Henry VIII Part 22

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 s.h.i.+res; 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 amba.s.sador, 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 pet.i.tion 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 a.s.sertions 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 canva.s.s 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 s.h.i.+re 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 Suss.e.x 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 a.s.surance 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 Warwicks.h.i.+re 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 Shrops.h.i.+re 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._ d.u.c.h.ess 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 a.s.sent, his election at Oxford was not regarded as certain; and, as a matter of fact, Cromwell sat neither for Oxford, nor for any const.i.tuency (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 const.i.tuencies 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 const.i.tuencies 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 const.i.tuencies of Surrey and Hamps.h.i.+re 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 c.u.mberland 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-s.h.i.+lling (_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 cla.s.ses; 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 compet.i.tors. 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 p.r.i.c.keth them chiefly which be chosen to be burgesses.... Would to G.o.d 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 G.o.dly counsel for the (p. 257) commonwealth?"[722] This pa.s.sage gives no support to the theory that members of Parliament were nothing but royal nominees. If the const.i.tuencies 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 att.i.tude of Parliament towards social grievances, see John Hales's letter to Somerset in _Lansdowne MS._, 238; Crowley's _Works_ (Early English Text Society), _pa.s.sim_; Latimer, _Sermons_, p. 247.]

For the time being, in fact, the interests of the King and of the lay middle cla.s.ses coincided, both in secular and ecclesiastical affairs.

Commercial cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 const.i.tutional doctrine. In 1543 he first enunciated the const.i.tutional 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 pet.i.tioned 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 Pet.i.t, 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 Pet.i.t's repute in the eyes of the King, who "would ask in Parliament time if Pet.i.t 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 const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sembly 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 unconst.i.tutional 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., _pa.s.sim_). The claim to criminal jurisdiction which the House of Commons a.s.serted 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 pet.i.tions of the defeated party; the chief complaint is that non-residents were chosen who knew little about the needs of their const.i.tuents, 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 a.s.sembled 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 const.i.tuents; 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 dictators.h.i.+p, 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]