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This thesis explores the late-Henrican polity through the archive and perspective of William Paget, Henry VIII's secretary at the end of his reign. Paget's papers as secretary (1543-1547), that form the basis of the thesis, are an extensive, unique and relatively under-used source. From this starting-point Paget's role as secretary is explored and he is revealed as the personal servant of the king, whose natural environment was the court. As such he was an influential source of counsel and perhaps the key patronage-broker at court. In this context Paget also had a significant influence over the operation of the dry stamp at the end of the reign. Equally, Paget's role in shaping the function of the secretary and his relations with the recently formed privy council was of considerable importance, providing the template for later Tudor secretaries. Diplomacy in the uncertain world of the 1540s was one of Paget's primary concerns and his priorities can be seen as trying to provide security and stability for the realm. This is revealed not only in his 'Consultation' of August 1546 but also in his diplomacy with the French, the Schmalkaldic League and the Papacy. In this he sometimes found himself at odds with the king and leading a privy council united in a desire for peace. Politically Paget has traditionally been cast as an ambitious politique, the 'master of practices' and part of the earl of Hertford's reform party. Whilst acknowledging Paget's close relations with Hertford this thesis questions the factional interpretation of the last years of the reign and argues that the predominant concern of Paget and his fellow privy councillors was a peaceful succession in which unanimity rather than conflict was the key-note.

'William Cecil and the British succession crisis of the 1560s' reconsiders the nature of the early Elizabethan polity and Cecil's place in it. Conventional historiography maintains that as principal secretary Cecil was a moderate, cautious, and religiously neutral politician, content to follow Elizabeth I's direction in policy. More recently, Professors Patrick Collinson and John Guy have challenged this interpretation of the Elizabethan polity. Based on a thorough survey of the archives, my thesis explores Cecil's political creed in the 1560s. Three years of research have helped to paint a radically different picture of Cecil to the one traditionally represented: he was a councillor prepared to redefine his relationship with a monarch who refused to abide by the rules of monarchy and select a successor. The eight chapters of the thesis blend two complementary themes. First, that Elizabethan in the 1560s experienced a British succession crisis and not, as Professor Collinson has maintained, an English domestic succession crisis. And second, that the political situation in Britain and Europe - the determination of the continental catholic powers to use Mary Stuart's claim to the English throne as a weapon against protestant England - had a profound impact on the mentality of protestant Englishmen and debate in England. It persuaded Cecil to press for a pre-emptive strike against the French in Scotland (chapter two), which he defended by appealing to the feudal-imperial power of the English monarch; he used the same argument to justify the 'first trial' of Mary Stuart in 1568 (chapter seven). In this British context, Elizabeth's refusal to secure England's future led to parliamentary action in 1563 and a Cecil plan for interregnum by privy council in the event of Elizabeth's death, twenty-two years before its re-emergence in 1585 (chapter four). The régime could not find a diplomatic solution to the marriage between Mary and Lord Darnley in 1565 (chapter five): parliament debated the succession in 1566 and Cecil disobeyed the queen by pressing for a settlement (chapter six). Cecil's approach to the crisis was innovative, and his political creed is profoundly important to any assessment of politics in Elizabeth I's reign.