The development of the privy council oath in Tudor England^*

Abstract

When a man was appointed to serve as a member of the king’s council, and of the privy council after its emergence as an executive board during Henry VIII’s reign, he had to swear an oath of office. This oath was the only official statement of the duties of councillors, who drew their executive authority from the monarch solely on the basis that they had been sworn. For this reason alone it would be worthy of attention. Another reason is the unusual fact that it was revised so many times: while many important oaths were introduced in the sixteenth century, from those produced during the Reformation to the Bond of Association, oaths of office were largely static.¹ To take an extreme example, a clause in the sheriffs’ oath condemning Lollardy managed to survive the Reformation and was not cut out until it came under government scrutiny when Sir Edward Coke, appointed sheriff of Buckinghamshire, refused to swear it in 1625.² Attempts to make alterations to oaths often failed: for instance, Henry VIII was unsuccessful in his attempts to rewrite the time-worn coronation oath in around 1534.³ The fluid nature of the council oath may explain why it was excluded from Sir Geoffrey Elton’s collection of constitutional documents.⁴ This article begins by offering brief background information about the oath in question, and then proceeds to describe the five different council oaths (one of them being an unfinished draft) that have survived from the Tudor period. It demonstrates that a new oath was introduced during the reign of Edward VI to serve the particular needs of that royal minority, and that in 1558 the government of Elizabeth I reverted to a revised version of the medieval oath. The article also examines another unfinished oath drafted by William Cecil in 1558 and provides a possible explanation for why this draft was shelved. It goes on to prove that sometime between 1566 and 1571, the government switched to yet another new version of the oath, this time one that was descended from the Edwardian oath, and suggests reasons for this curious fact. Finally, the article examines evidence from the oath that indicates shifting attitudes towards the function of counsel in the sixteenth century. It concludes with transcriptions of the four operational Tudor oaths and of the Cecilian draft.

The councillors of the king or queen of England have been required to take an oath before assuming office since at least 1233.⁵ The earliest surviving text of a council oath is from 1257.⁶ This oath, probably administered in French, although the surviving text is in a Latin chronicle, consisted of seven points: councillors swore to counsel the king faithfully; to keep his secrets; to defend the rights of the Crown; to mete out equal justice to rich and poor; not to allow personal prejudice to interfere with the course of justice; not to take a bribe; and to inform on fellow councillors if they should take a bribe. By 1307, although the oath remained the same in essentials, it had been modified into the form that is familiar to us from the Red Book of the Exchequer.⁷ In the fourteenth century, it was modified a further four times at least.⁸ In the third year of Henry VI, it was modified once again (this time by parliament during the royal minority) and was recorded for the first time in English.⁹ Here, as far as some historians are concerned, the story seems to have ended:

With the elimination of the portion relating to the king’s tender age, this form appears henceforth to have been regularly used, and for this purpose it was inscribed with other official forms in the [court of chancery’s] ‘Book of Oaths’. Inasmuch as it is then a well-understood feature of the constitution, there is no need here to pursue the topic further.¹⁰

We cannot blame a historian of the medieval council for having declined to pay full attention to further developments of the oath in the sixteenth century, but even historians of the Tudor period have largely neglected the topic.

G. W. Prothero printed only one version of the Tudor council oath (from 1571) in his collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean constitutional documents.¹¹ Following Prothero, Dorothy M. Gladish seemed to be aware of only one council oath when she wrote the history of the Tudor privy council.¹² Likewise, in his collection of Tudor Constitutional Documents, J. R. Tanner printed only a copy of the same 1571 oath.¹³ Only the 1558 oath was known to the author of a 1951 doctoral thesis on the Elizabethan privy council, and only the 1571 oath was mentioned in the definitive study of the council in the 1570s.¹⁴ However, this period in fact witnessed another spate of experimentation with the text of the oath, and at least four different versions were administered over the course of the century.

