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Christian Amos For Jon Healey

Catz, 4th week of MT 15

To what extent, and in what ways, did Elizabeths reign see


the strengthening of royal authority?
Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, writing to Bacon after he was excluded from royal
presence said that he was to be allowed access but not near access which was only
allowed for those whom the queen favours extraordinarily. 1 The word favour hits on
the cornerstone of Elizabethan administration, that is to say the relationship between
elites and the monarch for the purpose of governance. Elizabeths reign saw the
coalescence between the personal (stressing persons), royal, and institutional.
Royal authority can be seen as both the actual conduct of the monarch, but also as the
perception of monarchy by her subjects. Her conduct can be divided into the ability to
legislate and govern (religion, dynastic concerns, foreign policy, administration, and
inter-personal relations), the maintenance of stability, and financial enrichment. In
terms of perception, Elizabeths reign arguably saw the strengthening of the image of
monarchical greatness but how true this is and how far it is unique to Elizabeth will
be discussed. Elizabeths reign did see a minor increase in the capabilities of royal
authority, but ironically at the cost of requiring greater political consensus so while
the monarch could do more, she required more help doing it. The increased
capabilities of royal authority also, in some instances, came at the unexpected
expense of good government. At the same time, if we think about royal authority in
terms of stability then Elizabeth proves to have increased it beyond measure by the
professionalisation of power, a consequence of the wider engagement of those who
werent born to the throne.
In order to engage with the question, this essay will touch on the royal authority
before Elizabeth. In the case of the Privy Council, the changes are profound. Under
Henry VIII, the last period of stable monarch, the Privy Council the principal advisory
body to royal body and the Court were largely distinct, but endlessly competing. The
position of Groom of Stool to the king was a coveted one; it was a position of intense
intimacy which nevertheless gave unprecedented access to Henrys thoughts and
decisions. The 18 gentlemen of the bedchamber and 6 lords of the bedchamber were
often at odds for power with the Privy Council in wrestling for royal favour. In contrast,
under Elizabeth, the gentlewomen of the Chamber were women they did not have
the same place in a Tudor society for sharing political influence. Instead, Elizabeth had
the wives of many of her privy councillors placed as her gentlewomen, thereby
blurring the spheres of the two institutions. In addition, she had members of her court
for example the Lord Chamberlain placed in her Privy Council.
The Council of Elizabeth was made up largely of minor nobility and expert
administrators the attempts to carry out royal policy meant that the Council
members, even those with rivalries such as Leicester and Burghley, most of the time
attempted to work to the queens desires. The Council provided an efficient and
dedicated service to legislating. Henry had enforced the Privy Council in the 1540s,
but it was really the work of Elizabeths reign that turned it into an effective peace of
administration. William Penry argues that the Privy Council was far more an
administrative board than anything in France or the Hapsburg Realms, where councils
were prone to acting as the backgrounds to political battles. 2 The very lack of violence
or serious fighting in the Privy Council bears witness to that, but it is important to note
1 P. Williams The Later Tudors: England 15471603 (1995)

2 ibid.

