THE KING AND HIS PARLIAMENT.
In the closing days of July, 1529, a courier came posting from Rome
with despatches announcing the alliance of Clement and Charles, and
the revocation to the Papal Court of the suit between Henry VIII. and
the Emperor's aunt. Henry replied with no idle threats or empty
reproaches, but his retort was none the less effective. On the 9th of
August[703] writs were issued from Chancery summoning that Parliament
which met on the 3rd of November and did not separate till the last
link in the chain which bound England to Rome was sundered, and the
country was fairly launched on that sixty years' struggle which the
defeat of the Spanish Armada concluded.[704] The step might well seem
a desperate hazard. The last Parliament had broken up in (p. 250)
discontent; it had been followed by open revolt in various shires;
while from others there had since then come demands for the repayment
of the loan, which Henry was in no position to grant. Francis and
Charles, on whose mutual enmity England's safety largely depended, had
made their peace at Cambrai; and the Emperor was free to foment
disaffection in Ireland and to instigate Scotland to war. His chancellor
was boasting that the imperialists could, if they would, drive Henry
from his kingdom within three months,[705] and he based his hopes on
revolt among Henry's own subjects. The divorce had been from the
beginning, and remained to the end, a stumbling-block to the people.
Catherine received ovations wherever she went, while the utmost
efforts of the King could scarcely protect Anne Boleyn from popular
insult. The people were moved, not only by a creditable feeling that
Henry's first wife was an injured woman, but by the fear lest a breach
with Charles should destroy their trade in wool, on which, said the
imperial ambassador, half the realm depended for sustenance.[706]
[Footnote 703: Rymer, _Foedera_, xiv., 302.]
[Footnote 704: It has been alleged that the
immediate object of this Parliament was to relieve
the King from the necessity of repaying the loan
(_D.N.B._, xxvi., 83); and much scorn has been
poured on the notion that it had any important
purpose (_L. and P._, iv., Introd., p. dcxlvii.).
Brewer even denies its hostility to the Church on
the ground that it was composed largely of lawyers,
and "lawyers are not in general enemies to things
established; they are not inimical to the clergy".
Yet the law element was certainly stronger in the
Parliaments of Charles I. than in that of 1529;
were they not hostile to "things established" and
"inimical to the clergy"? Contemporaries had a
different opinion of the purpose of the Parliament
of 1529. "It is intended," wrote Du Bellay on the
23rd of August, three months before Parliament met,
"to hold a Parliament here this winter and act by
their own absolute power, in default of justice
being administered by the Pope in this divorce"
(_ibid._, iv., 5862; _cf._ iv., 6011, 6019, 6307);
"nothing else," wrote a Florentine in December,
1530, "is thought of in that island every day
except of arranging affairs in such a way that they
do no longer be in want of the Pope, neither for
filling vacancies in the Church, nor for any other
purpose" (_ibid._, iv., 6774).]
[Footnote 705: _L. and P._, iv., 4909, 4911; _cf._
5177, 5501.]
[Footnote 706: _Ibid._, vi., 1528.]
To summon a Parliament at such a conjuncture seemed to be courting
certain ruin. In reality, it was the first and most striking instance
of the audacity and insight which were to enable Henry to guide the
whirlwind and direct the storm of the last eighteen years of his (p. 251)
reign. Clement had put in his hands the weapon with which he secured
his divorce and broke the bonds of Rome. "If," wrote Wolsey a day or
two before the news of the revocation arrived, "the King be cited to
appear at Rome in person or by proxy, and his prerogative be interfered
with, none of his subjects will tolerate it. If he appears in Italy,
it will be at the head of a formidable army."[707] A sympathiser with
Catherine expressed his resentment at his King being summoned to plead
as a party in his own realm before the legatine Court;[708] and it has
even been suggested that those proceedings were designed to irritate
popular feeling against the Roman jurisdiction. Far more offensive was
it to national prejudice, that England's king should be cited to
appear before a court in a distant land, dominated by the arms of a
foreign prince. Nothing did more to alienate men's minds from the
Papacy. Henry would never have been able to obtain his divorce on its
merits as they appeared to his people. But now the divorce became
closely interwoven with another and a wider question, the papal
jurisdiction in England; and on that question Henry carried with him
the good wishes of the vast bulk of the laity. There were few Englishmen
who would not resent the petition presented to the Pope in 1529 by
Charles V. and Ferdinand that the English Parliament should be forbidden
to discuss the question of divorce.[709] By summoning Parliament,
Henry opened the floodgates of anti-papal and anti-sacerdotal feelings
which Wolsey had long kept shut; and the unpopular divorce became (p. 252)
merely a cross-current in the main stream which flowed in Henry's favour.
[Footnote 707: _L. and P._, iv., 5797.]
[Footnote 708: Cavendish, p. 210; _L. and P._, iv.,
Introd., p. dv.]
[Footnote 709: _Sp. Cal._, iii., 979.]
It was thus with some confidence that Henry appealed from the Pope to
his people. He could do so all the more surely, if, as is alleged,
there was no freedom of election, and if the House of Commons was
packed with royal nominees.[710] But these assertions may be dismissed
as gross exaggerations. The election of county members was marked by
unmistakable signs of genuine popular liberty. There was often a riot,
and sometimes a secret canvass among freeholders to promote or defeat
a particular candidate.[711] In 1547 the council ventured to recommend
a minister to the freeholders of Kent. The electors objected; the
council reprimanded the sheriff for representing its recommendation as
a command; it protested that it never dreamt of depriving the shire of
its "liberty of election," but "would take it thankfully" if the
electors would give their voices to the ministerial candidate. The
electors were not to be soothed by soft words, and that Government
candidate had to find another seat.[712] In the boroughs there was
every variety of franchise. In some it was almost democratic; in
others elections were in the hands of one or two voters. In the city
of London the election for the Parliament of 1529 was held on (p. 253)
5th October, _immensa communitate tunc presente_, in the Guildhall;
there is no hint of royal interference, the election being conducted
in the customary way, namely, two candidates were nominated by the
mayor and aldermen, and two by the citizens.[713] The general tendency
had for more than a century, however, been towards close corporations
in whose hands the parliamentary franchise was generally vested, and
consequently towards restricting the basis of popular representation.
