 
 
130 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 Secretary of State was appointed, to answer for, and 
 to control, all the miHtajy departments. In effect, 
 the Secretary at War, who, as such, was co-ordinate 
 with the heads of the Ordnance Office and other 
 departments, was translated to a grade from which 
 he could command them. The first holders of the 
 new office were at once Secretaries of State for War 
 and Secretaries at War, until the latter post was 
 abolished in 1863. But actual combination had to 
 be faced. Before the end of 1854 the Commissariat 
 was transferred to the new department, early in 1855 
 the Home Office handed over its authority in the 
 matter of the troops on the Home estabhshment, 
 and in May 1855 the greatest change of aU was 
 effected by investing the new Secretary with all the 
 powers of the Ordnance Office. When in 1856 he 
 also assumed the duties of the Mihtary Boards the 
 combination was accompUshed. But in one important 
 respect it still differed from the administration of 
 the Navy. There remained the conjoint authority of 
 the Commander-in-Chief. The Admiralty, having re- 
 presented the Lord High Admiral before it assumed 
 control of the other departments, was a complete 
 whole ; the War Office had to see matters of promotion 
 and details of organisation continuing in other hands. 
 
 The Building of the Government Offices 
 
 One of the points that confronted the Committees 
 of Inquiry into the pubUc offices was that a good 
 deal of inefficiency could be traced to the very un- 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 131 
 
 satisfactory conditions of. the various office premises. 
 We have seen the nature of the first expansion of 
 the departments beyond the actual limits of the 
 Palace which technically housed these sections of the 
 King's servants.! While there had been so much 
 concern on the part of the Commons as to salaries, 
 numbers, and perquisites, there had been no new 
 idea as to the premises in which the work was done. 
 The only way to house the growing staffs had been 
 to buy or rent more houses in the streets in which 
 the departments had settled themselves. If it seems 
 at first difficult to picture this state of things, we 
 have only to remember that it lasted in some cases 
 to our own day. Not many years ago the War Office 
 consisted of a number of houses in Pall Mail, and 
 the Board of Agriculture had several houses in 
 Whitehall Gardens ; while at the present moment 
 the Board of Trade does its work in various houses 
 not even contiguous. The departments which had 
 been weU housed in the eighteenth century remained 
 for long the only ones so treated. The Admiralty, 
 the Treasury, and the Horse Guards were the sole 
 public offices of note when the general reform of the 
 Civil Service reached at last the consideration of 
 housing the staff. When a Select Committee was 
 appointed in 1855 to inquire into the state of affairs, 
 it was natural that the Committee should consider 
 building near the ground where these offices had 
 accommodated themselves. They had originally placed 
 themselves there because the ground was within the 
 Palace precincts, but under the new conditions the 
 nearness of the locality to the Houses of Parliament 
 made good reason for sticking to the spot. 
 
 1 See p. 83, 
 
132 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 At that date all the space between the end of the 
 Treasury btiilding and ParUament Square north and 
 south, and between St. James's Park and Whitehall 
 (and ParUament Street), west and east, was a network 
 of small streets and courts. Between Downing 
 Street and Charles Street lay Fludyer Street, Says 
 Alley, Upper and Lower Crown Street ; and this 
 was the ground upon which the Committee proposed 
 to set to work. They found the Foreign Office, the 
 Home Of&ce, the Colonial Office, and the Board of 
 Control for India all clustered in Downing Street, 
 Downing Square (a kind of enlargement of Downing 
 Street at the Park end, the shape of which is still 
 traceable), and the north side of Fludyer Street. 
 The Foreign Office, for instance, occupied six houses 
 here and the Colonial Office two. The inconvenience 
 was extreme ; rooms were on all kinds of levels ; 
 copyists had to work in cellars ; people calling on 
 business had to wait about in passages. But the 
 houses were worse than inconvenient ; they were 
 unsafe. Doors had been so frequently cut through 
 from house to house, in order to imite the offices, 
 that the structures had been made quite insecure ; 
 no accumulation of ofiftcial papers could be kept, 
 because the floors x;ould not be trusted, and about 
 ten years before the date of the inquiry the workmen 
 had had to be employed night and day shoring up 
 the building in which Cabinet Councils were held, 
 to prevent an immediate collapse. 
 
