Privy Council

The Privy Council is presented as a governing body whose work sits at the fault line between royal command and competing claims of religious, dynastic, and political legitimacy. In Margaret Pole’s account, it becomes both the setting for enforcing Henry VIII’s settlement and a place where resistance to that settlement remains audible, though dangerous.

Role in Royal Government

In the spring of 1534, Margaret is summoned with the peers of the realm to the Privy Council at Westminster Palace. Thomas Cromwell, now Lord Chancellor, administers the succession oath to the assembled nobility. The scene places the Council at the center of a drive to secure public assent: an oath is required not simply as a private profession but as a test of whether the political elite will accept the king’s version of the royal marriage and succession.

The account presents this administrative role against a sharp expansion of the king’s authority over the Church. Montague reports that the Church has surrendered to Henry VIII, who will rule it himself, while the Pope is to be disregarded in England. Thomas More has returned the Lord Chancellor’s seal and resigned. The Council’s work thus takes place amid a change in who may claim authority over the Church and the law, not within an uncontested settlement.

The Succession Oath and Conflicting Authority

The oath is imposed even though the Pope has publicly ruled that the marriage of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon is valid and that the king should remain with his wife. Because the Pope has not excommunicated the king, Margaret understands that the peers are not formally authorized to defy him; each must decide what to do. The distance between Rome and the king’s claim that papal authority does not operate in England makes the oath a collision between rival jurisdictions as well as a question of allegiance.

The narrative emphasizes the coercive force of the king’s declarations: he has declared Katherine no longer his wife, Anne Boleyn queen, and Anne’s child a princess. The oath asks the nobility to ratify that account despite the contrary papal ruling. Thomas More refuses to sign the oath as it stands, although he would have signed a revised version and does not condemn those who do sign. Henry VIII had promised his friend that he would not put him to this test, but breaks that promise. The episode makes the Council’s procedure a personal as well as constitutional ordeal, in which conscience is pressed into the service of a political settlement.

Divisions, Suspicion, and Enforcement

The Council is not depicted as united behind the king’s decisions. Geoffrey Pole reports that half its members opposed disinheriting Princess Mary and that many spoke against the measure to him. Their dissent is politically hazardous: Montague warns that if Cromwell chooses to bring down half the Council, he will be able to find evidence, and predicts that Geoffrey may be an early target because he has spoken up for Mary.

The threat becomes concrete when Henry Courtenay is dismissed from the Privy Council under suspicion of plotting for Princess Mary. At the same time, Margaret witnesses the arrest of two of the king’s firmest friends. Thomas Howard tells her they are accused of conspiring with Mary and plotting to remove her from Hunsdon by ship to Flanders. Margaret conceals this accusation from the women around her, fearing even to repeat it. Council membership and access to the princess are therefore shown as liabilities as well as forms of influence: suspicion can turn political association into grounds for danger.

Competing Visions of Counsel

During the northern crisis, the question of who should advise the king becomes part of a broader dispute over government. Robert Aske tells Henry VIII that he has come to convey the people’s feelings and that they cannot tolerate Cromwell as an adviser. Cromwell responds angrily, calling the northern men traitors, while the king puts his arm around Aske’s shoulders. Aske is described as a Yorkshire gentleman, related to the Seymours and better born than Cromwell, but he refuses a place as a privy councillor. He wants a free Parliament and a Council governed by the old lords rather than new upstarts.

Henry VIII promises to hold a free Parliament at York, have the queen crowned there, and convene the Church there to declare its learning. Margaret and Montague receive these concessions as more than they had dared hope for. The episode does not show those promises resolving the conflict over counsel; instead, it reveals how the Council’s composition and authority have become part of the struggle over whether government will be shaped by established lords or by the king’s newer advisers.

Narrative Significance

The Privy Council’s changing role is traced through procedure, division, and threat. The succession oath turns political obedience into a formal act; dissent over Princess Mary exposes disagreement inside the governing elite; and the suspicions surrounding Henry Courtenay and the attempted rescue show the personal risks attached to those disagreements. Against this, Aske’s appeal for older lords and a free Parliament gives voice to a rival model of counsel. The Council is consequently portrayed neither as a neutral forum nor as a wholly unified royal instrument, but as a contested space where the king’s claims are administered, challenged, and enforced.