The cromwellian decade: Authority and consent

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 7, Issue , 1997, Pages 177-195

  Davies, C S L ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85012167772     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3679275     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. See, e.g., David Starkey, ‘Which Age of Reform?’, in Revolution Reassessed, ed. Christopher Coleman and David Starkey (Oxford, 1986), 13-27.
2. Revolution Reassessed, ed. Coleman and Starkey, seems, for the moment at least, to have silenced discussion on the ‘administrative revolution’.
3. Tudors (1955), 168; ‘Political Creed’, Studies 2, 235; Studies 3, 434 (review of Joel Hurstfield, Freedom, Corruption, and Government).
4. Graham Nicholson, ‘The Act of Appeals and the English Reformation’, in Law and Government under the Tudors: Essays Presented to Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Retirement, ed. Claire Cross, David Loades and J.J. Scarisbrick (Cambridge, 1988), 19-30
5. Virginia Murphy, ‘The Literature and Propaganda of Henry VIII's First Divorce’, in The Reign of Henry VIII, ed. Diarmaid MacCulloch (1995), 135-158.
6. Calendar of State Papers, Spanish [hereafter CSP Span], 1529-30, no. 460, p. 758.
7. ‘Anon. MS on the King's Marriage’, in Records of the Reformation, ed. Nicholas Pocock (2 vols., Oxford, 1870), II, 487-489, discussed in Policy and Police, 183.
8. See Philip Hughes, 7he Reformation in England (rev. edn, 3 vols, in one, 1963), II, plate 2; it is intriguing that the whole society, including laywomen, is shown speaking Latin (if only ‘vivat rex’), except for a solitary ‘God save the king’ by the lowest placed layman.
9. CSP Span., 1529-30, no. 460, p. 761.
10. Hen. VIII c. 6; 31 Hen. VIII c. 14, ss. 5 and 20; 33 Hen. VIII c. 8 (SR, III, 441, 739-43, 837). For Henry's probable interest in the first two measures, see Reform and Renewal, 148, and MacCulloch, ‘Henry VIII and the Reform of the Church’, in The Reign of Henry VIII, ed. MacCulloch,159-80, at 178.
11. Henry Brinklow complained that the Six Articles were unprecedendy draconian, ‘for the pope never made the marriage of priests to be death’; The Complaynt of Roderyck Mors, ed. J. Meadows Cowper, Early English Text Soc., extra ser., 22 (1874), 57.
12. Reform and Renewal, 122-3 (St German made the initial proposal for public works; see J. A. Guy, Christopher St German on Chancery and Statute, Seiden Soc., suppl. series, 6 (1985), 127-135)
13. R.-W. Heinze, The Proclamations of the Tudor Kings (Cambridge, 1976), 112-116.
14. Pamela Tudor-Craig, ‘Henry VIII and King David’, in Early Tudor England: Proceedings of the ig8j Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, 1989), 183-205, esp. 197; the quotation is from the first psalm.
15. Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy, (Oxford, 1969), 261.
16. See the revision of Anglo's views generally in his Images of Tudor Kingship (1992), esp. 109-12.
17. H. M. Colvin and John Summerson, ‘The King's Houses, 1485-1660’, in The History of the King's Works, ed. Colvin (6 vols., 1963-82), IV, 1-364, at 57.
18. Glyn Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic: The Ufe of Stephen Gardiner (Oxford, ?99°)> 141?
19. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 485.
20. Starkey, ‘Which Age of Reform?’.
21. Peter Gwyn, The King's Cardinal (1990), 116, and
22. J. A. Guy, The Cardinal's Court (Hassocks, 1977), 30, 37, 120 for Wolsey's Star Chamber orations.
23. Elton came close to accepting this; ‘Cromwell treated Parliament as the only instrument available, and usable despite the difficulties involved, for the carrying out of a major reform programme’; ‘Redivus’, Studies 3, 386.
