Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- III PARLIAMENT
- 21 Studying the History of Parliament
- 22 ‘The Body of the Whole Realm’: Parliament and Representation in Medieval and Tudor England
- 23 Parliamentary Drafts 1529–1540
- 24 The Evolution of a Reformation Statute
- 25 The Commons' Supplication of 1532: Parliamentary Manoeuvres in the Reign of Henry VIII
- 26 An Early Tudor Poor Law
- 27 The Stuart Century
- 28 A High Road to Civil War?
- 29 The Unexplained Revolution
- IV POLITICAL THOUGHT
- General Index
- Index of Authors Cited
23 - Parliamentary Drafts 1529–1540
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- III PARLIAMENT
- 21 Studying the History of Parliament
- 22 ‘The Body of the Whole Realm’: Parliament and Representation in Medieval and Tudor England
- 23 Parliamentary Drafts 1529–1540
- 24 The Evolution of a Reformation Statute
- 25 The Commons' Supplication of 1532: Parliamentary Manoeuvres in the Reign of Henry VIII
- 26 An Early Tudor Poor Law
- 27 The Stuart Century
- 28 A High Road to Civil War?
- 29 The Unexplained Revolution
- IV POLITICAL THOUGHT
- General Index
- Index of Authors Cited
Summary
The period which opened with the meeting of the Reformation Parliament on 3 November 1529 and closed with the fall of Thomas Cromwell on 10 June 1540 was one of revolution. A great many things were done that overthrew accepted notions, and a great many more were planned. A new ‘polity’ was being shaped, though the revolutionaries were conservative to a degree in the manner of their work. The characteristic note of those years is one of calm assurance that things ought by rights always to have been even as they are now being fashioned; there is really no innovation – only a clearing away of the false and usurped encrustations of the ages. The preamble of the Statute of Appeals with its invocation of ‘histories and chronicles’ sets the tone. In keeping with their backward-looking words, the revolutionaries also employed the strictest legality in putting through their measures. There was no attempt to do away with the supremacy of the law; on the contrary, nothing was done without giving the courts a hand in applying it. The place of Parliament in the establishment of the royal supremacy and in dealing with the vast social and political consequences of that establishment has been consistently misunderstood. Henry VIII and Cromwell did not appeal to Parliament for moral authority, nor did they use it (having perhaps packed it) to pretend a unity in the nation for propaganda purposes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and GovernmentPapers and Reviews 1946–1972, pp. 62 - 81Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1974