nally hold
these offices, from the moment of Cecil's death the actual direction of
affairs was in the hands of the king.

[Sidenote: The Council set aside.]

Another constitutional check remained in the royal Council. As the
influence of Parliament died down during the Wars of the Roses, that of
the Council took to some extent its place. Composed as it was not only
of ministers of the Crown but of the higher nobles and hereditary
officers of state, it served under Tudor as under Plantagenet as an
efficient check on the arbitrary will of the sovereign. Even the
despotic temper of Henry VIII. had had to reckon with his Council; it
had checked act after act of Mary; it played a great part in the reign
of Elizabeth. In the administrative tradition indeed of the last hundred
years the Council had become all-important to the Crown. It brought it
in contact with public opinion, less efficiently, no doubt, but more
constantly than the Parliament itself; it gave to its acts an imposing
sanction and assured to them a powerful support; above all it provided a
body which stood at every crisis between the nation and the monarchy,
which broke the shock of any conflict, and which could stand forth as
mediator, should conflict arise, without any loss of dignity on the part
of the sovereign. But to the practical advantages or to the traditional
weight of such a body James was utterly blind. His cleverness made him
impatient of its discussions; his conceit made him impatient of its
control; while the foreign traditions which he had brought with him from
a foreign land saw in the great nobles who composed it nothing but a
possible force which might overawe the Crown. One of his chief aims
therefore had been to lessen the influence of the Council. So long as
Cecil lived this was impossible, for the practical as well as the
conservative temper of Cecil would have shrunk from so violent a change.
But he was no sooner dead than James hastened to carry out his plans.
The lords of the Council found themselves of less and less account. They
were practically excluded from all part in the government; and the whole
management of affairs passed into the hands of the king or of the
dependent ministers who from this time became mere agents of the king's
will.

[Sidenote: The Favourites.]

Such a personal rule as this, concentrating as it does the whole
business of government in a single man, requires for its actual conduct
the entire devotion of