complication arises from the additional Committee of the Estates, appointed by James I in 1425.[84] The jurisdiction of the Council in matters of litigation was further defined by James IV, who, in an act of 1503, provided that "there be a council chosen by the King's Highness, which shall sit continually in Edinburgh or where the king makes residence or where he pleases, and decide all manner of summons and civil matters, complaints, and causes, daily, when they shall occur, so that there shall not be so great confusion of summons to call at the session"[85] of the Lords Auditors, or Judicial Committee of the Estates. We are probably right in connecting this council, chosen by the king, with the judicial powers of the Lords of Secret Council, and it may be an imitation of the English Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas. The special powers of this body came to an end with the establishment of the Court of Session. The constitution of the Secret Council, as an executive body, was the subject of legislation during the temporary rise of the importance of Parliament in the beginning of the reign of James IV.[86] In 1489 the King's Council was chosen in Parliament. Its numbers were increased, and an act was passed that this council should act as the advisers of the king till the next meeting of Parliament, and should be "responsable and accusable to the king and his Estates." They were appointed to deal, not only with justice, but also with all matters concerning the sovereign or the realm. A quorum consisted of six members, of whom the Chancellor must be one. But there is no second instance of a parliamentary choice of the members of the Secret Council, nor any indication of any control over them, and, as we have just seen, the members of the Secret Council sitting for judicial purpose were, on the creation of the committee in 1503, selected by the king alone. Thus matters continued till the minority of James V, when Council and Parliament alike became the object of the intrigues of the factions who were struggling for power, and the Estates were, as usual, powerless. In 1524 the Lords of the Articles chose the Lords of the Secret Council, and in 1528, when the Earl of Arran was in power, he obtained the election, in Parliament, of a Council to advise the king, and of a smaller Secret Council, from both of which the leader of the opposite party, Archbishop Beaton, was excluded. When the records of the Privy Council begin, in 1545, the council was a small body of advisers of the queen-mother and the regent, and there is no evidence that the Act of 1489 was ever really in operation. The Register shows that the council possessed very full executive powers, and it continued to carry on the real government of the country. Its numbers increased during the minority of James VI, the circumstances of which differed widely from those of any previous minority, and, in 1598, the king succeeded in reducing the number of its members to thirty-one, and