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This dissertation studies the office of the clerk of the Privy Council, including discussions of the office itself, and the nineteen men who held that office between its creation, in 1540, and 1603. The dual focus on the office and officers aims to provide greater understanding of both. Areas of study include the personal and professional backgrounds of the clerks, their careers, writings both political and personal, additional offices held and both social and financial concerns. This covers areas as diverse as knighthoods, land grants, election to the House of Commons, political treatises and university education. Additionally, the duties of the office, both standard and extraordinary, are discussed, as well as details regarding the creation and handling of the clerk’s primary concern, the Privy Council register. This includes details regarding signatures, meetings with ambassadors, examination of prisoners, Council meetings, salaries and fees, and attendance rotation. Ties between the clerks and clerkship and the Privy Council and its members are discussed throughout, as well as the role of patronage, education, foreign experience and personal motives. This study aims to provide a greater understanding of the clerks of the Privy Council and their office, knowing that one cannot be fully understood without the other.

English political thought from 1528 to 1558 was dominated by the question of obedience to civil authority. English Lutherans stressed the duty of obedience to the prince as the norm; however, if he commands that which is immoral one should passively disobey. The defenders of Henrician royal supremacy, while attempting to strengthen the power of the crown, used similar arguments to stress unquestioned obedience to the king. During Edward VI's reign this teaching of obedience was popularized from the pulpit. However, with the accession of Mary a new view regarding obedience gained prominence. Several important Marian exiles contended that the principle that God is to be obeyed rather than man entails the duty of Christians to resist idolatrous and evil rulers for the sake of the true Protestant religion.

This thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that the W.S.P.U.'s strategy choices were unimportant in regard to winning women's suffrage. It confirms the hypothesis that the long-range strategy of the W.S.P.U. was to escalate coercion until the Government exhausted its powers of opposition and conceded, but to interrupt this strategy whenever favorable bargaining opportunities with the Government and third parties developed. In addition to filling an apparent research gap by systematically analyzing these choices, this thesis synthesizes and tests several piecemeal theories of social movements within the general framework of the natural history approach. The analysis utilizes data drawn from movement leaders' autobiographies, documentary accounts of the militant movement, and the standard histories of the entire British women's suffrage movement. Additionally, extensive use is made of contemporary periodicals and miscellaneous works on related movements.

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