During the reign of Henry VII and the early years of Henry VIII’s reign, there is no question that the chancellor continued to administer the council oath that had been formulated in 1425 or 1426. We know this because an identical oath (discounting a couple of accidentals) is to be found in an unchronological chancery precedent book containing material dated between 1485 and 1530.¹⁵ This corrects the statement made by Dale Hoak in 1976 that no copies of the Henrician oath have survived.¹⁶ The oath contains seven clauses: councillors swore to counsel the king truly; to seek the welfare of the king and the realm impartially; to maintain secrecy; to refuse bribes; to support the council’s decisions; to withstand any opponents of policy; and generally to ‘doo all that a good and true counsailler’ ought to. For how long was this oath used by the Tudor council?

Most historians, from the time of A. F. Pollard to the present day, have recognized that the privy council emerged as an institution proper in the second half of Henry VIII’s reign, sometime between 1536 and 1540 depending on whom we consult.¹⁷ Whether or not this privy council was created by Thomas Cromwell, as Elton famously argued, need not now detain us. The point is that the requirement of swearing an oath was transferred from one body to the other. It is false to suppose, as Pollard once did, that there were two council oaths prior to 1540, one for the council at large and the other for the ‘privy council’, which did not exist at this time except as a loose grouping.¹⁸ It seems plausible that a fresh oath would have been formulated in around 1540 to suit the needs of the new privy council, but no evidence of any such new oath survives. It is equally possible that the text settled in the time of Henry VI continued to be used for the entirety of Henry VIII’s reign.

In contrast, the councillors of Edward VI swore a brand new oath. Two virtually identical Elizabethan copies of an Edwardian oath of six clauses have survived, both in formularies that belonged to Robert Beale.¹⁹ There are only minor accidental differences between the texts, such as the fact that the noun ‘voice’ in British Library, Additional MS. 48150 becomes ‘will’ in Additional MS. 48018; such differences are probably the result of errors introduced during copying. Swearers of this oath committed to be true and faithful to the king and his heirs; to alert the king to any dangers to the king’s person or the commonwealth; to serve truly and faithfully; to maintain secrecy; to give their opinions openly and honestly; and to be diligent and vigilant. Clearly, this was a bespoke document designed to help government to run safely and smoothly during the royal minority. The oath used in Henry’s reign had mentioned allegiance to the king only in passing, in the final clause, which called for councillors to do anything that might be expected from a ‘good and true counsailler’. The Edwardian oath, by contrast, bound councillors to swear – not once but twice – to be true and faithful to the king. They also swore, as part of the first clause, to uphold the succession as set out in Henry VIII’s Third Succession Act. This act had stipulated that in the event that Edward died, the Crown would pass to Edward’s notional male or female heir, or else to Mary and Elizabeth successively should Edward die without an heir; and that Mary would be excluded from the succession were she to breach conditions that would be set out in letters patent.²⁰ These articles were designed to forestall any potential factionalism or even treason in the years to come, until the king was old enough to steer the ship of state himself. Likewise, the authors of the oath made a significant addition to the traditional injunction to secrecy found in previous oaths, by expanding the qualifying clause:

And yet if any matter so p[ro]pounded, treated, disputed & debated in any soche counsaile shall touche any priuate p[er]son sworne of the same, appon any soche matter as shall in any wise concerne his fidelity & trothe to the kynges ma[ies]ty, yow shall in no wise oppen the same vnto him, but kepe yt secret as yow wolde do from any other p[er]son till the kinges ma[ies]tes pleasure shalbe knowen in that behalf.

This is the only oath that commanded councillors to keep matters secret concerning their ‘fidelity and trothe’. A certain amount of paranoia is noticeable in these words, which survived in a more diluted form in the 1571 oath too, since they suggested to councillors from their first day in office that their colleagues might turn out to be traitors. They call to mind a scene from Shakespeare’s Henry V, where the king’s councillors have to hide their knowledge of the treachery of Cambridge, Scroop and Grey until the dramatic moment in which the king delivers papers to the traitors exposing their guilt:

Why how now Gentlemen?

What see you in those papers, that you loose

So much complexion? Looke ye how they change:

Their cheekes are paper.²¹

It was obviously not unthinkable to the authors of the oath that one or more of Edward’s councillors might turn out to be disloyal.

When was the Edwardian oath composed? The first swearing-in of Edward’s reign took place in the star chamber on 1 February.²² Councillors probably swore the new oath from day one. This suggestion is based on the fact that the oath refers, as we have already mentioned, to Henry’s Third Succession Act (1543), but it contains a blank instead of the year in which this act was passed. It therefore seems that the act had not yet passed when the oath was drafted. Indeed, the oath was probably drafted at about the same time as the bill of 1543 was being drawn up, as part of the same phase of preparations for succession. Presumably, nobody got around to filling in the blank once the information was available.