 The plan most favoured at this time was one which 
 proposed to build a quadrangle round Downing 
 Street and Downing Square. The Treasiuy building 
 was already in existence to form one comer. As 
 you entered the quadrangle by Downing Street, you 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 133 
 
 would have had on the left hand, forming the corre- 
 sponding comer, the Colonial Office, beyond that the 
 Foreign Office reaching to the Park. Facing you at 
 the far side of the quadrangle was to have been a suite 
 of Ministerial Reception-Rooms ; in the right-hand 
 comer next to these rooms, a new War Office ; and 
 the houses of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
 the First Lord of the Treasury, joining the War 
 Office to the Treasury Building, would have completed 
 the quadrangle. The Home Office was to be housed 
 in the Treasury Building, which would be enlarged 
 in the construction of the quadrangle. Other plans 
 were proposed, some of them dealing with the other 
 side of Whitehall, and suggesting a grouping of 
 Government Offices on the site where the present 
 Wax Office stands. For some time the scheme hung 
 fire, and meanwhile new departments were arising. 
 
 New Departments 
 
 When the East India Company's possessions and 
 rights were vested in the Crown in 1858, there was 
 an Act of ParUament laying the administration of 
 them upon one of the Secretaries of State, it being left 
 to the Queen to decide whether there should be a 
 new Secretary. The Queen appointed a fifth Secre- 
 tary ; and the India Office grew up out of the 
 old Board of Control. In 1871 Parliament, taking 
 into consideration the mass of legislation that had 
 been accumulating on matters of public health, the 
 poor law, local government, etc., decided that the 
 
134 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 time had come for a single superintending authority, 
 and set up the Local Government Board. Some 
 conception of the need for such an authority as the 
 new Office is given by the Ust of duties it was to take 
 over. The Poor Law Board had administered the 
 poor law ; the Board of Health, while it existed, 
 had administered some details of the Public Health 
 Acts, and the Secretaries of State some others ; after 
 the abolition of the Board in 1858, the Secretaries 
 of State had attended to the registration of births, 
 deaths, and marriages, to local government, drainage, 
 baths and wash-houses, and labourers' dwellings, and 
 the Privy Council had been the authority in the 
 prevention of disease, and for administering the 
 Vaccination Acts. 
 
 Besides the demand of these new Departments for 
 accommodation, there was another Department which, 
 owing to fresh legislation, was in need of more space. 
 The Elementary Education Act of 1870, recognising 
 the duties of the State in a matter which had too 
 long been left to private enterprise, vastly increased 
 the operations of the Committee of Council on 
 Education. Acquaintance with the history of de- 
 partments might have warned the nation that even 
 now the subject was not being dealt with whole- 
 heartedly. No change was made in the nature of 
 the Board ; it remained a Committee with a paid 
 Vice-President ; and therefore, although its functions 
 might be enlarged, they were not really executive. 
 In other words, it was stOl to give more attention 
 to seeing how the money granted was spent than to 
 governing the character and systematising the range 
 of national education. The Board was not lifted 
 above an advisory position, however much it may 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 135 
 
 subsequently have struggled above that. But even 
 so it had become of sufficient importance to demand 
 consideration in the plajining of new offices. 
 
 Under these modifications the offices, which were 
 by this time in course of construction, took a fresh 
 and more extensive form. What was to have been 
 the south side of the Downing Street quadrangle 
 became the north side of a new quadrangle ; this 
 side was still designed to contain the Foreign and 
 Colonial Offices. But the greater extent of the new 
 plan, reaching right down to Charles Street, gave 
 opportunity for housing also the Home Office, the 
 India Office, and the Local Government Board. The 
 Education Office was placed in the Treasiuy Building, 
 instead of the Home Office. The new offices were 
 opened in 1873, and this distribution of departments 
 lasted for about thirty years. Towards the end of 
 the century the inconvenience of the old War Office, 
 together with the great growth of business in the 
 Education Office and the Local Government Board 
 Office, led to further proposals for building. The last 
 of the old streets between St. James's Park and 
 Parliament Street were swept away, and a new 
 building erected for the Board of Education and the 
 Local Government Board ; to be extended later for 
 the inclusion of the Board of Trade. The War Office 
 was put on the other side of the street, nearly opposite 
 the Horse Guards. These two offices were opened, 
 the former in 1908 and the latter in igo6. 
 
