A collaborative research approach was used to co-develop patient reported outcome measures or PROMS. One of our PROMS (SURE) assesses recovery from alcohol and other drug problems, and another (SUSS) assesses sleep problems. People using SURE and SUSS reported that they would like to complete them on their mobile phones and tablet computers so that they could record and refer back to their scores. This chapter describes the collaborative research process used to co-design a mobile application (app) called SURE Recovery, including the experiences of working with a diverse team of people with lived experience of addiction, researchers, app developers, and clinicians. The chapter also provides reflections on the challenges encountered and the lessons learned. Insights and advice for others are offered who might be interested in developing similar recovery-oriented apps in the future.

It was consistent with both humanism and the growth of political bureaucracy that humanisticallyeducated ‘new men’ took roles as counsellors in the courts of both early Tudor kings. This chapter explores the role of the counsellor in the work of three leading Renaissance humanists: Erasmus, More and Castiglione. Each accepted that good counsel should, to varying degrees, rule the prince. At the heart of their writings remains, however, a question about the efficacy of counsel in a hereditary monarchy. Often overlooked in this debate is importance of Seneca, who provides the basis for the discussion of the effectiveness of counsel in all three writers’ works, contrasting principles learned through instruction from precepts gathered through counsel.

By abandoning the focus on virtue and replacing it with a focus on preservation by means of occasional deception, the Machiavellian discourse throws suspicion on the role of the counsellor, and especially problematises his powerful role in relation to the monarch. This is especially the case in late Tudor England, ruled by monarchs perceived to be ‘weakened’ by their age or gender. Whereas the Henrician humanists had advocated counsellors who ruled their princes, the threat of Machiavellianism and weak monarchs renders such arguments threatening, and the counsellor falls under greater suspicion for his perceived usurpation of power. At the same time – and by contrast – there is a view that such weak monarchs require strong counsel to guide them. If this cannot come from individuals, as they are likely to be self-interested, then it must come different, ‘dis-interested’, sources. Whereas single private counsellors will be self-interested and thus ought not to rule a monarch, especially a female one, assemblies such as parliament will guide the prince according to the good of the commonwealth. For this reason, they need to have a share in the government. Command becomes ‘bridled’ by this source of counsel.

The Introduction sets out the ‘problem’ and ‘paradox’ of counsel in regard to the ‘monarchy of counsel’ in England between the end of the Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War. On the one hand, it was a long-standing requirement that monarchs receive counsel in order to legitimize their rule. On the other, this condition had the potential to undermine their authority if the monarch was required to act on the counsel given. In other words, if counsel is obligatory, it impinges upon sovereignty. If it is not, it then becomes irrelevant and futile. The Introduction also provides justification of the scope of the study by providing some classical and medieval background.

The introduction of Machiavellian political thought into the context of an England weakened by perceived monarchical instability – the reign of a minor and two women – opens a new chapter in the history of the English discourse of counsel. Machiavelli, in The Prince, offers a reversal of the traditional humanist model of counsel; the prince’s prudence is what determines the quality of the counsel he receives. Counsellors, given Machiavelli's pessimistic account of self-interest in The Prince, are not likely to demonstrate the civic spirit that the humanist took to be foundational to their image of the counsellor. Thus, they need to be held in suspicion, and cannot be given any real power.

Reason of state discourses see a renewed preoccupation with the divide between public and private. Even as there is an increased understanding of the need to keep state secrets, there are likewise increasing attempts to peer into hearts and minds of rulers. At the centre of this tension is the counsellor, whose position between public and private remains in contention. It is the emerging language of ‘interests’ which shows this tension most clearly. The counsellor is to advise according to the interest of the state, and not his own private interest. The more public a counsellor can be, the more likely he is to give advice in line with this state interest. Three problems emerge from this model, however. First, how can the counsellor be both secretive and public? Second, how can a private individual abandon his personal interests? And, third, a recurring issue, what if the counsellor knows the state’s interests better than the monarch: should his counsel then become command? These are the issues which come to the fore in the mid-seventeenth century, born of tensions apparent in the reason of state tradition.

In the Machiavellian literature on counsel, the distinction between private and public prudence becomes more pointed, leading to a distinction between a private sphere ruled by morality, and a public sphere in which moral flexibility, or even amoralism, is appropriate. As Machiavellian principles spread, such a view became accepted even amongst self-described anti-Machiavellians, especially in considering ‘policy’ and political deliberation. Counsellors must weigh both private and public expectations, offering advice that takes into account necessity and advantage politically but with an awareness of traditional expectations, embracing the skill of redescription when occasion, still in the tradition of kairos, calls for the employment of vice. Not only does this redefinition of prudence establish a separate sphere of morality (or lack thereof) for politics, it also introduces a language of contingency and exceptionalism, which becomes associated with the counsellor. In contrast with earlier writings on the topic, in this tradition the counsellor must mitigate not the tyranny of the prince, but of fortune.

The events of the Henrician Reformation served to put pressure on the problem of counsel and especially on its proposed timely solution. A second generation of English humanists took on this question, thinking more deeply about what the opportune moment was and how it related to the question of frank counsel. Thomas Starkey makes this issue central to his Dialogue Between Pole and Lupset, criticizing More’s approach, though he never resolves the problem fully. It is Thomas Elyot, in his works published in 1531 and 1533, who writes at length on the issue of right-timing and counsel, like Starkey coming to a critique of the ‘silence until kairos’ strategy espoused by Erasmus and More. These writers are also directly concerned with the relationship between counsel and command. In the context of the late 1520s and 1530s, theirs is a concern that counsel does not have enough authority over command, and that it will need to be supported or bolstered in some fashion to have its proper influence.