Christian Amos For Jon Healey

Catz, 4th week of MT 15

how Elizabeths specific composition of the Council was key to that. Whereas her
father and siblings had had fairly large Privy Councils, numbering sometimes in the
30s, Elizabeth was concerned to keep her council to a minimum. In 1558 she reduced
it to 19 members, and by the 1590s the Council numbered only 11 members much
to the irritation of some of her vying courtiers. The result was an effective
administrative machine, that parsed royal will and ruled the kingdom with the help of
administrative manpower and ingenuity. To be clear, despite conflicts of interest
between the council and the Queen, it was still very much an instrument of royal
authority. Elizabeth certainly held some very strong beliefs, and had the education and
resources to directly enforce those beliefs, but her innovation was in choosing
individuals to think for her. I do not mean this in a patronising sense, but in a practical
sense. The day-to-day running of a kingdom required intense amounts of mental and
physical labour, beyond the capabilities of one individual yet one individual could still
hold principles, opinions, and aspirations. Elizabeth understood this and used the Privy
Council as a means to legislate in line with her thoughts, if not always, which was
beyond the singular capabilities of solo-administration or the cumbersome Plantagenet
use of the Privy Seal, Chancery, and Signet Seal.
The privy councils effect on the balance of royal authority was not just at the national
centre, but at the peripheries. Wall has argued that the instances of instability and
infighting of county administration was a result of factional forces having the means to
mutually contest each other.3 Whereas before the advent of the Privy Council, disputes
between the grand nobility over governance, J.Ps, of counties was confined largely to
the resources available among the nobility and gentry, opportunities for patronage
and influence now clearly reached the centre of power The Privy Council and Court
itself. In Nottinghamshire, for example, Lord Shrewsburys power was challenged by
local gentry led by Sir John Stanhope and successfully gained predominance in the
administration of the county. This was because Stanhope was a favourite of Elizabeth
and had connections to the court, whereas Shrewsbury had little mobilisation of the
powers of court influence. The example of Nottinghamshire was repeated in many
English counties, including Wiltshire and Yorkshire, where power contests were
determined by who could most effectively muster the backing of key individuals at the
court, even the Queen herself. Additionally, Cecil encouraged the creation of small
committees for J.P.s in the counties something which actually increased factional
infighting as it made power more competitive, rather than the intended effect of
efficiency savings. In this way, the strengthening of the central royal authority in the
form of a resurgent court and Council actually risked weakening the power of royal
authority in the counties with factional violence.
The second, but no less important, way of engaging with royal authority is in terms of
its perception. How far did Elizabeths reign see royal authority strengthened in the
hearts and minds of her subjects? Elizabeth embraced pageantry and theatrics, as a
means to strengthen the royal authority. Penry Williams describes how Elizabeth
actively embraced traditions such as the washing of the feet of the poor, in a
concerted effort to reinforce the image of monarchy. While Mary, her predecessor,
preferred to perform healing rituals in private, Elizabeth took to the public stage to
demonstrate her fulfilment of biblical models of monarchy. Moreover, Elizabeth had an
explicitly religious identity which was fermented during the Marian persecutions. The
hopes of evangelical and protestant faith in England were projected onto the young
Princess Elizabeth. While we can see Elizabeths reign as reflecting a personal
strengthening of the perception of sacral royal authority, something not applicable to
royal authority in general but only to this particular Queen. Undoubtedly, the strength

3 A. Wall Patterns of Politics in England, 15581625 HJ 31 (1988)

Christian Amos For Jon Healey

Catz, 4th week of MT 15

of Elizabethan religious imagery seems incomparable with the insipidness of Queen


Anne in the 1700s. Yet, this is not doing justice to the persistent legacy of Elizabeths
strengthening of the perception of religious importance to royal authority. The Act of
Uniformity 1558, but above all The Act of Supremacy 1558, established the
foundations of Anglicanism. Crucial to not only the image of royal authority, but also
subsequent conservative interpretations of constitutional thought, was the importance
of the monarch as the Governor of the Church of England. While Henry VIII
established the revolutionary idea of merging the obedience to the clergy with
obedience to the king, it was Elizabeths settlement the vindication of her father
which set the precedent that it was institutional change, not merely specific to the
reign of Henry. The book of 1558 Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty Nine Points of
1563 served to reinforce the Henrician and Edwardian Reformations, but the length
and endurance of her reign meant that the Elizabethan settlement had an enduring
place in the English Church but also in the collective social memory. Interestingly,
pageantry again was an instrument of royal image making. Roger Bowers has argued
for the significance of Elizabeth intervening to ensure the survival of the Chapel Royal
and choir music in the English Church. Preserving one of the communal enjoyments of
the old church strengthened the popular appeal of Anglicanism, distancing it from the
asceticism of Puritanical thought, while not detracting from the finely balanced
achievements of converging a form of religious Anglican identity, Governor of the
church, with the monarch of the commonweal.
Additionally, we might counter the strengthening of royal authority in its religious
dimension, with some of the manifestations of practical republicanism. Collinson has
argued that the difficulty of solving the succession crisis during the 1560s and 1570s
meant that leading figures in Elizabeths government, including Burghley, resorted to
proposing a form of anti-monarchism in a hypothetical interregnum. Collinson argues
that there was an unofficial face to Elizabethan political thought, anti-monarchical
virus which was part of the legacy of early 16th-century humanism. 4 While his
attribution of that thought is to humanism, that seems to be misleading. There is
nothing humanistic or even innovative about the idea that monarchs were responsible
to God for their conduct, that their rule had to be pious and biblical just such
thoughts were put forward, if not explicitly at all, going back to Magna Carta in 1215.
The idea that there were expectations and responsibilities of monarchs, while not new,
was certainly more coherently expressed than ever before in Elizabethan England. This
expression was found in the Bond of Association in 1584, a response to William of
Oranges assassination, which bound its signatories to the posthumous vengeance of
Elizabeth in the instance of assassination. Collinsons argument is that this constitutes
a tacit support of a commonwealth-republic, in the form of a foreseen interregnum. It
shows the ability of the Elizabethan Privy Council, and wider political establishment, to
conceive of royal authority as a malleable concept. While there was still an undoubted
adherence to the principles of monarchy, the letters of Thomas Digges and Burghley
envisage the idea of a Great Council to be made from the House of Lords and Privy
Council in the event of the assassination of Elizabeth, which would proceed to decide
the succession within the year following her death. To conceive of the states
sovereignty in what Cecil termed the magnum consilium coronae Angliae rather than
the Crown as monarch, showed that royal authority as the authority of traditional
succession by right of birth was vulnerable to practical concerns and desires of the
elite members of the commonweal.
Additionally, the reinvigoration of parliament was a notable aspect of Elizabeths reign.
At a cursory glance, strengthening parliament seems to be counter-intuitive and even