136 THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 The Youngest Department 
 
 One Government department remains to be noticed, 
 and it has a history unlike that of any of the others 
 — the Board of Agrictdture. The existence of a 
 Board so named in the end of the eighteenth and 
 beginning of the nineteenth century has led to some 
 confusion, and the confusion is the more widespread 
 because of the fame of Arthur Yoimg's Reports, which 
 were made to this Board, and are one of the main 
 sources of our knowledge of agricultural conditions 
 dviring the much-debated period of Enclosure Acts. 
 That Board was not a department of Government. 
 It was a society founded in 1793 and incorporated by 
 Royal Charter " for the encouragement of agriculture 
 and internal improvement." It included certain 
 members appointed because of the offices they held, 
 and it received a small grant of money from public 
 funds.i The fact that it was not a pubUc department, 
 and that it was never proposed to make it one, is 
 an additional proof of a suggestion made in the 
 Introduction to this book — namely, that Government 
 as a business affecting the daily life of the country 
 in any other way than by taxation, is an invention 
 of the last hundred years. The old Board of Agri- 
 culture failed to expend its grant in 1819 ; and after 
 a few years of attempting to maintain its existence 
 by voluntary subscriptions it was dissolved in 1822. 
 The great decline in agricultural prices in the last 
 
 1 See a paper by Sir Ernest Clarke in the Journal of the Royal 
 Agricultural Society, Third Series, vol. ix. (i£ 
 
THE RISE OF THE MODERN SYSTEM 137 
 
 quarter of last century, and the consequent distress, 
 drew attention to the lack of any Government depart- 
 ment to deal with these subjects. But a department 
 for advice and suggestion alone would have been 
 difficult to set up ; in the case of the Colonial Land 
 and Emigration Department at the beginning of the 
 century, such offices had been found rather useless. 
 Fortunately the first Small Holdings and Allotments 
 Act, passed in the late 'eighties, offered a subject for 
 administration, and once a nucleus was found there 
 were some scattered duties which might be allotted 
 to a new office. The Board of Trade might be 
 reheved of certain statistics, and also of the adminis- 
 tration of Acts relating to fisheries ; while there 
 were still remains of the duties of the Tithe and En- 
 closure Commission relating to redemption of tithe 
 and to copyhold tenure which could appropriately be 
 handed over. The Board of Agriculture and Fisheries 
 was therefore created in 1889, on the model of the 
 other Boards. 
 
 Two administrative reforms yet remained to be 
 carried out to complete the homogeneity of the 
 system. In 1899 the Board of Education was put 
 upon the same level as the other Boards ; it was 
 placed imder a paid President, and a Parliafnentary 
 Secretary was substituted for the Vice-President, 
 the department thus acquiring the full status of 
 responsibility to Parliament, with power to make 
 orders and regulations on its own responsibihty, 
 instead of having to father its instructions by a fiction 
 upon " My Lords " of the Council. The change was 
 fully in the spirit of the earher reforms recorded in 
 this chapter. It signalised a determination to make 
 national education a genuine administrative process, 
 
138 , THE KING'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 and to make the work of Government in that respect 
 more than a mere la3dng down of conditions for 
 obtaining grants. It properly ushered in the Education 
 Act of 1900, with the attempt then made to abohsh 
 the isolation of Elementary Education, and to link 
 it on to the general machinery of national well-being, 
 centralised, but not resident, in a department. 
 
 The other reform took place in 1904 at the War 
 Office. The dual administration, which had long 
 vanished from naval affairs, was in that year removed 
 from military affairs by the abolition of the office 
 of Commander-in-Chief — a step which had been 
 recommended by a Royal Commission in 1890 and 
 more emphatically by the Committee of 1903. Hence- 
 forth the Army Council, modelled on the lines of the 
 Board of Admiralty, brought all outstanding affairs 
 of military administration under the single roof of 
 the War Office. 
 
 We may therefore conclude with the reflection 
 that we have been able to trace to its completion 
 the reconstruction of a method of government that 
 had by force of circumstances grown up piecemeal, 
 lacking homogeneity ; and have arrived at an 
 organisation which, whatever be its future, is at 
 least a systematic and comprehensible whole. 
 
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL 
 AUTHORITIES QUOTED 
 
 Ads of the Privy Council. (Rolls Series.) 
 