It seems that the Edwardian oath continued to be administered during the reign of Mary I. The reason for so concluding is that a copy of a council oath was printed in an eighteenth-century collection of ‘ancient and modern’ oaths just after the death of Queen Anne, which is almost identical to the Edwardian oath, except that all of the instances of the word ‘king’ are replaced with ‘queen’, and the pronouns are similarly altered.²³ There is a single substantive difference between the two known manuscript copies of the Edwardian oath and the printed text: the former contain the phrase: ‘w[i]thout dysclosing of the same to any man but to soche onlye as be of the same counsell’, while the latter contains the phrase: ‘without disclosing the same, or any part thereof to any, but to such only that be of the Privy Council’.²⁴ It is possible that the editor of this collection was a blunderer who edited the text of the Edwardian oath himself, but this does not seem likely. The oath does not date from the reign of Anne, for her councillors took the 1571 oath, which will be discussed presently.²⁵ Thus, it seems most likely that it dates from Mary’s reign.

When Elizabeth acceded to the throne, it was seen fit to alter the text of the council oath once again. Two important documents have survived from 1558, one a draft oath in the hand of William Cecil and the other a finalized oath from the same year.²⁶ The draft oath has not received much attention from historians. Stephen Alford used it to prove that William Cecil swore a council oath, but this is an odd use of evidence.²⁷ The date is confirmed by the fact that the draft appears on the dorse of a manuscript page containing Cecil’s plans for the coronation from 18 November 1558.²⁸ The text of the oath is obviously a rough draft because of all the interpolations and the bad grammar: there are, for example, two conflicting verbs in the second relative clause (‘serue’ and ‘tend’) because one of them was replaced without striking out the original. Moreover, the text is probably unfinished because it is appreciably shorter than other Tudor council oaths. This draft oath can be divided into three main articles: to bear allegiance to the queen; to give effective council; and to maintain secrecy.

Why did Cecil, who would have sworn the Edwardian oath when he was admitted to the privy council in 1550, want to rewrite the council oath? There is no evidence in the draft that he intended any great innovation. Most of its elements are similar to those of the Edwardian oath, with one important exception: it stipulates that if council business ever concerns one of its own members, this fact should be hidden not only from the member in question but also from other councillors ‘by who[m] ye think the same wilbe disclosed and reuealed’. A deletion indicates that the original intention was even stronger: councillors would have sworn to keep such information from those ‘allyed in your knoledge to the sayd Cou[n]sellor’. This is a step forward from the Edwardian oath, which had said only that such matters should be kept secret from the singular councillor himself. It is now generally doubted that the court of Elizabeth was the stage of great factional strife.²⁹ While this is no doubt correct, it cannot escape our attention that by including this clause in the draft oath, Cecil conjured up the spectre of factionalism at the very beginning of the reign, for he foresaw a circumstance in which one bloc of councillors might be pitted against another. In all likelihood, he was concerned here primarily with securing a successful regime change, for when Elizabeth acceded to the throne, she retained no fewer than ten men from the Marian privy council.³⁰ This was necessary for the sake of continuity and expertise, but it also opened up the possibility of conflict and even double-dealing, which the oath attempted to prevent.

In the event, the draft was shelved in favour of an oath virtually identical to that whose form had been settled in the reign of Henry VI.³¹ It seems to have been restored in 1558, which is the date provided by Robert Lemon’s calendar and is also to be found on the dorse of the manuscript page bearing the oath, possibly in an Elizabethan hand.³² Common sense might, in any case, have suggested this date, since we know that Cecil stopped working on a version of the draft so something else probably took its place. While the 1558 oath is substantively the same as the 1425/6 oath, there are some minor differences. One notices, for instance, that the syntax has been clarified and modernized in places: thus ‘ye shall no yefte ... admytte for p[ro]mocion ... of any matter’ has been replaced with ‘you shall receue no gifte ... for p[ro]moting ... anye matttier’. The oath as re-established in 1558 was still being used in 1566, since it is on record that this was the one sworn by Sir Walter Mildmay at St. James’s Palace.³³ While it is unwise to build large conclusions on limited evidence, it is possible that the conservative chancellor Nicholas Heath (who was removed on the first day of Elizabeth’s reign, 17 November 1558) had used his last days in office to instruct chancery to supply his successor with a refreshed version of the traditional oath, as a means of guarding against constitutional innovation.³⁴