4 P. Collinson The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I in his Elizabethan Studies (1994

Christian Amos For Jon Healey

Catz, 4th week of MT 15

directly opposed to the interests of strengthening royal authority. Neale and his ilk
argued for the existence of a Protestant Puritan Opposition in parliament a group of
MPs who sought to counter government measures, and shaped the Elizabethan
religious settlement. The evidence for this, however, has been fairly well disowned by
recent scholars. That is not to say that the role of parliament was solely as an
enhancer of royal authority, and the Elizabethan parliament provided much of the
potential for the future encroachment of parliament on royal authority that would
characterise the Stuarts and be a feature of political normality after 1688.
Nevertheless, in an immediate sense, Elizabeths use of parliament was an asset to
royal authority. Graves argues that the management of the House of Commons was a
top priority of the Queen and her Privy Council, as the short length of Parliaments
and the fact that local administration was sent through Parliament meant that
Elizabeth needed managerial members of the house who could head committees,
debate, draft laws, and make speeches.5 Ultimately these men of business were in
constant collaboration with the Privy Council (and usually the Queen). Even when
these men of business fell foul of royal approval, they were still necessary to enacting
the royal will, and thereby adding greater strength to royal authority. Thomas Norton,
for example, was imprisoned in 1581-2 and 1583-4, but was nevertheless sent for by
Walsingham to draw up a draft justification of the governments treatment of
Catholics.6 Yet, the men of business (who did not constitute any formal grouping)
acted to the Councils interests first and foremost. In the 1563 Succession Crisis, it was
the likes of Digges and Norton who, to use one MPs blunt words put forward the stark
reality of axe or act. Their continual calls for the settlement of succession and
execution of Mary Queen of Scots applied pressure on the Queen, to the advantage of
the Privy Council. These men, many of whom were put into parliament by the
expansion of borough representation under Elizabeth, had a crucial place in
administration. Even if they were at odds with the Queen at certain times, their sheer
practical use in passing government business should not be underestimated without
them the dividends of parliament would have been far more clotted by verbose speech
and minor bills.
One of the ways in which historians have viewed the Elizabethan period is one in
which internal peace and stability was achieved by the rationalisation and
centralisation of finance and poor-relief, and that this is a reflection of how strong royal
authority was. It is certainly true that financial reform and centralisation was an aspect
of Elizabeths reign, enacted through subsidies obtained in parliament, and through
royal decrees issued through the Privy Council. Wrightson has argued that Elizabeths
reign saw the conception of the common-wealth as involving capitalist free enterprise
restricted by government legislation, fore example legislation that allowed for
enclosure but required, at the same time, the provision that an allowance of formerly
arable land had to be restored. 7 Additionally, a national poor law was implemented
(although in 1598 and 1601 it was legislated not be the government but by private
members of Parliament) which further drew in administration from the peripheries into
5 M.A.R. Graves The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons
Parliamentary History (1983)

6 ibid,

7 K. Wrightson Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (2000),


Chapters 5-9.

