322 The Period of Constitution Making
was bound to be attacked. It was not mentioned by
name in the New Ordinances, but was clearly aimed at
in the provisions to restore the Exchequer, to limit the
royal right of prisage, not to disturb or delay the law of
the land by letters under privy seal, to appoint a com-
mission to hear complaints against the king's ministers,
and to remove the evil, i. e. household, counsellors. As
the reign progressed, the incompetence of both Edward II.
as leader of the court party and of Lancaster as leader of
the baronage led to a combination of some of the saner
elements from each; and the circumstances of the reign
begat much political planning of a reforming nature.
The Wardrobe had been the informal part of government,
free, untrammelled, the thing the king used in order to set
tap anew his power against Exchequer or Chancery. Now
the attempt was to make the informal part of the admin-
istration formal—at least in times of peace; to define the
Wardrobe, limit it, stereotype it, cut out its "abuses/'
keep it from playing a national rdle. The origin of an
independent keeper of the privy seal is to be found in the
provision of the New Ordinances appointing a suitable
clerk for that function who was to be responsible to
Parliament. Thus baronial influence started the process
by which the office of privy seal began to be a distinct
office in the Wardrobe and finally, with its staff, went out
of the Wardrobe to become an independent office of state.
Before the end of Edward IIL's reign, the Keeper of the
Privy Seal ranked next after the Chancellor and the
Treasurer among the great ministers of the Crown.
When the barons were getting control of the Wardrobe
under Edward II., they thought they were getting con-
trol of the essential administrative household. But the
old process of duplication began once again. What the
king proceeded to do, with considerable temporary suc-
cess, was to duplicate the Wardrobe machinery under an
old name, chamber; when the "reformed" Wardrobe
proved less useful to the king, the heart of the personal,
household organisation was reappearing a,s the Chamber,