24. Guy, St German, 24-25.
25. The Reports of Sir John Spelman, ed. J. H. Baker, 2 vols., Seiden Soc., 93-94 (1977-8 for 1976-7), II, introduction, 44, 65; pace Parliament, 34-5, the case is 1506 (21 Hen. VII), not 1529; see Les reportes del cases Edw. V-Hen. VIII (1679; repr. 1981), Hilary 21 Hen. VII, pi. I.
26. Norman Doe, Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law (Cambridge, 1990). Doe also considers judge-made law, but the positivistic case seems strongest in the case of statute, and there seems no case of sixteenth-century judges disallowing statute; 57-9
27. ‘Lex’, in Studies 4, 37-57, esp. 41-3
28. John Guy, ‘The Henrician Age’, in The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500-1800, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1993), 13-46
29. and ‘The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modem England’, in Tudor Political Culture, ed. Dale Hoak, (Cambridge, 1995), 292-310.
30. Cf. also Shelley Lockwood, ‘Marsilius of Padua and the Case for the Royal Ecclesiastical Supremacy’, 6th ser., I, (1991), 89-119, for William Marshall's adaptation of Marsilio not only to replace popular sovereignty by parliamentary authority, but to diminish restraints on the prince.
31. ‘Lex’, Studies 4, 46
32. the act (its title, revealingly, ‘An act abolishing diversity in opinions’), 31 Hen. VIII c.14, see Constitution (1982), 399-401, or SR, III, 739-43. Cf. the circular of 1535 which invokes the law of God, Scripture, ‘due consultation and deliberate advisement and consent’ of ‘all other our nobles and commons temporal assembled in our high court of parliament, and by authority of the same’, for the abolition of papal power and the ‘grant’ of the supreme headship; adding the subsequent ‘recognition’ of the king's new style by bishops and clergy, in convocation and by their individual oaths
33. Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin (3 vols., New Haven, CT,. no- '5831 For political thinkers urging apparently incompatible positions in support of the same argument
34. see Antony Black, ‘Political Languages in Later Medieval Europe’, and
35. Diana Perry, ‘Paradisis de Puteo - a Fifteenth-Century Civilian's concept of Papal Sovereignty’, in Church and Sovereignty: Essays in Honour of Michael Wilks, ed. Diana Wood, Studies in Church History, Subsidia, 9 (Oxford, 1991), 313-328 and 369-92.
36. Reform and Renewal, 67. Strictly Morris conceded only that ‘the Holy Ghost is as verily present’ at the making of an act of parliament ‘as ever it was at any General Council’, possibly an equivocation.
37. ‘Lex’, Studies 4, 47-48; 25 Hen. VIII c. 21, SR, III, 464-71, at 464.
38. Obedience in Church and State: Three Political Tracts by Stephen Gardiner, ed. Pierre Janelle (Cambridge, 1930), 90, 92. The tendentious English translation of Mary's reign went further in talking of the tide ‘granted’ by Parliament, 91; and cf. ‘Lex’, Studies 4, 47, quoting Obedience, 115.
39. Obedience, 156.
40. Letters of Stephen Gardiner, ed. J. A. Muller, (Cambridge, 1933), no. 42, pp. 56–57.
41. Policy and Police, 222–4; Hughes, Reformation, I, 270 for a convenient printing of the oath as set out in Lords Journal, I, 82. The oath-taker was sworn ‘to your cunning, wit, and uttermost of your power, without guile, fraud or other undue means … [to] keep, maintain and defend this Act … and all other Acts and Statutes made since the beginning of this present parliament’. Elton's implied analogy with the Test Acts surely fails, in that the latter were voluntary in the sense of being imposed on aspirants to offices, not on all subjects.
42. J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952).
43. Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (1681 edn), cap. 74, p. 343
44. cf. St. German, Doctor and Student, ed. T. F. T. Plucknett and J. L. Barton, Seiden Soc., 91 (1974), 300. The question at issue concerned tithe and therefore the law of God.
45. The House of Commons, 1509-1558, ed. S. T. Bindoff, History of Parliament Trust, 3 vols. (1982), I, 264, 284.
46. The Calais act refers to the town as ‘one of the most principal treasures belonging to his Realm of England’. For an attempted refutation of the statement that Tournai was represented at Westminster in 1514 (I, 285) and for a discussion of the status of Calais, see C. S. L. Davies, ‘Tournai and the English Crown, I5í3-9’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997).