The narrower that basis became, the greater the facilities it afforded
for external influence. In many boroughs elections were largely
determined by recommendations from neighbouring magnates, territorial
or official.[714] At Gatton the lords of the manor nominated the
members for Parliament, and the formal election was merely a matter of
drawing up an indenture between Sir Roger Copley and the sheriff,[715]
and the Bishop of Winchester was wont to select representatives for
more than one borough within the bounds of his diocese.[716] The Duke
of Norfolk claimed to be able to return ten members in Sussex and
Surrey alone.[717]
[Footnote 710: "The choice of the electors," says
Brewer (_L. and P._, iv., Introd., p. dcxlv.), "was
still determined by the King or his powerful
ministers with as much certainty and assurance as
that of the sheriffs."]
[Footnote 711: _L. and P._, i., 792, vii., 1178,
where mention is made of "secret labour" among the
freeholders of Warwickshire for the bye-election on
Sir E. Ferrers' death in 1534; and x., 1063, where
there is described a hotly contested election
between the candidate of the gentry of Shropshire
and the candidate of the townsfolk of Shrewsbury.]
[Footnote 712: _Acts of the Privy Council_,
1547-50, pp. 516, 518, 519; _England under
Protector Somerset_, pp. 71, 72.]
[Footnote 713: _Narratives of the Reformation_,
Camden Soc., pp. 295, 296.]
[Footnote 714: _Cf._ Duchess of Norfolk's letter to
John Paston, 8th June, 1455 (_Paston Letters_, ed.
1900, i., 337), and in 1586 Sir Henry Bagnal asked
the Earl of Rutland if he had a seat to spare in
Parliament as Bagnal was anxious "for his
learning's sake to be made a Parliament man"
(_D.N.B._, Suppl., i., 96).]
[Footnote 715: _L. and P._, xiv., 645; _cf._
Hallam, 1884, iii., 44-45.]
[Footnote 716: Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 54. There
are some illustrations and general remarks on
Henry's relations with Parliament in Porritt's
_Unreformed House of Commons_, 2 vols., 1903.]
[Footnote 717: At Reigate, says the Duke, "I doubt
whether any burgesses be there or not" (_L. and
P._, x., 816); and apparently there were none at
Gatton.]
But these nominations were not royal, and there is no reason (p. 254)
to suppose that the nominees were any more likely to be subservient to
the Crown than freely elected members unless the local magnate happened
to be a royal minister. Their views depended on those of their patrons,
who might be opposed to the Court; and, in 1539, Cromwell's agents
were considering the advisability of setting up Crown candidates
against those of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.[718] The curious
letter to Cromwell in 1529,[719] upon which is based the theory that
the House of Commons consisted of royal nominees, is singularly
inconclusive. Cromwell sought Henry's permission to serve in
Parliament for two reasons; firstly, he was still a servant of the
obnoxious and fallen Cardinal; secondly, he was seeking to transfer
himself to Henry's service, and thought he might be useful to the King
in the House of Commons. If Henry accepted his offer, Cromwell was to
be nominated for Oxford; if he were not elected there, he was to be
put up for one of the boroughs in the diocese of Winchester, then
vacant through Wolsey's resignation. Even with the King's assent, his
election at Oxford was not regarded as certain; and, as a matter of
fact, Cromwell sat neither for Oxford, nor for any constituency (p. 255)
in the diocese of Winchester, but for the borough of Taunton.[720]
Crown influence could only make itself effectively felt in the limited
number of royal boroughs; and the attempts to increase that influence
by the creation of constituencies susceptible to royal influence were
all subsequent in date to 1529. The returns of members of Parliament
are not extant from 1477 to 1529, but a comparison of the respective
number of constituencies in those two years reveals only six in 1529
which had not sent members to a previous Parliament; and almost if not
all of these six owed their representation to their increasing
population and importance, and not to any desire to pack the House of
Commons. Indeed, as a method of enforcing the royal will upon
Parliament, the creation of half a dozen boroughs was both futile and
unnecessary. So small a number of votes was useless, except in the
case of a close division of well-drilled parties, of which there is no
trace in the Parliaments of Henry VIII.[721] The House of Commons
acted as a whole, and not in two sections. "The sense of the House"
was more apparent in its decisions then than it is to-day. Actual
divisions were rare; either a proposal commended itself to the House,
or it did not; and in both cases the question was usually determined
without a vote.
[Footnote 718: This seems to have been the object
of Southampton's tour through the constituencies of
Surrey and Hampshire in March, 1539; with one of
Gardiner's pocket-boroughs he did not meddle,
because the lord chamberlain was the Bishop's
steward there (_L. and P._, xiv., i., 520). There
were some royal nominees in the House of Commons.
In 1523 the members for Cumberland were nominated
by the Crown (_ibid._, iii., 2931); at Calais the
lord-deputy and council elected one of the two
burgesses and the mayor and burgesses the other
(_ibid._, x., 736). Calais and the Scottish Borders
were of course exceptionally under Crown influence,
but this curious practice may have been observed in
some other cities and boroughs; in 1534, for
instance, the King was to nominate to one of the
two vacancies at Worcester (_ibid._, vii., 56).]
[Footnote 719: _Ibid._, iv., App. 238.]
[Footnote 720: _Official Return of Members of
Parliament_, i., 370.]
[Footnote 721: Occasionally there were divisions,
_e.g._, in 1523 when the court party voted a
subsidy of 2_s._ in the pound; but this was only
half the sum demanded by Wolsey (Hall, pp. 656,
657, Ellis, _Orig. Letters_, I., i., 220, 221).]
