Book Description

This book describes the membership, business and procedure of the privy council during the minority of Henry VIII's son successor, Edward VI. It examines the policy-making, administrative and quasi-judicial functions of the central institution of Tudor government at a time of war, rebellion, financial instability, reform in the Church and potentially violent political change. Professor Hoak analyses the way in which, through the council - a body whose formal existence dated only from 1540 - the dukes of Somerset and Northumberland successively governed the realm in the effective absence of a king. He sheds light on the nature of Somerset's failure, Northumberland's purpose and achievements, as well as on the techniques by which he controlled both the king and council, and the politics of the Reformation in England at the moment of the Protestant's triumph, 1549-50. The book demonstrates the extent to which the Edwardian privy council confirmed and continued earlier 'revolutionary' reform in government; it establishes the uniqueness of the place of Edward's council in the history of Tudor government and of royal councils generally in the sixteenth-century Europe.