Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council - Other Councils

Other Councils

The Privy Council is one of the four principal councils of the Sovereign. The other three are the courts of law, the Commune Concilium (Common Council, or Parliament) and the Magnum Concilium (Great Council, or the assembly of all the Peers of the Realm). All are still in existence, or at least have never been formally abolished, but the Magnum Concilium has not been summoned since 1640 and was considered obsolete then.

Several other Privy Councils have advised the Sovereign. England and Scotland once had separate Privy Councils (the Privy Council of England and Privy Council of Scotland). The Acts of Union 1707, which united the two countries into the Kingdom of Great Britain, created a single body, and the Scots privy council was abolished on 1 May 1708. Ireland, on the other hand, continued to have a separate Privy Council even after the Act of Union 1800. The Privy Council of Ireland was abolished in 1922, when the southern part of Ireland separated from the United Kingdom; it was succeeded by the Privy Council of Northern Ireland, which became dormant after the suspension of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1972. No further appointments have been made since then, and only five appointees were still living as of April 2011.

Canada has had its own Privy Council—the Queen's Privy Council for Canada—since 1867. While the Canadian Privy Council is specifically "for Canada", the Privy Council discussed above is not "for the United Kingdom"; in order to clarify the ambiguity where necessary, the latter is referred to as the Imperial Privy Council. Equivalent organs of state in other Commonwealth realms, such as Australia and New Zealand, are called Executive Councils.