The creation of boroughs was also unnecessary. Parliaments packed
themselves quite well enough to suit Henry's purpose, without (p. 256)
any interference on his part. The limiting of the county franchise to
forty-shilling (_i.e._, thirty pounds in modern currency) freeholders,
and the dying away of democratic feeling in the towns, left
parliamentary representation mainly in the hands of the landed gentry
and of the prosperous commercial classes; and from them the Tudors
derived their most effective support. There was discontent in
abundance during Tudor times, but it was social and economic, and not
as a rule political. It was directed against the enclosers of common
lands; against the agricultural capitalists, who bought up farms,
evicted the tenants, and converted their holdings to pasture; against
the large traders in towns who monopolised commerce at the expense of
their poorer competitors. It was concerned, not with the one tyrant on
the throne, but with the thousand petty tyrants of the villages and
towns, against whom the poorer commons looked to their King for
protection. Of this discontent Parliament could not be the focus, for
members of Parliament were themselves the offenders. "It is hard,"
wrote a contemporary radical, "to have these ills redressed by
Parliament, because it pricketh them chiefly which be chosen to be
burgesses.... Would to God they would leave their old accustomed
choosing of burgesses! For whom do they choose but such as be rich or
bear some office in the country, many times such as be boasters and
braggers? Such have they ever hitherto chosen; be he never so very a
fool, drunkard, extortioner, adulterer, never so covetous and crafty a
person, yet, if he be rich, bear any office, if he be a jolly cracker
and bragger in the country, he must be a burgess of Parliament. Alas,
how can any such study, or give any godly counsel for the (p. 257)
commonwealth?"[722] This passage gives no support to the theory that
members of Parliament were nothing but royal nominees. If the
constituencies themselves were bent on electing "such as bare office
in the country," there was no call for the King's intervention; and
the rich merchants and others, of whom complaint is made, were almost
as much to the royal taste as were the officials themselves.
[Footnote 722: Brinkelow, _Complaynt of Roderik
Mors_ (Early English Text Society), pp. 12, 13; for
other evidence of the attitude of Parliament
towards social grievances, see John Hales's letter
to Somerset in _Lansdowne MS._, 238; Crowley's
_Works_ (Early English Text Society), _passim_;
Latimer, _Sermons_, p. 247.]
For the time being, in fact, the interests of the King and of the lay
middle classes coincided, both in secular and ecclesiastical affairs.
Commercial classes are generally averse from war, at least from war
waged within their own borders, from which they can extract no profit.
They had every inducement to support Henry's Government against the
only alternative, anarchy. In ecclesiastical politics they, as well as
the King, had their grievances against the Church. Both thought the
clergy too rich, and that ecclesiastical revenues could be put to
better uses in secular hands. Community of interests produced harmony
of action; and a century and a half was to pass before Parliament
again met so often, or sat so long, as it did during the latter half
of Henry's reign. From 1509 to 1515 there had been on an average a
parliamentary session once a year,[723] and in February, 1512, Warham,
as Lord Chancellor, had in opening the session discoursed on the (p. 258)
necessity of frequent Parliaments.[724] Then there supervened the
ecclesiastical despotism of Wolsey, who tried, like Charles I., to
rule without Parliament, and with the same fatal result to himself;
but, from Wolsey's fall till Henry's death, there was seldom a year
without a parliamentary session. Tyrants have often gone about to
break Parliaments, and in the end Parliaments have generally broken
them. Henry was not of the number; he never went about to break
Parliament. He found it far too useful, and he used it. He would have
been as reluctant to break Parliament as Ulysses the bow which he
alone could bend.
[Footnote 723: The first Parliament of the reign
met in January, 1510, the second in February, 1512.
It had a second session, November-December of the
same year (_L. and P._, i., 3502). A third
Parliament met for its first session on 23rd
January, 1514, for its second on 5th February,
1515, and for its third on 12th November, 1515
(_ibid._, i., 5616, 5725, ii., 1130). It was this
last of which Wolsey urged "the more speedy
dissolution"; then for fourteen years there was
only one Parliament, that of 1523. These dates
illustrate the antagonism between Wolsey and
Parliament and show how natural it was that Wolsey
should fall in 1529, and that his fall should
coincide with the revival of Parliament.]
No monarch, in fact, was ever a more zealous champion of parliamentary
privileges, a more scrupulous observer of parliamentary forms, or a
more original pioneer of sound constitutional doctrine. In 1543 he
first enunciated the constitutional principle that sovereignty is
vested in the "King in Parliament". "We," he declared to the Commons,
"at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of
Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and
knit together in one body politic, so as whatsoever offence or injury
during that time is offered to the meanest member of the House, is to
be judged as done against our person and the whole Court of
Parliament."[725] He was careful to observe himself the deference to
parliamentary privilege which he exacted from others. It is no (p. 259)
strange aberration from the general tenor of his rule that in 1512
by Strode's case[726] the freedom of speech of members of Parliament
was established, and their freedom from arrest by Ferrers' case in
1543. In 1515 Convocation had enviously petitioned for the same
liberty of speech as was enjoyed in Parliament, where members might
even attack the law of the land and not be called in question
therefor.[727] "I am," writes Bishop Gardiner, in 1547, apologising
for the length of a letter, "like one of the Commons' house, that,
when I am in my tale, think I should have liberty to make an
end;"[728] and again he refers to a speech he made during Henry's
reign "in the Parliament house, _where was free speech without
danger_".[729] Wolsey had raised a storm in 1523 by trying to browbeat
the House of Commons. Henry never erred in that respect. In 1532 a
member moved that Henry should take back Catherine to wife.[730]
Nothing could have touched the King on a tenderer spot. Charles I.,
for a less offence, would have gone to the House to arrest the (p. 260)
offender. All Henry did was to argue the point of his marriage with
the Speaker and a deputation from the Commons; no proceedings whatever
were taken against the member himself. In 1529 John Petit, one of the
members for London, opposed the bill releasing Henry from his
obligation to repay the loan; the only result apparently was to
increase Petit's repute in the eyes of the King, who "would ask in
Parliament time if Petit were on his side".[731] There is, in fact,
nothing to show that Henry VIII. intimidated his Commons at any time,
or that he packed the Parliament of 1529. Systematic interference in
elections was a later expedient devised by Thomas Cromwell. It was
apparently tried during the bye-elections of 1534, and at the general
elections of 1536[732] and 1539. Cromwell then endeavoured to secure
a majority in favour of himself and his own particular policy (p. 261)
against the reactionary party in the council. His schemes had created
a division among the laity, and rendered necessary recourse to
political methods of which there was no need, so long as the laity
remained united against the Church. Nor is it without significance
that its adoption was shortly followed by Cromwell's fall. Henry did
not approve of ministers who sought to make a party for themselves.