 Anson, Sir William, Law and Custom of the Constitution. 
 
 Two volumes. Oxford University Press. 191 1. 
 Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers. Four volumes. 
 
 Oxford. 1872. 
 Calendar of Patent Rolls. 
 
 Calendar of State Papers. (Domestic and Colonial.) 
 Calendar of Treasury Papers. 
 " Camden Society Publications," Letters of Sir Robert Cecil to 
 
 Sir George Carew. (Published in 1864.) 
 Do., Letters from George, Lord Carew, to Sir Thomas Roe, 
 
 1615-17. (Published in i860.) 
 Clode, Charles M., The Military Forces of the Crown. Two 
 
 volumes. London. 1869. 
 Gardiner, S. R., History of England, 1603-42. Ten 
 
 volumes. London. 1883. 
 Grenville Papers, The. Four volumes. London. 1853. 
 Hall, Hubert, Formula Book of Diplomatic Documents. 
 Do., The Red Book of the Exchequer. 
 Hearn, W. E., The Government of England. 2nd Edition. 
 
 London. 1887. 
 Joyce, H., The History of the Post Office. London. 1 893. 
 Laws of the Admiralty. Two volumes. London. 1746. 
 Liber Niger Scaccarii. Edited by Thomas Heame. Two volumes. 
 
 Oxford. 1728. 
 Nicolas, Sir Harris, Observations on the Offices of Secretary 
 
 of State, etc. Privately printed, London. 1837. 
 Do., History of the Royal Navy. Two volumes. London- 
 
 1847- 
 Pepys's Diary. 
 
 139 
 
140 LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES 
 
 " Pipe Roll Society's Publications." 
 Proceedings of the Privy Council. (Rolls Series.) 
 Parliament Rolls. 
 
 Parliamentary Debates. Cobbett's Series ; Hansard. 
 Parliamentary Papers. Various Reports of Royal Com- 
 missions and Select Committees, especially : 
 
 Return on Increase and Diminution of Salaries in 
 Public Departments since 1793 (1821), and similar 
 Returns publislied in 1831 and 1833. 
 Return of the number of persons employed, etc., in Public 
 
 Departments in various years (1830). 
 Report of Select Committee on Sinecure Offices (1834). 
 Reports of Committees and Royal Commission on the 
 
 Civil Service (1850-54). 
 Return on Public Income and Expenditure (1868-69). 
 Ordinances and Regulations for the Royal Household. 
 Published by the Society of Antiquaries. London. 1790. 
 Rymer's Fcedera. 3rd Edition. 1739. In ten volumes. 
 Stanhope, Earl. The Reign of Queen Anne. London. 1872, 
 Thomas, F. S. Historical Notes. Three volumes. 
 Treasury Letter Books. (Rolls Series.) 
 
INDEX 
 
 AccuRSii, Francis, 14. 
 Act of Settlement, 71. 
 Adjutant-General, no. 
 Admiralty, The, office of, 60, 83, 
 
 131- 
 Lords of, 60. 
 Naval departments grouped under, 
 
 112, 130, 138. 
 Secretary of, 60. 
 Staff of, 98, 113. 
 Agriculture, Board of, xi, 131, 136, 
 Aimeric the clerk, 8. 
 Arlington, Lord, 67. 
 Army, The, administration after the 
 Restoration, 57. 
 Administration reformed, 129, 
 
 138. 
 Civil'staffin eighteenth century, 87. 
 Estimates for, 9j. 
 First civil staff of, 22. 
 Victualling of, 42. 
 Audit Department, 99, 1 1 4, 115. 
 of the Exchequer, 22, 61. 
 
 Bacun, John, 27. 
 Bashe, Edward, 48. 
 Bayeux, John of, 8. 
 Beckington, William, 28. 
 Bek, Antony, 15. 
 
 Thomas, 16. 
 Bello Campo, John de, 19. 
 Bennet, Sir H., 66. 
 Benstede, John de, 15. 
 Beverley, Archdeacon and Provost 
 
 of, 7. 
 Braybroke, Robert, 27. 
 Brembre, Thomas de, ig. 
 Board of Agriculture. See Agri- 
 culture. 
 
 Education. See Education. 
 
 Trade. See Trade. 
 
