ABSTRACT
The Cabinet now definitely became, what it has since remained, an informal meeting of Privy Councillors who assembled to draw up an advice which was to be given to the King. It is natural to enquire whether all the members of the Cabinet regularly attended its meetings. It is also very probable that three or four Ministers sometimes met together before a Cabinet to decide on the line which they would take there. But such meetings, which did not result in the tendering of advice to the King, were not Cabinet meetings. During the earlier part of the reign we hear of ‘normal Cabinet Councillors’, members who never or scarcely ever attended meetings, and did not expect to be summoned. These ‘normal’ Councillors were in a different position from those earlier members of the Cabinet who attended, not regularly, but from time to time; the attendance of the latter at meetings, irregular though it was, might have some significance.