The packing of Parliaments has in fact been generally the death-bed
expedient of a moribund Government. The Stuarts had their "Undertakers,"
and the only Parliament of Tudor times which consisted mainly of
Government nominees was that gathered by Northumberland on the eve of
his fall in March, 1553; and that that body was exceptionally
constituted is obvious from Renard's inquiry in August, 1553, as to
whether Charles V. would advise his cousin, Queen Mary, to summon a
general Parliament or merely an assembly of "notables" after the
manner introduced by Northumberland.
[Footnote 724: _L. and P._, i., 2082.]
[Footnote 725: Holinshed, _Chronicles_, iii., 956.]
[Footnote 726: Hallam, _Const. Hist._, ii., 4.]
[Footnote 727: _L. and P._, ii., 1314. In some
respects the House of Commons appears to have
exercised unconstitutional powers, _e.g._, in 1529
one Thomas Bradshaw, a cleric, was indicted for
having conspired to poison members of Sir James
Worsley's household, and on 27th February, 1531,
Henry VIII. orders Lady Worsley not to trouble
Bradshaw any more, "as the House of Commons has
decided that he is not culpable" (_ibid._, iv.,
6293; v., 117; _cf._ the case of John Wolf and his
wife, _ibid._, vi., 742; vii., _passim_). The claim
to criminal jurisdiction which the House of Commons
asserted in Floyd's case (1621) seems in fact to
have been admitted by Henry VIII.; compare the
frequent use of acts of attainder.]
[Footnote 728: Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 33.]
[Footnote 729: _Ibid._, vi., 43.]
[Footnote 730: In the House of Lords in 1531 the
Bishops of St. Asaph and of Bath with a similar
immunity attacked the defence of Henry's divorce
policy made by the Bishops of Lincoln and London
(_L. and P._, v., 171).]
[Footnote 731: _Narratives of the Reformation_
(Camden Soc.), p. 25.]
[Footnote 732: Hence the complaints of the northern
rebels late in that year (_L. and P._, xi., 1143,
1182 [15], 1244, 1246); these are so to speak the
election petitions of the defeated party; the chief
complaint is that non-residents were chosen who
knew little about the needs of their constituents,
and they made the advanced demand that all King's
servants or pensioners be excluded.
The most striking instance of interference in
elections is Cromwell's letter to the citizens of
Canterbury, written on 18th May, 1536, and first
printed in Merriman's _Cromwell_, 1902, ii., 13; he
there requires the electors to annul an election
they had made in defiance of previous letters, and
return as members Robert Derknall (a member of the
royal household, _L. and P._, xv., pp. 563-5) and
John Brydges, M.P. for Canterbury in 1529-36,
instead of the two who had been unanimously chosen
by eighty electors on 11th May (_L. and P._, x.,
852). The Mayor thereupon assembled ninety-seven
citizens who "freely with one voice and without any
contradiction elected the aforesaid" (_ibid._, x.,
929). These very letters show that electors did
exercise a vote, and the fact that from 1534 to
1539 we find traces of pressure being put upon
them, affords some presumption that before the rise
of Cromwell, when we find no such traces no such
pressure was exerted. The most striking exception
must not be taken as the rule. See p. 317 _n._]
But, while Parliament was neither packed nor terrorised to any great
extent, the harmony which prevailed between it and the King has
naturally led to the charge of servility. Insomuch as it was servile
at all, Parliament faithfully represented its constituents; but the
mere coincidence between the wishes of Henry and those of Parliament
is no proof of servility.[733] That accusation can only be (p. 262)
substantiated by showing that Parliament did, not what it wanted, but
what it did not want, out of deference to Henry. And that has never
been proved. It has never been shown that the nation resented the
statutes giving Henry's proclamations the force of laws, enabling him
to settle the succession by will, or any of the other acts usually
adduced to prove the subservience of Parliament. When Henry was dead,
Protector Somerset secured the repeal of most of these laws, but he
lost his head for his pains. There is, indeed, no escape from the
conclusion that the English people then approved of a dictatorship,
and that Parliament was acting deliberately and voluntarily when it
made Henry dictator. It made him dictator because it felt that he
would do what it wanted, and better with, than without, extraordinary
powers. The fact that Parliament rejected some of Henry's measures is
strong presumption that it could have rejected more, had it been so
minded. No projects were more dear to Henry's heart than the statutes
of Wills and of Uses, yet both were rejected twice at least in the
Parliament of 1529-36.[734]
[Footnote 733: "Parliament," says Brewer,
"faithfully reflected the King's wishes." It is
equally true to say that the King reflected the
wishes of Parliament; and the accusation of
servility is based on the assumption that
Parliament must either be in chronic opposition to
the Crown or servile. One of Brewer's reasons for
Henry's power is that he "required no grants of
money"! (_L. and P._, iv., Introd., p. dcxlv.).]
[Footnote 734: "Henry," writes Chapuys in 1532,
"has been trying to obtain from Parliament the
grant of a third of the feudal property of deceased
lords, but as yet has got nothing" (_L. and P._,
v., 805). Various other instances are mentioned in
the following pages, and they could doubtless be
multiplied if the Journals of the House of Commons
were extant for this period.]