 Boards, paid presidents of, 119. 
 Bubble Act, The, I2I. 
 Burke reforms, 81. 
 
 Cabinet, The, 3, 63, 73, 100. 
 Council Room, 132. 
 Summoned by the King, 75. 
 Carew, Sir G., 44. 
 Cecil, Sir R., 43, 49. 
 Chancellor, The, 27, 64, 73. 
 A King's Clerk, 18. 
 As Secretary, 3. 
 
 Ceases to be Secretary, lo, 11, 19, 
 38. 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. See 
 
 Exchequer. 
 Chancery, The, 43. 
 
 Clerks of, 19. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 78. 
 Civil Service, The, connection with 
 Royal Household, vii, viii, 
 4, 6, 29, 30, 41, 47, 80, 105, 
 120. 
 Burke reforms in, 89. 
 Disqualified for Parliament, 71. 
 Estimates for, ix, 104, no, 123. 
 First payment for, in supply, 105. 
 Incompetence of, before reform, 
 
 127. 
 Payment by fees, 36, 85, 97, 
 
 107. 
 Payment from Consolidated Fund, 
 
 104. 
 Reforms in, 106, 122, 125. 
 Relation to Commons, 89, 104, 
 
 106, no, 120. 
 Returns concerning, 107, 109, 
 
 III, 113, 125. 
 Size of, in eighteenth century, 85, 
 98. 
 in 1832, 113. 
 
142 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Civil Service, staffed by King's 
 Clerks, 6, 15, 22, 41. 
 Unreformed pay of, 108, no, 122. 
 
 Civil Service Commission, 126. 
 
 Clark, William, 56. 
 
 Clerk of the Crown, 16. 
 
 Clerks, the King's. See King's 
 Clerks. 
 
 Coke, Sir John, 51, 77. 
 
 Colonial Land and Emigration De- 
 partment, 137. 
 
 Colonial Office, 98, 113, 125, 127, 
 132. 
 
 Colonies, Secretary of State for, 88, 
 
 94- 
 Commander-in-Chief, 130, 138. 
 Commons, House of, control of 
 revenue, 62, 71, 91. 
 Relations of Civil Service to, 89, 
 
 104, 106, no, 120. 
 Relations of Ministers to, 25, 29, 
 32,53,66,68,73,78,80,101. 
 Commonwealth, The, 55, 57. 
 Council, The Privy, Lords of, 2. 
 Clerks of, 86, 98, 109, 113. 
 Committees of, 49. 
 Weakening of, 34, 39, 65. 
 Council of State, Secretary to the, 55. 
 Cromwell, Thomas, 32, 37. 
 Crutched Friars, 48, 60. 
 Curia, The, i, 38. 
 
 Departments, The, heads of, act- 
 ing in concert, 74, 100. 
 Numbers of, 98, 113. 
 Office premises of, 29, 42, 47, 60, 
 
 80, 130. 
 Relation to the Council, 2, 43. 
 Relation to the Crown, 56. 
 Deptford, 42, 60. 
 Despenser, Hugh le, 18. 
 Disraeli, 123. 
 Domestic affairs, a modem concern, 
 
 X, 106, 116. 
 Downing, Sir G., 63, 84. 
 Downing Street, 84, 132. 
 
 Eadmer, 8. 
 
 Education, Board of, xi, 120, 128, 
 
 134. 137- , 
 Embassies, King s Clerks employed 
 on, 10, 13, 14, 51, 
 
 Estimates, Civil Service, ix, 104, 
 
 no, 122. 
 Exchequer, The, Abolished, 116. 
 Departmentalised, 20. 
 Reorganised, 21. 
 
 Audit of, 22, 61, 115. 
 
 Authority for payments from, 22. 
 
 Barons of, 4, 20. 
 
 Chamberlain of, 27. 
 
 Chancellor of, 22, 76. 
 
 Clerks in, 10. 
 
 Confusion in, 62, 115. 
 
 Depository of archives, 5, 1 1. 
 
 Economy forced on, 92. 
 
 House of, 5. 
 
 King's Clerks in, 12. 
 
 Seal of, 22. 
 
 Staff of, 87, 99, n4. 
 
 Tellers of, 87, 114, 115. 
 
 The first permanent office, 5. 
 