Nevertheless, by 1571, the oath had been replaced by yet another one.³⁵ Interestingly, this oath was descended not from the medieval/Henrician oath but from the Edwardian oath. This is clear from the fact that its articles are broadly the same as those in the Edwardian oath, and appear in roughly the same order. 1571 is the terminus ad quem for the introduction of this oath because in December of this year Elizabeth sent a written copy of the oath to the earl of Shrewsbury. There is a surviving draft of an accompanying letter in Cecil’s hand, which was presumably drawn up as a fair copy and sent under sign manual to Shrewsbury. The queen assured Shrewsbury that

though we ar well assured of your fidelit[i]e, yet for ordre sake because it hath been used that wha[n] any p[er]so[n] is admytted to be of the p[ri]vie counsell, the same is therto swor[n]e, we haue willed the Lo[rd] Burghley to send to you the copy of such usuall othe which we do charge you by these our l[et]res to obs[er]ue and fo[llo]we.³⁶

That the oath is described as the ‘usuall othe’ indicates that it had probably been introduced prior to 1571. Rather than swearing the oath orally, Shrewsbury signed and sealed it on 12 December.³⁷ Another copy of the oath has survived in Beale’s 1575 formulary, where it is entitled ‘An other othe as is now vsed’.³⁸ A third copy may be found among the papers of Sir Julius Caesar, and a fourth among the Petyt Manuscripts in the Inner Temple Library.³⁹

The most notable difference between the Edwardian oath and the 1571 oath is that councillors now had to swear to defend ‘the Queenes ma[ies]te her heirs and lawfull successors ... against al forrayn Princes, parsons, Prelates, or Potentates &c. by act of Parliament or otherwise’. This clause of the oath was no doubt introduced in the wake of the Northern Rising of 1569 and the papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth in February 1570. Here we observe the kind of thinking that later led to the Bond of Association and the 1585 act that arranged for the queen’s death to be avenged if she were to be assassinated.⁴⁰ The grammar is interesting because there are two alternative ways of reading the first phrase in the above quotation. It might be read, first, as a list of three items: ‘the Queenes ma[ies]te[,] her heirs and [her] lawfull successors’, in which case the scribe probably ought to have added the second pronominal adjective that has been interpolated here. However, the phrase might equally be read – and I think this is the intended meaning – as a list of two items introduced with the old-fashioned form of the possessive: the queen’s heirs and successors. In this case, the article assumes even more significance because it is intended solely to secure loyalty to the queen’s notional heirs in the event of her death. Precisely who these heirs or successors might have been is unclear, although Elizabeth was not yet too old to conceive a child when the oath was introduced, being only in her late thirties. Thus far, we have charted the development of the Tudor council oath and suggested some reasons why councillors introduced or altered certain clauses. We may now turn to discuss the evidence that these oaths furnish about the function of counsel during the sixteenth century.

The privy council was the institution most properly qualified to counsel the monarch. It has been claimed that ‘the pre-eminent form of institutionalized counsel was parliament’,⁴¹ but in fact the privy council is the only body that qualifies for this title. It is true that parliament, or we should more properly say the lords in parliament, also had a theoretical right to counsel the queen.⁴² The traditional conception of parliament as a conciliar body was based on the idea of a monarch attending in person to seek advice from the lords of the realm. The commons had no such right of counsel traditionally, although some parliamentarians and councillors had begun to believe in such a right by Elizabeth’s reign.⁴³ Elizabeth herself was keen to clamp down on parliament’s claims of being a counsel-giving body.⁴⁴ However, it was not contestable that the commons could counsel the queen indirectly by presenting petitions through the speaker. For instance, Elizabeth decided to attend parliament on 10 April 1563, where, ‘being Apparell’d in her Parliament Robes’, she heard a petition from the speaker of the commons, Thomas Williams, to marry.⁴⁵ In the sixteenth century, however, the monarch was usually absent from parliamentary sessions. If the king or queen was not physically sitting in parliament, neither house had any reliable procedure for counselling him or her, short of making a speech in the knowledge that it would eventually come to the monarch’s attention, which was a pretty ineffectual way of dealing with the situation. As Elton reminded us, parliament’s ‘political function was seen as essentially subordinate to the legislative one’; we may also note that he did not deny the political function altogether, although his arguments have often been caricatured since.⁴⁶ Practice was not in step with theory: the Tudor parliament was primarily a law-making rather than a counsel-giving body.

