The royal clerks: Career patterns in the chancery and the privy seal office of Henry VI.

摘要

This study explores the effectiveness of bureaucracy during the reign of Henry VI of England (1422-1461). A reign, such as that of King Henry VI, which includes a long minority and a king's incapacity, provides a test case for the extent to which routine administration functions during a time of change at the highest levels of power. How does a bureaucracy operating in such circumstances fit into the evolution and the professionalization of English medieval bureaucracy? To answer this question, the study focused on 121 members of the chancery and the privy seal office during Henry VI's reign who held positions ranging in status from chancellors and keepers of the privy seal, through the master of chancery, chancery clerks and privy seal clerks, and spigurnels and chafewaxes concerned solely with the physical production of documents. The focus is on the personnel of the offices rather than the offices themselves in the belief that the quality of the royal clerk himself affected the level and the professionalism of administrative services offered.; The details collected on each individual have been assembled in a biographical pattern, including family background, regional associations, education, laicization, work conditions, length of service, duties and rewards. Particular attention is paid to those factors which enabled a clerk to get his job, keep his job, and profit from it. The result is a collective biography, a prosopography, which considers the effect of this group on Henry VI's administration.; The study concludes that the importance of regional and personal contacts, the completeness of bureaucratic record-keeping, the attractiveness of the rewards available to the clerks, the creation of a bureaucratic "family," and the increasing professionalism which these clerks brought to their jobs all contributed to a smoothly functioning bureaucracy which placed administration in the reign of Henry VI in the mainstream of the growth of professional English bureaucracy.