The humanist counsellor -- The right-timing of counsel -- Machiavellian counsel -- Political prudence -- Late Tudor counsellors -- Reason of state and the counsellor -- Counsel, command and the Stuarts.
Summary:
"There was a deep-seated tension present in early modern English political thought: the 'paradox of counsel'.2 On the one hand, it was a long-standing requirement that monarchs receive counsel in order to legitimize their rule. On the other, this condition had the potential to undermine their authority if the monarch was required to act on the counsel given. In other words, if counsel is obligatory, it impinges upon sovereignty. If it is not, it then becomes irrelevant and futile. The working out of this essential problem defines much of the political thinking produced during the English 'monarchy of counsel', roughly from the end of the Wars of the Roses to the end of the English Civil War.3 It is the purpose of this book to document attempts to grapple with this fundamental problem: the necessarily challenging relationship between counsel and command"-- Provided by publisher.
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