A primer on policymaking and public administration during the second half of the 16th century. Many early-modern forms of government began taking root, though the more obvious milestones came with Stuart rule and the succeeding century’s transition to Parliamentary preeminence.

Government turned on the sovereign’s cultivated mystique. Most criticism was oral, at court, whereas the vast majority of administration was written. By economy of government, Elizabeth avoided bankruptcy; by moderate religious policy, she staved off civil war. But by the 1590s she was seen as highly conservative. The Privacy council, as a duty, followed Elizabeth around – she never went north of the midlands – undertaking an increasing workload because of private suits, the war with Spain, and the growing ties of London to local government.

Parliament was called during crises or for money, as in the 1583 Throckmorton plot, the Spanish war, or for anti-Catholic measures, though the gentry who filled Parliament expected to discuss broader issues. The Lords were more subservient, used by Elizabeth to influence the Commons via patronage. Not more than 2,500 were estimated to be active in politics, so patronage was quite manageable. Approximately 40 percent of this class held profitable office under the crown.

The main objective of government budget and expense was the defense of England against foreign powers, the preservation of law and order, and paternalism by statute. Legal administration was taking shape: the Star Chamber was for criminal justice, the Chancery for equity and to a lesser degree common law. One of the more prominent roles was the principal secretary, whose potential was exploited by the two Cecils, Lord Burghley and Walsingham, men who made the office. Essex, succeeding Leicester, lacked Burghley’s moderation, an important shortcoming in his bid to challenge the younger Cecil.

From 1572, Justices of the Peach levied a fixed tax for the upkeep of the poor. Distribution was ill-defined: another twenty years passed before the law separated those unable to work from those who were unemployed or vagrants (i.e., those who would not work). The 1563 statute of artificers sough to install high standards of workmanship, requiring apprenticeship. Taken together, these were not economic policy so much as a coherent, paternalistic view of managing social economy.

Locally, the era’s main features were the extended roles of the lords lieutenant and the introduction of (often informal) deputy lieutenants subject to lords; the expansion of the JPs, and the establishment of parish authorities. Lieutenancy was oriented around defense; often informal, the deputies were also charged with collection of forced loans to the crown, making it more prominent than patronage. The JPs displaced the medieval sheriff as local adjudicators of common law. The parish, which came into formal status during Elizabeth’s reign, was a site of factional struggle and the locus of poor law administration, the organization of roads, and of common law.

Elizabethan government was fundamentally by consent because it lacked institutional enforcement, contrasting with the command-and-control regime of faltering Spain. The era marks the beginning of transition from medieval to early modern, with control passing from the crown to its ministers and local administrators, from rudimentary numerology to more sophisticated statisticians. It also saw the beginnings of the Stuart era struggle between common law and prerogative courts (i.e., Star Chamber), and in the struggle between Essex and Cecil, the first failings of political morality that was to result in the corruption of Buckingham in the 1620s.