The general harmony between King and Parliament was based on a
fundamental similarity of interests; the harmony in detail was worked
out, not by the forcible exertion of Henry's will, but by his careful
and skilful manipulation of both Houses. No one was ever a greater
adept in the management of the House of Commons, which is easy (p. 263)
to humour but hard to drive. Parliaments are jealous bodies, but
they are generally pleased with attentions; and Henry VIII. was very
assiduous in the attentions he paid to his lay Lords and Commons. From
1529 he suffered no intermediary to come between Parliament and
himself. Cromwell was more and more employed by the King,[735] but
only in subordinate matters, and when important questions were at
issue Henry managed the business himself. He constantly visited both
Houses and remained within their precincts for hours at a time,[736]
watching every move in the game and taking note of every symptom of
parliamentary feeling. He sent no royal commands to his faithful
Commons; in this respect he was less arbitrary than his daughter,
Queen Elizabeth. He submitted points for their consideration, argued
with them, and frankly gave his reasons. It was always done, of course,
with a magnificent air of royal condescension, but with such grace (p. 264)
as to carry the conviction that he was really pleased to condescend
and to take counsel with his subjects, and that he did so because he
trusted his Parliament, and expected his Parliament to place an equal
confidence in him. Henry VIII. acted more as the leader of both Houses
than as a King; and, like modern parliamentary leaders, he demanded
the bulk of their time for measures which he himself proposed.
[Footnote 735: Cromwell used to report to the King
on the feeling of Parliament; thus in 1534 (_L. and
P._, vii., 51) he tells Henry how far members were
willing to go in the creation of fresh treasons,
"they be contented that deed and writing shall be
treason," but words were to be only misprision;
they refused to include an heir's rebellion or
disobedience in the bill, "as rebellion is already
treason and disobedience is no cause of forfeiture
of inheritance," and they thought "that the King of
Scots should in no wise be named" (there is in the
Record Office a draft of the Treasons Bill of 1534
materially differing from the Act as passed.
Therefore either the bill did not originate with
the Government and was modified under Government
pressure, or it did originate with the Government
and was modified under parliamentary pressure).
This is how Henry's legislation was evolved; there
is no foundation for the assertion that Parliament
merely registered the King's edicts.]
[Footnote 736: _E.g._, _L. and P._, v., 120. At other
times Parliament visited him. "On Thursday last,"
writes one on 8th March, 1534, "the whole
Parliament were with the King at York Place for
three hours" (_ibid._, vii., 304).]
The fact that the legislation of Henry's reign was initiated almost
entirely by Government is not, however, a conclusive proof of the
servility of Parliament. For, though it may have been the theory that
Parliament existed to pass laws of its own conception, such has never
been the practice, except when there has been chronic opposition
between the executive and the legislature. Parliament has generally
been the instrument of Government, a condition essential to strong and
successful administration; and it is still summoned mainly to discuss
such measures as the executive thinks fit to lay before it. Certainly
the proportion of Government bills to other measures passed in Henry's
reign was less than it is to-day. A private member's bill then stood
more chance of becoming law, and a Government bill ran greater risks
of being rejected. That, of course, is not the whole truth. One of the
reasons why Henry's House of Commons felt at liberty to reject bills
proposed by the King, was that such rejection did not involve the fall
of a Government which on other grounds the House wished to support. It
did not even entail a dissolution. Not that general elections possessed
any terrors for sixteenth-century Parliaments. A seat in the House of
Commons was not considered a very great prize. The classes, from (p. 265)
which its members were drawn, were much more bent on the pursuit of
their own private fortunes than on participation in public affairs.
Their membership was not seldom a burden,[737] and the long sessions
of the Reformation Parliament constituted an especial grievance. One
member complained that those sessions cost him equivalent to about
five hundred pounds over and above the wages paid him by his
constituents.[738] Leave to go home was often requested, and the
imperial ambassador records that Henry, with characteristic craft,
granted such licences to hostile members, but refused them to his own
supporters.[739] That was a legitimate parliamentary stratagem. It was
not Henry's fault if members preferred their private concerns to the
interests of Catherine of Aragon or to the liberties of the Catholic
Church.
[Footnote 737: Some at least of the royal
nominations to Parliament were due to the fact that
nothing less than a royal command could produce a
representative at all.]
[Footnote 738: _L. and P._, vii., 302.]
[Footnote 739: _Ibid._, v., 120.]
Henry's greatest advantage lay, however, in a circumstance which
constitutes the chief real difference between the Parliaments of the
sixteenth century and those of to-day. His members of Parliament were
representatives rather than delegates. They were elected as fit and
proper persons to decide upon such questions as should be submitted to
them in the Parliament House, and not merely as fit and proper persons
to register decisions already reached by their constituents. Although
they were in the habit of rendering to their constituents an account
of their proceedings at the close of each session,[740] and although
the fact that they depended upon their constituencies for their wages
prevented their acting in opposition to their constituents' (p. 266)
wishes, they received no precise instructions. They went to Parliament
unfettered by definite pledges. They were thus more susceptible, not
only to pressure, but also to argument; and it is possible that in
those days votes were sometimes affected by speeches. The action of
members was determined, not by previous engagements or party discipline,
but by their view of the merits and necessities of the case before
them. Into that view extraneous circumstances, such as fear of the
King, might to a certain extent intrude; but such evidence as is
available points decisively to the conclusion that co-operation
between the King and Parliament was secured, partly by Parliament
doing what Henry wanted, and partly by Henry doing what Parliament
wanted. Parliament did not always do as the King desired, nor did the
King's actions always commend themselves to Parliament. Most of the
measures of the Reformation Parliament were matters of give and take.