The primary sphere of royal counsel in the Tudor period, to reiterate, was the privy council. But what form was such counsel supposed to take, and what rules were to be imposed on it? If we compare the texts of the council oaths that have been discussed here, there are some elements that remained constant in every single version. For instance, every oath demanded that councillors should maintain secrecy. Nothing spoken at the council board, and no counsel presented to the monarch, ought to be shared with anyone who was not a member of the council. This fact ought to give us pause before endorsing the now-popular view that Elizabeth’s councillors covertly steered confidential information through the printing press as an indirect way of pressuring the queen.⁴⁷ The other clauses that directly treat of the subject of counsel, however, differ from each other in interesting and significant ways. From 1425/6 through to the reign of Henry VIII, councillors swore to ‘truly, iustly and euenly counsaill and adyuse the kyng in all matiers to be co[m]moned [comunicated], treted and demened in the kinges Counsaill, or by you as the kynges Counsaillour’. Here we notice that three adverbs are used to describe the standard of counsel: it should be given truly, justly and evenly (or impartially). This is very much the traditional conception of a council that merely advised the king, who then decided on policy personally and independently. The verbs used to describe the activities at the council board paint a picture of consensus politics: matters were commoned (or communicated), treated and demeaned (or dealt with). The oath does not even contemplate the idea that councillors might have bitter disagreements or vigorous debate. There is a hint of this same idea in the practice of the modern cabinet, which theoretically does not debate but merely discusses matters and arrives at a collective agreement. It does not even put matters to a vote, for this would ‘demonstrate, nakedly and unashamedly, a lack of Cabinet unity and solidarity which is always deprecated’.⁴⁸ Similarly, unity was the keynote of the theory of counsel as expressed in the traditional oath.

The unique conditions of Edward’s reign, in contrast, allowed the updated oath to express a rather different conception of counsel. Now, in the fifth article, councillors were bound

in all thinges to be moued, treated & disputed & debated in any soche counsaile, faithfully & trewlye [to] declare yo[w]r mind & opinion accordinge to yo[w]r harte & co[n]science. In no wise forbearing so to do, for any ma[n]ner of respect or fauor, loue, mead, dreade, displeasure or corruptio[n].

One is struck immediately by those two new verbs that have been added to the description of the council’s activities: now matters were to be not only moved and treated but also disputed and debated. Formerly, at least in theory, the council had only ever been composed of faithful servants who carried out policy decided on by the king, and who humbly presented him with their opinions. In the Edwardian oath, we encounter the quite different conception of a council that decides on policy not by consulting the king but by putting questions to internal debate. This change was, of course, not stimulated by idealism but by the very real situation of a royal minority, where there would be little guidance ‘from upstairs’. According to the rules laid down in Henry’s will, there was to be no pretending that Edward was in charge of policy while he was a minor. The privy council was to exercise complete control not only of national government but also of ‘the Gouvernment of our moost Dear Sonne Prince Edwarde’.⁴⁹ This was a version of the style of government that had been invented in Henry’s reign, namely ‘Government under the King but not by the King’, except that now the council had even more independent executive authority.⁵⁰

The return to a more traditional version of the oath in 1558 sent a clear message to councillors that the reign of Elizabeth was going to be quite different from the reign of Edward. The council was to return to the ideal of consensus politics and its members were no longer bound to speak their ‘mind & opinion’ in all matters, for they were to yield in every case to the will of the queen. The fifth article, however, differs in a couple of respects from the similar article in the medieval/Henrician oath; the most important addition is here italicized:

Yow shall as farfurth as yo[u]r cunninge and discretion sufficeth truly, iustly and uprightly counsaile & advise the Quenes highnes in alle mattiers w[hi]ch you shalbe made p[ri]uey or called vnto to be communed and demeaned in the Quenes Counselle, or by you as the Quenes Counsailor.

