Great Britain. Foreign Office : Prior to the reign of Henry VIII, the King's secretary was his confidential servant, responsible for the custody of the signet and the business transacted under its seal. He was usually skilled in diplomacy and definitely influential in foreign affairs. Unlike other government officials, the duties of the secretaryship were not rigidly circumscribed by letters patent. When, in 1536, Thomas Cromwell succeeded to the office under Henry VIII, he revolutionized the secretaryship by extending his influence into virtually all functions of the internal administration of the state, while consolidating and strengthening the secretary's seat on the Privy Council.
In 1540, Cromwell relinquished the secretaryship to become Lord Privy Seal and two secretaries were appointed to fill his place, thereby establishing a tradition of dual incumbency which thereafter characterized the office. During the eighteenth century, a rough geographical division came into being which distinguished between the Southern Department which supervised the foreign affairs of France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, the Barbary States, Home and Irish Affairs, on the one side, and the Northern Department on the other which assumed responsibility for the Low Countries, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Russia and others. However, in spite of such divisions, it was common for each secretary to take an interest in the affairs of the other's department and, in the absence of one, for all business to be carried on by the other. This arrangement persisted until 1782 when certain administrative reforms led to the creation of the Foreign Office under the direction of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Initially, the staff of the Foreign Office was relatively small by modern standards, with the Secretary himself performing a wide variety of duties. Later in the nineteenth century, the demands of Victorian England required an expanding establishment. Its various departments may be divided more or less into political or non-political categories. The political departments conducted the diplomatic business of the office and at least initially maintained the pre-1782 division of southern and northern spheres or departments. These political departments were later subdivided or rearranged as circumstances dictated. The non-political departments comprised Consular, Commercial, Slave Trade and Africa, Chief Clerk, Treaty and Royal Letter, Library, Registry, and other miscellaneous departments.
The Foreign Office of Great Britain merged into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1968. It conducted British relations with nearly all foreign states between 1782 and 1968. Further information on the administrative history of the British Foreign Office is available in various sources including, for instance, the General Inventory, Volume 2, MG 11 to MG 16, of the Manuscript Division of the National Archives, printed in 1976 and the "Overseas Information Leaflet 14" of the Public Record Office.
