The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286–1707, ed. Jacqueline Rose

Abstract

So central was counsel to late medieval and early modern political life in Britain that it might be thought too big a subject for one volume. What could be excluded from consideration? The editor, Jacqueline Rose, observes at the outset that counsel was ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘inescapable’. That the volume nevertheless coheres owes much to her comprehensive and lucid introduction: this synthesis should be the starting-point for anyone grappling with the subject. As the introduction acknowledges, counsel involved more than mediating the relationship between rulers and their subjects, for it was believed to be the route to all good decision-making (from personal matters such as choice of marital partner, to questions of universal import such as war or peace). Two chapters reflect the importance of counsel to the governance of self-defining communities. Eliza Hartrich’s well-researched piece considers the place of counsel in English cities and towns in the early fifteenth century. Intriguingly, it suggests that, in the 1420s, counselling practices and values at national and local levels were mutually reinforcing. Alexander Haskell’s discussion of the Virginia Company two hundred years later proposes that a conciliar structure legitimised its exercise of delegated royal authority in America. This governing arrangement may also have reflected the organisation of pre-existing chartered companies with outposts overseas; counselling practices in other trading and craft associations would thus repay study. The volume, however, concentrates on the ‘macropolitics of counsel’ in relation to the monarchy.