This new relative clause seems to have been designed to put councillors firmly back in their place of executive inferiority to the monarch. It differs strikingly from a similar clause in Cecil’s draft of the same year, by which councillors would have sworn to ‘gyve such counsell to hir Ma[ies]ty as maye best … tend to the safety of hir M[aiestes] person, and to the co[m]men weale of this realme’. While Cecil had wanted them to give whatever council they saw fit, as their ‘co[n]science’ dictated, the operative oath authorized them only to give counsel on matters to which they were invited to contribute. The difference between Cecil’s conception of counsel and that of the restored oath strengthens our earlier hypothesis that the outgoing chancellor was responsible for the latter.

And yet in 1571, the government switched, as we have said, to an oath that had more in common with the Edwardian oath than with the traditionalist oath. Councillors were now to agree to the following article: ‘You shall not let to give true, playne and faithfull counsell at all tymes without respect either of the cause or of the parson, layeng apart all favour, meede affection and partialitie’. The diction of this injunction is a touch more emphatic than similar clauses in previous oaths, for the adjective ‘playne’ meant not only ‘straightforward’ but also ‘outspoken, blunt’.⁵¹ It calls to mind the rhetorical figure of parrhesia, or plainspokenness, which played a significant part in the political culture of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.⁵² An extreme example of this figure may be found in John of Gaunt’s frank comments to the king in Richard II:

Thy death-bed is no lesser then the Land,

Wherein thou lyest in reputation sicke,

And thou too care-lesse patient as thou art,

Commit’st thy anointed body to the cure

Of those Physitians, that first wounded thee.⁵³

It also indicates an acceptance of the Ciceronian idea that plain counsel is superior to flattery.⁵⁴ Jacqueline Rose has demonstrated that this idea became commonplace in England through its inclusion in Erasmus’s Education of a Christian Prince (1516).⁵⁵ Perhaps Cecil would have included a similar clause in the draft of 1558, had he finished it. The discovery of such evidence does not warrant a pronouncement in favour of Patrick Collinson’s mischievous theory of the Elizabethan ‘monarchical republic’, but this clause of the oath does at least indicate that its editor, very probably Cecil, thought it wise that councillors should swear to speak their mind to all persons.⁵⁶ We may detect the same impulse that a few years later led Sir Francis Walsingham to beg the queen: ‘For the love of God, Madam, let not the cure of your diseased estate hang any longer in deliberation!’⁵⁷

One final question presents itself: did the changes to the oath described in this article indicate any significant developments in the English constitution that have not already been discussed? The answer to that question must be given in the negative. The oath as codified in around 1571 contains only one positive statement of the executive function of the privy council: that its members should ‘give true, playne and faithfull counsell’. It had long since ceased to be true, of course, that councillors were responsible only for advising the king, but the oath was never fully updated to reflect reality.⁵⁸ This is no doubt because it served primarily as a statement of the behaviour required of councillors rather than of the council’s executive function. The oath served this purpose effectively and was used to hold swearers to account: in 1586, fourteen years after the duke of Norfolk’s execution, a treatise commissioned by Walsingham noted that Norfolk had given ‘the Bishopp of Rosse his counsel & advise in all his proceadinges … w[hi]ch was co[n]trary to his othe of a counselor’.⁵⁹ The oath as it stood in 1571 is a particularly important landmark because it continued to be used in the reign of James I.⁶⁰ In fact, excepting some minor modifications, privy councillors continue to swear the same oath today.⁶¹

Appendix⁶²

1. Early Henrician Oath (The National Archives of the U.K., C 193/1, fo. 87v).

   • [1] Ye shall as ferforth as your connyng and discrec[i]on suffiseth truly, iustly and euenly counsaill and adyuse the kyng in all matiers to be co[m]moned, treted and demened in the kinges counsaill, or by you as the kynges Counsaillour.

   • [2] And gen[er]ally in all thing that may be to the kynges worship and behove and to the good of his realmes, lordshippes and subiectes without parcialite or accep[ta]c[i]on of p[er]sons, not leving or eschewing so to doo for affec[i]on, loue, mede, dowte or drede of any p[er]son or p[er]sones.