 Factory Acts, 117. 
 Foreign Affairs, x, 45, 50. 
 
 Secretary of State for, 95, 108. 
 Foreign Office, 98, 113, 132. 
 Fraunceys, John, 11. 
 Frost, Secretary, 55. 
 
 George IIL, his attitude concerning 
 
 Ministers, ix, 74, 80. 
 Gloucester, Duke of, 28. 
 Gonson, Benjamin, 48. 
 Grenvilles, The, 90. 
 
 Hadham, Philip de, 10. 
 Harley, Robert, 75, 78. 
 Hatclyffe, Edward, 30. 
 Herbert, Secretary, 44. 
 Holstock, William, 48. 
 Home Affairs, Secretary of State 
 
 for, 95, 108, 113, n6, 130. 
 Home Office, xi, 98, 113, 132. 
 Horse Guards, 84, 131. 
 
 India, Board of Control for, 132. 
 Secretary of State for, 133. 
 
 Justiciar, The, 3. 
 His Secretary, 12. 
 
 King, OUver, 30, 31. 
 
 King's Clerks : At the Exchequer, 
 
INDEX 
 
 143 
 
 King's Clerks : Chancery clerks 
 separated from, 19. 
 
 Duties, 15, 18. 
 
 Employed in Embassies, 10, 13, 
 14. 
 
 Formed first Civil Service, 6, 15, 
 22, 41. 
 
 Highest Offices open to, 18. 
 
 King's Secretaries drawn from, 
 
 ."> 13. 31. 
 Their maintenance, 8, IJ, 37- 
 Kirkeby, John de, 16. 
 
 Letters Patent, 124. 
 
 Local Government Board, xi, 133, 
 
 I3S- 
 
 Locke, Matthew, 58. 
 
 Lord President of the Council, 32, 
 
 7S, 108. 
 Lord Privy Seal, 27, 32, 36, 75. 
 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 78. 
 Maunsell, John, 13, 
 Melton, William de, 18. 
 Military Boards, Office for, 112. 
 Milton, John, 55. 
 
 Ministers: Collective responsibility 
 of, 78. 
 
 Combinations of, 68, 76, 77. 
 
 Relation of, to Commons, 68, 73, 
 78, 80. 
 
 Responsibility of, 74, 77. 
 
 Navy, The : Commissioners of, 54, 
 56, 60, 64. 
 
 Direction of, 43. 
 
 First civil staff of, 22. 
 
 Staff under Henry VIII., 42. 
 
 Staff under Charles II., S9- 
 
 Staff in eighteenth century, 86, 98. 
 
 Treasurer of, 48. 
 
 Victualling of, 42, 48. 
 Navy Board, The : Office of, 48, 83. 
 
 Transferred to Admiralty, 112. 
 Norwico, Richard de, 19. 
 
 Ordnance : Board of, 41, 56, 59, 
 64, 112. 
 First department of, 23. 
 Office of, 48, 83. 
 Staff of, 59, 87,98, 113. 
 Transferred to War Office, 130- 
 
 Pace, Dr., 32, 40. 
 
 P^et, Sir W., 3S. 
 
 Parties, of offices of State, 66. 
 
 Paymaster-General, 116. 
 
 Paymaster of the Forces, 58, 81, 85. 
 
 Pells, Clerk of the, 87, 114, iii;. 
 
 Pensioners, 71. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, 59, 62, 85. 
 
 Perton, W. de, 16. 
 
 Petre, Sir W., 35. 
 
 Police, 117. 
 
 Poor Law Board, 119, 129. 
 
 Abolished, 134. 
 Post Office, The, 63, 113. 
 
 Development of, 96. 
 Presidents, paid, of Boards, 119. 
 Privy Council. See Council. 
 Privy Council Warrants, 48. 
 Privy Seal. See Seal ; Lord Privy 
 
 Seal. 
 Public Health Board, 119, 129. 
 
 Abolished, 134. 
 
 Revenue, The, 4, 61. 
 
 Accounts of, 72. 
 
 Control of, by Commons, 71. 
 
 New form of Accounts, 91. 
 Richard de Capella, 8. 
 Rochester, Lord, 77. 
 Rockingham, Lord, 79. 
 Roger the Clerk, 8. 
 Routhale, Dr., 31. 
 R)fnel, John, 28. 
 