47. House of Commons, I, 283-284.
48. Durham was granted representation in 1673, pace the uncharacteristic error in ‘Representation’, Studies 2, 42, 51.
49. Robert Cecil was unaware in 1597 that it was not represented; Mark A. Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modem England (Cambridge, 1986), 23. For Cheshire see 34 & 35 Hen.
50. VIII c. 13 (SR, III, 911), discussed by Tim Thornton, ‘Political Society in Early Tudor Cheshire, 1480-1560’ (DPhil thesis, Oxford University, 1993), 152-154.
51. Brendan Bradshaw, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979) 5157-“Ö
52. Steven G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland (1985), 131-132, 193-5. For the Irish legislation, see Statutes at Large: Ireland (20 vols., Dublin, 1786-1801), I, 66-174.
53. Statutes at Large: Ireland, I, 252-73, 275-304; quotation at 300. Cf. Ellis, Tudor Ireland, 2IO-II, 236.
54. M. H. Dodds and Ruth Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace 1536-7 and the Exeter Conspiracy 1538 (2 vols., Cambridge, 1915), I, 182
55. M. L. Bush, ‘“Up for the Commonweal”: The Significance of Tax Grievances in the English Rebellions of 1536’, English Historical Review, 106 (1991), 299-318.
56. Dodds, Pilgrimage, I, 357-361
57. Michael Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace (Manchester,)” 1678.
58. Patrick Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, Bull, of the John Rylands Library, 69 (1986-7), 394-424.
59. °Dodds, Pilgrimage, I, 136-138, at 136.
60. Hughes, Reformation, I, 338, compares Henry's ‘our own church’ with Gardiner's invocation, ‘cum summo populi consensu, suaeque [my italics] ecclesiae iudicio’, Obedience, 86.
61. Dodds, Pilgrimage, I, 275–8
62. John Guy, in Guy and Alastair Fox, Reassessing the Henrician Agí (Oxford, 1986), 145, also characterises Henry's answer as ‘disingenuous’.
63. Proclamations, I, no. 191. The authority quoted by Henry is obscure. The editors believe it may anticipate the Proclamations Act which was introduced in the immediately subsequent Parliament, on the grounds that the Supremacy Act makes no mention of the council, 285 n.i. Perhaps this is another example of Henry reaching for justification regardless of legal nicety.
64. tudor-Craig, ‘Henry VIII and King David’, 199, for convenient edition of the revised oath; 187, for dating.
65. Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Herny VIII, 1536-1547 (Cambridge, 1977), 16, 36.
66. The Later Parliaments of Herny VIII, 1536-1547, 141. Cf. also Sir Robert Wingfield's telling Henry that he had been ordained since before the Creation to restore the principles of Christianity; LP, XIV, pt I, no. 368. I owe this reference to Dr Bernard.
67. Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, 170.
68. English Historical Documents, 1485-1558, ed. C. H. Williams (1967), 361-386, at 367.
69. John Cheke, The Hurt of Sedición (1549)
70. Richard Morison, Apomaxis Calumnarium Conmtiorumque (1537-8), An Exhortation … (1539), An Inuective … (1539), and above all, A Lamentation …, and Remedy for Sedition, both 1536, and conveniently available in Humanist Scholarship and Public Order, ed. D. S. Berkowitz (Washington, 1984)
71. Nichols, in Troubles connected with the Prayer-Book of 1549, ed. Nicholas Pocock, Camden Ser., new ser., 37 (1884), 141-193, at 169.
72. This last was ascribed by Pocock to Udall, but see G. Scheurweghs in British Museum Quarterly, 8 (1933-4), 24–5
73. I owe this reference to John D. Cooper. For Nichols, see Robert Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People (Cambridge, 1989), passim.