It was due to Henry's skill, and to the circumstances of the time that
the King's taking was always to his own profit, and his giving at the
expense of the clergy. He secured the support of the Commons for his
own particular ends by promising the redress of their grievances
against the bishops and priests. It is said that he instituted the
famous petitions urged against the clergy in 1532, and it is hinted
that the abuses, of which those petitions complained, had no real
existence. No doubt Henry encouraged the Commons' complaints; he had
every reason to do so, but he did not invent the abuses. If the
Commons did not feel the grievances, the King's promise to redress
them would be no inducement to Parliament to comply with the royal
demands. The hostility of the laity to the clergy, arising out (p. 267)
of these grievances, was in fact the lever with which Henry overthrew
the papal authority, and the basis upon which he built his own
supremacy over the Church.
[Footnote 740: _Cf. ibid._, iv., App. 1.]
This anti-ecclesiastical bias on the part of the laity was the
dominant factor in the Reformation under Henry VIII. But the word in
its modern sense is scarcely applicable to the ecclesiastical policy
of that King. Its common acceptation implies a purification of
doctrine, but it is doubtful whether any idea of interfering with
dogma ever crossed the minds of the monarchs, who, for more than a
generation, had been proclaiming the need for a reformation. Their
proposal was to reform the practice of the clergy; and the method they
favoured most was the abolition of clerical privileges and the
appropriation of ecclesiastical property. The Reformation in England,
so far as it was carried by Henry VIII., was, indeed, neither more nor
less than a violent self-assertion of the laity against the immunities
which the Church had herself enjoyed, and the restraints which she
imposed upon others. It was not primarily a breach between the Church
of England and the Roman communion, a repudiation on the part of
English ecclesiastics of a harassing papal yoke; for it is fairly
obvious that under Henry VIII. the Church took no measures against
Rome that were not forced on it by the State. It was not till the
reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth that the Church accorded a consent,
based on conviction, to a settlement originally extorted by force. The
Reformation was rather a final assertion by the State of its authority
over the Church in England. The breach with the Roman Church, the
repudiation of papal influence in English ecclesiastical affairs, was
not a spontaneous clerical movement; it was the effect of the (p. 268)
subjection of the Church to the national temporal power. The Church in
England had hitherto been a semi-independent part of the political
community. It was semi-national, semi-universal; it owed one sort of
fealty to the universal Pope, and another to the national King. The
rising spirit of nationality could brook no divided allegiance; and
the universal gave way to the national idea. There was to be no
_imperium in imperio_, but "one body politic,"[741] with one Supreme
Head. Henry VIII. is reported by Chapuys as saying that he was King,
Emperor and Pope, all in one, so far as England was concerned.[742]
The Church was to be nationalised; it was to compromise its universal
character, and to become the Church _of_ England, rather than a branch
of the Church universal _in_ England.
[Footnote 741: The phrase occurs in Cromwell's
draft bill for the submission of Convocation (_L.
and P._, v., 721).]
[Footnote 742: _Ibid._, v., 361. This was in
reference to Henry's refusal to allow a visitation
of the Cistercian monasteries, of which Chapuys
thought they stood in great need (31st July,
1531).]
The revolution was inevitably effected through the action of the State
rather than that of the Church. The Church, which, like religion
itself, is in essence universal and not national, regarded with
abhorrence the prospect of being narrowed and debased to serve
political ends. The Church in England had moreover no means and no
weapons wherewith to effect an internal reformation independent of the
Papacy; as well might the Court of King's Bench endeavour to reform
itself without the authority of King and Parliament. The whole
jurisdiction of the Church was derived in theory from the Pope; when
Wolsey wished to reform the monasteries he had to seek authority from
Leo X.; the Archbishop of Canterbury held a court at Lambeth and (p. 269)
exercised juridical powers, but he did so as _legatus natus_ of
the Apostolic See, and not as archbishop, and this authority could at
any time be superseded by that of a legate _a latere_, as Warham's was
by Wolsey's. It was not his own but the delegated jurisdiction of
another.[743] Bishops and archbishops were only the channels of a
jurisdiction flowing from a papal fountain. Henry charged Warham in
1532 with _praemunire_ because he had consecrated the Bishop of St.
Asaph before the Bishop's temporalties had been restored.[744] The
Archbishop in reply stated that he merely acted as commissary of the
Pope, "the act was the Pope's act," and he had no discretion of his
own. He was bound to consecrate as soon as the Bishop had been
declared such in consistory at Rome. Chapters might elect, the
Archbishop might consecrate, and the King might restore the
temporalties; but none of these things gave a bishop jurisdiction.
There were in fact two and only two sources of power and jurisdiction,
the temporal sovereign and the Pope; reformation must be effected by
the one or the other. Wolsey had ideas of a national ecclesiastical
reformation, but he could have gone no farther than the Pope, who gave
him his authority, permitted. Had the Church in England transgressed
that limit, it would have become dead in schism, and Wolsey's
jurisdiction would have _ipso facto_ ceased. Hence the fundamental (p. 270)
impossibility of Wolsey's scheme; hence the ultimate resort to the
only alternative, a reformation by the temporal sovereign, which
Wycliffe had advocated and which the Anglicans of the sixteenth
century justified by deriving the royal supremacy from the authority
conceded by the early Fathers to the Roman Emperor--an authority prior
to the Pope's.
[Footnote 743: _Cf._ Maitland, _Roman Canon Law_;
Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_, i.,
90 (Bracton regards the Pope as the Englishman's
"Ordinary"); and Leadam, _Select Cases from the
Star Chamber_, Introd., pp. lxxxvi.-viii.]
[Footnote 744: _L. and P._, v., 1247. A curious
point about this document, unnoticed by the editor,
is that the Bishop of St. Asaph had been
consecrated as far back as 1518, and that he was
the Standish who had played so conspicuous a part
in the early Church and State disputes of Henry's
reign. This is an echo of the "Investiture"
controversy (Luchaire, _Manuel_, pp. 509, 510).]