   • [3] Ye shall kepe secrete the kynges counsaill and all that shalbe co[m]muned by wey of Counsaill in the same, withouten that ye shall co[m]mone it, publisshe it or discouer it by worde, writing or in any wise to any p[er]son out of the same Counsaill, or to any of the same Counsaill yf it touche hym or yf he be partie therto.

   • [4] And that ye shall no yefte, mede nor good, ne p[ro]myse of good by you nor by mean p[er]son receyue nor admytt for p[ro]mocion, fauoring nor for declarying, letting or hindering of any matter or thing to be treated or doo [sic] in the seid Counsaill.

   • [5] Ye shall also with all your might and power helpe, strenght [sic] vnto the kynges seid Counsaill in all that shalbe tought vnto the same counsaill for the vnyversall good of the kyng and of his londe, and for the peas, rest and tranquillite of the same.

   • [6] And withstand any p[er]son or p[er]sones of what condicion, eastate or degree that they be of, that wold by waye or feate or elce attempte or entende vnto the contrary.

   • [7] And gen[er]ally ye shall obserue, kepe and doo all that a good and true Counsailler oweth for to doo vnto his Soueraigne lord. So helpe you God &c., and his sayntes.

2. Edwardian Oath (British Library, Additional MS. 48150, fo. 2v).

   • [1] Yow shall sweare that to the vttermost of y[ow]r power, witt, voice & coning, yow shalbe trewe & faithfull to the trusty o[u]r most dreade, beningne & souereigne lord, king edward the sixt &c. and to his highnes heires & successors kinges of England, according to the limitac[i]on of the statute made in the [space] yere of the reigne of &c. for the establishment of his ma[iest]es succession in the crowne imperiall of this realme.

   • [2] Yow shall not knowe or heare any things that may in any wise be p[re]iudiciall to his ma[ies]ty or to the co[mm]en wealthes peace & quiet of this his ma[ies]tes realme, but yow shall w[i]thal diligence reuele and disclose the same to his ma[ies]ty, or to other p[er]son or p[er]sons of his graces p[ri]vie counsell, as yow shall thinck may and will sonest conuey and bring yt to his m[aies]tes knowledge.

   • [3] Yow shall serue the kynges ma[ies]ty trewleye and faithfully in the rome & place of one of his highnes counsaile.

   • [4] Yow shall kepe close & secrett all soche thinges & matters as shalbe treated disputed & debated in any counsaile w[i]thout dysclosing of the same to any man but to soche onlye as be of the same counsell. And yet if any matter so p[ro]pounded, treated, disputed & debated in any soche counsaile shall touche any priuate p[er]son sworne of the same, appon any soche matter as shall in any wise concerne his fidelity & trothe to the kynges ma[ies]ty, yow shall in no wise oppen the same vnto him, but kepe yt secret as yow wolde do from any other p[er]son till the kinges ma[ies]tes pleasure shalbe knowen in that behalf.

   • [5] Yow shall in all thinges to be moued, treated & disputed & debated in any soche counsaile, faithfully & trewlye declare yo[w]r mind & opinion accordinge to yo[w]r harte & co[n]science. In no wise forbearing so to do, for any ma[n]ner of respect or fauor, loue, mead, dreade, displeasure or corruptio[n].

   • [6] Finally yow shalbe vigilant, diligent and circu[m]spect in all yo[w]r doinges & p[ro]ceadinges touching the kinges ma[ies]ty and his affaires.

     All w[hi]ch pointes & articles before exp[re]ssed yow shall faithfullye obserue, keepe & fulfill to the vttermost of yo[w]r power witte & co[n]ning, so helpe yow God and the holye contentes of this booke.