74. Wriothesley's Chronicle, ed. W. D. Hamilton, 2 vols., Camden Soc., new ser., 11 & 20 (1875 and 1877), I, 26, 102-3, II” 9'10*
75. Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1809), 767, 774-5, 785, 828, 864-5
76. Lehmberg, Later Parliaments, 73.
77. Brinklow, Roderyck Mors, 57.
78. William Thomas's able defence of Henry's actions invokes parliamentary authority and its supposed free speech, but not popular consent; The Pilgrim, ed. J. A. Froude (1861). Thomas Starkey, Exhortation to Unitie and Obedience, (? 1535-6), talks of the people's acceptance of the abolition of papal power ‘by the high providence of our most noble prince, and by common authority here in our nation’, presumably Parliament, but without specifically advancing the theory of popular consent through Parliament, fol. 43V.
79. While they disagree on timing, both Derek Hirst, The Representative of the People? (Cambridge, 1975), and Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection, see this as a seventeenth-century development.
80. R. H. Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England (Cambridge, 1990), cap. 2, 28-54
81. F. D. Logan, ‘Thomas Cromwell and the Vice-Gerency in Spirituals’, Eng. Hist. RM'* JOS (1988), 658-667
82. Diarmid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer (New Haven and London, 1996), 122-123
83. 29'3o> I33-5> i65'6> i84> 272-66Claire Cross, The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (1969), 35-36
84. John Guy, ‘The i59o's: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?’, in The Reign of Elizabeth /, ed. Guy (Cambridge, 1995), 1-19, at 11-13
85. Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 16371642 (Oxford, 1991), 39-40
86. cf. ‘Redivivus’, Studies 3, 385.
87. J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Reissue with Retrospect (Cambridge, 1987), 289-294.
88. Heinze, Proclamations, 113-116; there were attempts as late as 1551-2 to settle meat prices by proclamation (240-2), but apparently none under Mary or Elizabeth.
89. A. J. Slavin, ‘The Tudor State, Reformation, and Understanding Change through the Looking Glass’, in Political Thought and the Tudor Commonwealth, ed. Paul A. Fideler and T. F. Mayer (1992), 223-253, quotation at 224.
90. “'Bush, Pilgrimage, 408-14; Roger Schofield, ‘Taxation and the Political limits of the Tudor State’, in Law and Government, 227–55.
91. ‘Human Rights and the Liberties of Englishmen’, Studies 4, 58–76, at 74.
92. Sir Thomas Smith, De República Anglorum, ed. Mary Dewar (Cambridge, 1982), 53.
93. ‘Faction’ has become a term of art. I share the multi-dimensional view of Tudor politics expounded by Steven Gunn, ‘The Structure of Politics in Early Tudor England’, 6th ser., V (1995), 59-90; i.e. I do not believe that Henry must necessarily be classified as either puppet or puppeteer, but rather that the relationships between king and his entourage were multi-dimensional and varied according to circumstances.
94. ‘Decline and Fall’, Studies I, 189-230; it would be redundant to list the works of Lacey Baldwin Smith, J.J. Scarisbrick, E. W. Ives and David Starkey.
95. Cf. Eric Ives, The Common Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England (Cambridge, 1983), 2445
96. ‘there was not the antithesis between “Tudor Despotism” and the rule of law and king-in-parliament which has sometimes been supposed; rather the royal will operated through due legal process and the “High Court of Parliament” … The Tudor courts rendered the power of the crown legitimate.’ I am grateful to Dr John Watts for reminding me of this passage. Elton himself could write that the Tudor monarchs, ‘content with the reality of great political power, … never bothered [my italics] to clothe it in a formal doctrine of absolutism’; Constitution (1982), 14.
97. Parliament, 22-24, 346-7, 378-9.
98. Policy and Police, cap. 6, esp. 288-9.
99. S. E. Lehmberg, ‘Parliamentary Attainder in the Reign of Henry VUT’, Historical Journal, 18 (1975), 675-702.
100. Joel Hurstfield, ‘Was there a Tudor Despotism after all?’, 5th ser., XVII (1967), 83-108
101. repr. in Hurstfield, Freedom, Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, MA, 1973), 23-49.