Christian Amos For Jon Healey

Catz, 4th week of MT 15

the centre of royal authority. Under Mary, and part of Elizabeths reign, the various
financial institutions of the state were streamlined. The collecting and accounting for
revenue went from 10 different bodies in 1546 to only 3 in 1558.
At the same time, financial rationalisation did not always mean a strengthening of
royal authority. Under Elizabeth there was a farming out, a privatisation, of Crown
lands to improve efficiency and prevent further defaulting under the Exchequer. The
financial strengthening of royal authority can be seen in its role in the dispensation of
the poor laws to Elizabeths subjects, enacted in her name even if it was a
parliamentary measure. Some historians have attributed the measures taken by
Elizabethan government, such as the poor laws, as the explanation for the relative
peace and stability of Elizabethan England with the notable exception of the 1571
rebellion and for the steady economic growth of the later 16th century in England.
Yet while fiscal and financial reforms were important, the state still had limited power
to enrich itself. Collinson calculates that the state could theoretically have taxed to
raise 6 million, yet only raised 2% of that amount at its peak under Elizabeth.
Actually, although royal authority may have been strengthened in financial matters
that is of less interest to historians than we might imagine. Such a strengthening may
anachronistically be used to explain the developments of a proto-capitalist kernel to
England, but the still minimal force of this strengthened authority needs to be placed
alongside other factors.
Palliser has revised arguments which claim that late Tudor and early Stuart
England faced a crisis of overpopulation that led to dearth and economic stagnation by
saying that historians have taken the claims of contemporaries too much at face
value, and that a Malthusian explanation of positive checks on Tudor society does not
click with either the textual evidence or with revised population estimates. 8 Palliser
argues that population growth remained modest between 1540 and 1640 as a result of
prudential rather than positive checks. Wage inflation and an poorly supplied labour
market meant that there was the emergence of a form of popular consumerism, as
remarked on by foreign visitors. The increase in the tillage of land and enclosure came
as extra-governmental measures responsible for economic development. In contrast,
royal authority although somewhat strengthened in financial matters was limited
by Elizabeths wariness to disrupt the delicate balance of social order achieved over
the previous century. Royal authority sured up some of the economic and social
developments of the latter 16th century, yet only in part external, demographic, and
technological factors played a more signifiant role.
To conclude, Elizabethan royal authority was a balancing act. The extension of royal
authority into aspects of public life had to be carefully decided upon, and if necessary,
withdrawn. There was always compromise between royal authority and the interests of
others. Guys central argument is that the stability and strengthening of Elizabethan
royal authority came ironically from the wider and wider sharing of royal power. 9
Broadly speaking, I am in agreement although I think we have to place Elizabeth in
the wider contexts of what monarchy could be to truly appreciate the degree to
which Elizabeth strengthened royal authority. Under Elizabeth, practical concerns met
ideological ones in a way that is reflective of a desire for good governance and the
political maturity of the age. Ideologically, the Queen was Christs deputy iN England
and had a god-given right to rule. Practically speaking, this authority necessitated
8 D.M. Palliser, Tawneys Century: Brave New World or Malthusian Trap?, Economic
History Review, 35 (1982).

9 J. Guy, Tudor England (1988)

Christian Amos For Jon Healey

Catz, 4th week of MT 15

power-sharing. Other monarchs had been more authoritatively autocratic in their,


testing the limits of their capability, but always at the high risk of losing the stability as
a part of their royal authority. Henry VIII exercised more power but was less assured of
the stability of his tenure, facing internal opposition and the risk of noble revolt when
he broke-off ties with Rome. What Elizabeth showed was that the royal authority could
be strengthened in terms of its stability, if at the cost not being able to push the
boundaries of royal power to the extent that Henry had done. It would take the
formulation of a more severe conception of royal authority in the vogue of the Bourbon
absolutism of Louis XIV for European monarchy to demonstrate more powerful
capabilities, if not more stability.

Christian Amos For Jon Healey

Catz, 4th week of MT 15

Bibliography
J. Guy, Tudor England (1988)
P. Williams The Later Tudors: England 15471603 (1995)
M.A.R. Graves The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons Parliamentary
History (1983)
A. Wall Patterns of Politics in England, 15581625 HJ 31 (1988)
D.M. Palliser, Tawneys Century: Brave New World or Malthusian Trap?, Economic
History Review, 35 (1982).
K. Wrightson Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (2000),
Chapters 5-9.
P. Collinson The Monarchical Republic of Elizabeth I in his Elizabethan Studies (1994
J. Walter A Rising of the People? The Oxfordshire Rising of 1596 PP 60
(1973)

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