 Sandale, John de, zi, 18. 
 
 Scotland, Secretary for, 88. 
 
 Seal, The Great, 4, 13, 16, 24, 36, 
 
 38. 72. 
 Seal, The Privy, 12, 26, 36, 38. 
 
 Fees of, 85. 
 
 Office of, 83, 87. 
 Seals, Formalities of the, 76. 
 Secretary, The King's : Appointment 
 of a second, 28. 
 
 Becomes a new title, 13. 
 
 Division of duties, 51, 52. 
 
 Drawn from King's Clerks, II, 13. 
 
 Emoluments of, 15, 40, 52, 81, 85. 
 
 Executive orders by, 36. 
 
 His clerks, 30. 
 
 Increasing importance of, 25, 29, 
 
 31. 32. 39. 43- 
 Mode of appointment, 31. 
 
144 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Secretary, The King's : Originally 
 the Chancellor, 3. 
 Power in regard to armed forces, 
 
 43. 44. 49- 
 Seated in Parliament, 32. 
 Title not always used, 18, 27. 
 Two with equal duties, 30, 40, 
 Secretary, The French, 28, 30, 86. 
 The Latin, 86. 
 The King's Private, lOl. 
 at War, 56, 58. 
 Secretaries of State : Early sources of 
 
 power, 45. 
 Executive power of, 50. 
 Financial powers of, 55, 65. 
 George III.'s attitude, ix, 74. 
 Intrigues of, 66, 70. 
 Members of the Cabinet, 64, 75, 
 
 100. 
 Mode of appointment, 124. 
 Office premises, 83, 132. 
 Power in regard to armed forces, 
 
 58, 64, 100. 
 Regarded as Household officials, 
 
 ix, S2, 8i, 95. 
 Relation to foreign affairs, x, 45, 
 
 Relation to home affairs, 46, 73> 
 
 134- 
 Re-arrangement of duties, 94. 
 Seniority of, 52. 
 Third created, 87. 
 suppressed, 90. 
 restored, 93. 
 Title first bestowed, 47. 
 Fourth created, 130. 
 Fifth created, 133. 
 Secretaryship : Its Duties, 10. 
 Relation to Parliament, 25, 29, 
 
 32, 53, 66, 68, 73, 80, loi. 
 Relation to Privy Council, 27, 35, 
 49, 64, 78. 
 Sign Manual, Countersigning of, 
 
 19, 58- 
 Signet, The, 26, 28, 31, 36^ 124. 
 Two in use, 40, 46. 
 Office of, 38, 87. 
 Writers of, 30, 37. 
 
 Somers, Lord, 77. 
 Spithead, 43. 
 
 Statute of Labourers, xi, 121. 
 Sunderland, Lord, 78, 80. 
 Swift, Dean, 79. 
 
 Trade, Board of; xi, 65, 88, 90, 
 118, 128. 
 
 Commissioners for, 88, 90, 93, 
 118. 
 
 Office of, 84, 131. 
 
 Staff of, 98, 113. 
 Treasurer, The, 3, 27, 63, 64, 75. 
 
 of the Army, 48. 
 
 of the Navy, 48. 
 Treasury, The, Commission of, 54, 
 
 65, 
 New powers of, 63. 
 Offices of, 83, 131. 
 Relation to armed forces, 58. 
 Relation to Civil Service, 90. 
 Staff of, 87, 98, 113, 125. 
 The oldest department, ix, 4, 
 
 5- 
 Varied duties of, 63, 113, I20 
 127. 
 
 Valence, Aymer de, 18. 
 Vane, Sir Henry, 50, 77. 
 Vannes, Peter, 40. 
 Vescy, Johnde, 15. 
 Victualling Office, 48, 60, 83, 86, 
 98. 
 Transferred to Admiralty, 112. 
 Volore, Gervais de, 28. 
 
 War Office, 84, 98, 113, 130, 
 
 135- 
 
 Reformed, 138. 
 War, Secretary at, 56, 58, 130. 
 
 Secretary of State for, 130. 
 Wardrobe, The : Keeper of, 18. 
 
 Clerk of, 23. 
 
 Ordnance reckoned in, 24. 
 Wengham, Henry de, 13. 
 Whitehall, 60, 83, 132. 
 Windebank, Sir F., 50, 52. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 32. 
 
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