Hence, too, the agency employed was Parliament and not
Convocation.[745] The representatives of the clergy met of course as
frequently as those of the laity, but their activity was purely
defensive. They suggested no changes themselves, and endeavoured
without much success to resist the innovations forced upon them by
King and by Parliament. They had every reason to fear both Henry and
the Commons. They were conscious that the Church had lost its hold
upon the nation. Its impotence was due in part to its own corruption,
in part to the fact that thriving commercial and industrial classes,
like those which elected Tudor Parliaments, are as a rule impatient of
religious or at least sacerdotal dictation. God and Mammon, in spite
of all efforts at compromise, do not really agree. In 1529, before the
meeting of Parliament, Campeggio had appealed to Henry to prevent the
ruin of the Church; he felt that without State protection the Church
could hardly stand. In 1531 Warham, the successor of Becket and
Langton, excused his compliance with Henry's demands by pleading (p. 271)
_Ira principis mors est_.[746] In the draft of a speech he drew up
just before his death,[747] the Archbishop referred to the case of St.
Thomas, hinted that Henry VIII. was going the way of Henry II., and
compared his policy with the constitutions of Clarendon. The comparison
was extraordinarily apt; Henry VIII. was doing what Henry II. had
failed to do, and the fate that attended the Angevin king might have
befallen the Tudor had Warham been Becket and the Church of the
sixteenth been the same as the Church of the twelfth century. But they
were not, and Warham appealed in vain to the liberties of the Church
granted by Magna Carta, and to the "ill end" of "several kings who
violated them". Laymen, he complained, now "advanced" their own laws
rather than those of the Church. The people, admitted so staunch a
churchman as Pole, were beginning to hate the priests.[748] "There
were," wrote Norfolk, "infinite clamours of the temporalty here in
Parliament against the misuse of the spiritual jurisdiction.... This
realm did never grudge the tenth part against the abuses of the Church
at no Parliament in my days, as they do now."[749]
[Footnote 745: "It was not from Parliament," says
Brewer (_L. and P._, iv., Introd., p. dcxlvii.),
"but from Convocation that the King had to
anticipate any show of independence or opposition."
True, to some extent; but the fact does not prove,
as Brewer alleges, that Convocation was more
independent than Parliament, but that Henry was
doing what Parliament liked and Convocation
disliked.]
[Footnote 746: "The Queen replied that they were
all fine councillors, for when she asked advice of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, he replied that he
would not meddle in these affairs, saying
frequently, _Ira principis mors est_" (Chapuys to
Charles V., 6th June, 1531). Warham was one of the
counsel assigned to the Queen for the divorce
question.]
[Footnote 747: _L. and P._, v., 1247. Warham also
made a formal protest against the legislation of
1529-32 (_ibid._, v., 818). The likeness between
Henry VIII. and Henry II. extended beyond their
policy to their personal characteristics, and the
great Angevin was much in the Tudor's mind at this
period. Chapuys also called Henry VIII.'s attention
to the fate of Henry II. (_ibid._, vii., 94).]
[Footnote 748: _L. and P._, v., App. 10.]
[Footnote 749: _Ibid._, v., 831; _cf._ v., 898,
989, App. 28.]
These infinite clamours and grudging were not the result of the (p. 272)
conscientious rejection of any Catholic or papal doctrine. Englishmen
are singularly free from the bondage of abstract ideas, and they began
their Reformation not with the enunciation of some new truth, but with
an attack on clerical fees. Reform was stimulated by a practical
grievance, closely connected with money, and not by a sense of wrong
done to the conscience. No dogma plays such a part in the English
Reformation as Justification by Faith did in Germany, or Predestination
in Switzerland. Parliament in 1530 had not been appreciably affected
by Tyndale's translation of the Bible or by any of Luther's works.
Tyndale was still an exile in the Netherlands, pleading in vain for
the same toleration in England as Charles V. permitted across the sea.
Frith was in the Tower--a man, wrote the lieutenant, Walsingham, whom
it would be a great pity to lose, if only he could be reconciled[750]--and
Bilney was martyred in 1531. A parliamentary inquiry was threatened in
the latter case, not because Parliament sympathised with Bilney's
doctrine, but because it was said that the clergy had procured his
burning before obtaining the State's consent.[751] Parliament was as
zealous as Convocation against heresy, but wanted the punishment of
heretics left in secular hands.
[Footnote 750: _L. and P._, v., 1458.]
[Footnote 751: _Ibid._, v., 522; vii., 171.]
In this, as in other respects, the King and his Parliament were in the
fullest agreement. Henry had already given proof of his anti-clerical
bias by substituting laymen for churchmen in those great offices of
State which churchmen had usually held. From time immemorial the Lord
Chancellor had been a Bishop,[752] but in 1529 Wolsey was succeeded
by More, and, later on, More by Audley. Similarly, the privy seal (p. 273)
had been held in Henry's reign by three bishops successively, Fox,
Ruthal and Tunstall: now it was entrusted to the hands of Anne
Boleyn's father, the Earl of Wiltshire. Gardiner remained secretary
for the time, but Du Bellay thought his power would have increased had
he abandoned his clerical vows,[753] and he, too, was soon superseded
by Cromwell. Even the clerkship of Parliament was now given up to a
layman. During the first half of Henry's reign clerical influence had
been supreme in Henry's councils; during the second it was almost
entirely excluded. Like his Parliament, he was now impugning the
jurisdiction of the clergy in the matter of heresy; they were doctors,
he said, of the soul, and had nothing to do with the body.[754] He was
even inclining to the very modern theory that marriage is a civil
contract, and that matrimonial suits should therefore be removed from
clerical cognisance.[755] As early as 1529 he ordered Wolsey to
release the Prior of Reading, who had been imprisoned for Lutheranism,
"unless the matter is very heinous".[756] In 1530 he was praising
Latimer's sermons;[757] and in the same year the Bishop of Norwich
complained of a general report in his diocese that Henry favoured
heretical books.[758] "They say that, wherever they go, they hear that
the King's pleasure is that the New Testament in English shall (p. 274)
go forth." There seems little reason to doubt Hall's statement that
Henry now commanded the bishops, who, however, did nothing, to prepare
an English translation of the Bible to counteract the errors of
Tyndale's version.[759] He wrote to the German princes extolling their
efforts towards the reformation of the Church;[760] and many advisers
were urging him to begin a similar movement in England. Anne Boleyn
and her father were, said Chapuys, more Lutheran than Luther himself;
they were the true apostles of the new sect in England.[761]
[Footnote 752: Thomas Beaufort, afterwards Duke of
Exeter, who was Chancellor in 1410-12, and Richard,
Earl of Salisbury, who was Chancellor in 1454-5,
are exceptions.]