3. Draft Oath by William Cecil, 1558 (The National Archives of the U.K., SP 12/1, fo. 3v).

   • [1] Ye shall swere, th[a]t ye shall beare trew fayth and allegia[n]ce to h[er] soueraign lady the Quenes Ma[ies]ty Elizabeth by the grace of God Quene of E[ngland] Scot[land] and Fran[ce] defe[n]d[er] of the fayth and shall in all matters to the vttermost of your witt and power gyve such counsell to hir Ma[ies]ty as maye best serue in yo[w]r co[n]science tend to the safety of hir M[aiestes] person, and to the co[m]men weale of this realme,

   • [2] and shall furder kepe secrett, all maner of counselles and Conferencees w[it]hout disclosing any p[ar]t thereof to any ma[n]ner of p[er]son others, than to hir Ma[ies]ty or to such as bee of her Ma[ies]tes p[ri]vee counsell or to who[m] ye shalbe co[m]manded, and if any thing shall seme to touch any one of the said p[ri]vee counsellors ye shall not disclose any part thereof eith[er] to the sayd counsellor, or to any other by who[m] ye shall think the same wilbe disclosed and reuealed to the sayd Cou[n]sellor.

4. Oath, 1558 (The National Archives of the U.K., SP 12/1, fo. 137r).

   • [1] Yow shall as farfurth as yo[u]r cunninge and discretion sufficeth truly, iustly and uprightly counsaile & advise the Quenes highnes in alle mattiers w[hi]ch you shalbe made p[ri]uey or called vnto to be communed and demeaned in the Quenes Counselle, or by you as the Quenes Counsailor.

   • [2] And generally in all thinges that maye be to the Quenes honour and behofe and to the good of her Realmes, Lordshipps & subiectes w[i]thout p[ar]tialitye or exception of p[er]sons, not leuing or eschewinge so to do for affec[i]on, loue, meade, doubte or dreade, of anie p[er]son or p[er]sonnes.

   • [3] And you shall keepe secret the Quenes Counsaile & all that shalbe co[m]muned by waye of counsaille in the same, w[i]thout that you shall common yt, publyshe yt or discouer yt by worde writing or in anyewise, to anye p[er]son out of the same counsaile, or to anye of the same counsaill yf yt touche him, or if he be p[ar]tie thervnto.

   • [4] And that you shall receue no gifte, meade nor good, ne p[ro]mise of good, of anye p[er]son for p[ro]moting, fauoring, declaring, letting or hinderinge of anye mattier or thing to be treated or don in the sayd Counsaile.

   • [5] Yow shall allso w[i]thall yor might and power helpe & strenght the sayd Quenes Counsaile in all that shalbe thought to the same Counsaile for the uniu[er]sall good of the Quene of her Realmes, & for the peace, rest & tranquillitie of the same and w[i]th stand anye p[er]son or p[er]sons of what estate or degree that they be of that would by anye waye attempt or pretend to the contrarye.

   • [6] And generally you shall obserue, keape and do all that a good & true counsailor ought to do to his liege Ladye so helpe you god &c.

5. Oath, 1571 (The National Archives of the U.K., SP 12/83, fo. 72r).

   • [1] You shall sweare to be a true and faithfull Counsellor to the Queenes ma[ies]te as one of her highness privy Counsell.

   • [2] Yow shall not know or understand of any maner thing to be attemptid, done or spoken against her Ma[ies]tes parson, honor, Crowne, or dignitie Royal, but you shall let and withstand the same to the vttermost of your powre and either do or cause it to be furthwith revealid either to her ma[ies]tes self or to the rest of her Pryvy Counsell.

   • [3] You shall keepe secret all maters co[m]mittid and revealid to yow as her ma[ies]tes counsell, or that shalbe treatid of secretly in Counsell. And if any of the same treatis or counsells shall touche any other of the counsellours, you shall not reveale the same to him, but shall keepe the same vntill suche tyme as by the consent of her ma[ies]te or of the rest of the Counsell, publication shalbe made therof.

   • [4] You shall not let to give true, playne and faithfull counsell at all tymes without respect either of the cause or of the parson, layeng apart all favour, meede affection and partialitie.

   • [5] And you shall to your vttermost beare faith and true alleageance to the Queenes ma[ies]te her heirs and lawfull successors, and shall assist and defende all Iurisdictions, preemynences and authoritees grauntid to her ma[ies]te and annexid to her Crowne, against al forrayn Princes, parsons, Prelates, or Potentates &c. by act of Parliament or otherwise.

   • [6] And generally in all things you shall do as a faithfull and true Counsellour ought to doo to her Ma[ies]te. So help you God and the holy contentes of this booke.

Footnotes