[Footnote 753: _L. and P._, iv., 6019.]
[Footnote 754: _Ibid._, v., 1013.]
[Footnote 755: _Ibid._, v., 805; vii., 232. Chapuys
had told him that "all the Parliament could not
make the Princess Mary a bastard, for the
cognisance of cases concerning legitimacy belonged
to ecclesiastical judges"; to which Henry replied
that "he did not care for all the canons which
might be alleged, as he preferred his laws
according to which he should have illegitimacy
judged by lay judges who could also take cognisance
of matrimonial causes".]
[Footnote 756: _L. and P._, iv., 5925.]
[Footnote 757: _Ibid._, iv., 6325.]
[Footnote 758: _Ibid._, iv., 6385.]
[Footnote 759: The net result at the time was a
royal proclamation promising an authorised version
of the Scriptures in English "if the people would
come to a better mind" (_L. and P._, iv., 6487).]
[Footnote 760: _L. and P._, v., App. 7.]
[Footnote 761: _Ibid._, v., 148, 850.]
But, however Lutheran Anne Boleyn may have been, Henry was still true
to the orthodox faith. If he dallied with German princes, and held out
hopes to his heretic subjects, it was not because he believed in the
doctrines of either, but because both might be made to serve his own
ends. He rescued Crome from the flames, not because he doubted or
favoured Crome's heresy, but because Crome appealed from the Church to
the King, and denied the papal supremacy; that, said Henry, is not
heresy, but truth.[762] When he sent to Oxford for the articles on
which Wycliffe had been condemned,[763] it was not to study the great
Reformer's doctrine of the mass, but to discover Wycliffe's reasons
for calling upon the State to purify a corrupt Church, and to digest
his arguments against the temporal wealth of the clergy. When he
lauded the reforms effected by the German princes he was thinking of
their secularisation of ecclesiastical revenues. The spoliation (p. 275)
of the Church was consistent with the most fervent devotion to its
tenets. In 1531 Henry warned the Pope that the Emperor would probably
allow the laity "to appropriate the possessions of the Church, which
is a matter which does not touch the foundations of the faith; and
what an example this will afford to others, it is easy to see".[764]
Henry managed to improve upon Charles's example in this respect. "He
meant," he told Chapuys in 1533, "to repair the errors of Henry II.
and John, who, being in difficulties, had made England and Ireland
tributary to the Pope; he was determined also to reunite to the Crown
the goods which churchmen held of it, which his predecessors could not
alienate to his prejudice; and he was bound to do this by the oath he
had taken at his coronation."[765] Probably it was about this time, or
a little later, that he drew up his suggestions for altering the
coronation oath, and making the royal obligations binding only so far
as the royal conscience thought fit. The German princes had a further
claim to his consideration beyond the example they set him in dealing
with the temporalties of the Church. They might be very useful if his
difference with Charles over Catherine of Aragon came to an open
breach; and the English envoys, who congratulated them on their zeal
for reform, also endeavoured to persuade them that Henry's friendship
might be no little safeguard against a despotic Emperor.
[Footnote 762: _Ibid._, v., 129, 148.]
[Footnote 763: _Ibid._, iv., 6546.]
[Footnote 764: _L. and P._, v., 326.]
[Footnote 765: _Ibid._, vi., 235.]
All these phenomena, the Reformation in Germany, heresy at home, and
the anti-sacerdotal prejudices of his subjects, were regarded by Henry
merely as circumstances which might be made subservient to his own
particular purpose; and the skill with which he used them is a (p. 276)
monument of farsighted statecraft.[766] He did not act on the impulse
of rash caprice. His passions were strong, but his self-control was
stronger; and the breach with Rome was effected with a cold and
calculated cunning, which the most adept disciple of Machiavelli could
not have excelled. He did not create the factors he used; hostility to
the Church had a real objective existence. Henry was a great man; but
the burdens his people felt were not the product of Henry's hypnotic
suggestion. He could only divert those grievances to his own use. He
had no personal dislike to probate dues or annates; he did not pay
them, but the threat of their abolition might compel the Pope to grant
his divorce. Heresy in itself was abominable, but if heretics would
maintain the royal against the papal supremacy, might not their sins
be forgiven? The strength of Henry's position lay in the fact that he
stood between two evenly balanced parties. It is obvious that by
favouring the anti-clericals he could destroy the power of the Church.
It is not so certain, but it is probable that, by supporting the
Church, he could have staved off its ruin so long as he lived.
Parliament might have been urgent, but there was no necessity to call
it together. The Reformation Parliament, which sat for seven years,
would probably have been dissolved after a few weeks had Clement
granted the divorce. It met session after session, to pass one measure
after another, each of which was designed to put fresh pressure on the
Pope. It began with the outworks of the papal fortress; as soon (p. 277)
as one was dismantled, Henry cried "Halt," to see if the citadel
would surrender. When it refused, the attack recommenced. First one,
then another of the Church's privileges and the Pope's prerogatives
disappeared, till there remained not one stone upon another of the
imposing edifice of ecclesiastical liberty and papal authority in
England.
[Footnote 766: _Cf._ A. Zimmermann, "Zur
kirchlichen Politik Heinrichs VIII., nach den
Trennung vom Rom," in _Roemische Quartalschrift_,
xiii., 263-283.]