England’s Parliament had (and has) two houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Although the latter body was intended to represent townspeople, during the 16th century the towns delegated more knights than commoners to represent them. Until the reign of Henry VIII (r. 1509-47) Parliament had met sporadically, usually less than once a year. Beginning in 1529, Parliament sat for five years to work through the details of royal reforms, especially the closing of monasteries and the impounding of monastic property. In 1534, Henry VIII denied papal authority in England and assumed the role of head of the Church of England, or Anglican Church (see chapter 2, religion). Parliament also had long sessions during the reign of Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) to finalize details concerning the independence of the Church of England. Not until the Stuart dynasty of the 17th century did England have an absolute monarch who refused to convene Parliament, and he was executed in 1649.
History, Government, and Society
England was at peace when Henry VIII (1491-1547) was crowned in 1509. Henry claimed the crown of France, especially the provinces of Normandy, Guyenne, Gascony, and Anjou. Although English forces attacked France three times during his reign, Henry kept only the cities of Calais, Tournai, and Boulogne, and the French king, Francis I, paid him a hefty pension as satisfaction for his claim. The port city of Calais was actually enfranchised as part of England in 1536 (lost in 1558), but the other two cities remained under the French Crown. The district outside Calais known as the Pale is important in European political history because that was the location of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. For three weeks in June 1520, Francis I and Henry VIII, with their full retinues and court advisers, met in an extravagant diplomatic display that lasted for three weeks. Francis attempted in vain to persuade the English king not to join forces with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, knowing that such an alliance would threaten France from all sides except the western coast.
Henry VIII’s international prestige was enhanced by this meeting, and his power in England backed by Imperial support. His major political initiatives during the latter 1520s involved his efforts to obtain papal dispensation for a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536). Because she had not produced a male heir, Henry wished to remarry. To break with the Catholic Church over this issue, Henry acted as “king in Parliament,” a prerogative whereby the acts of this legislative and judicial body are sanctioned by the Crown as well as by the people. Besides calling the entire Parliament nine times during his reign, Henry met repeatedly with the Great Council (the king and the House of Lords, his close peers).
The king also created 40 new constituencies for the House of Commons. Parliament granted funds for extraordinary purposes, such as defense, and Henry VIII needed money from these new constituencies. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (c. 1474-1530), the king’s chaplain and lord chancellor, proposed a new basis for taxation. Unlike most countries in western Europe, England did not exempt the nobility from taxes. Wolsey proposed that royal commissioners should assess the estimated value of property, and that taxes should be based on that amount. Parliament, however, voted on the frequency of taxation. Thus Parliament, as this example demonstrates, somewhat balanced royal power with a modified form of popular government.
Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn (1507-36). During her long reign as queen, she formalized the Church of England as the official church of the realm, and she blended politics and religion by forcing Protestantism on the Irish. Parliament generally supported Elizabeth, who recognized the importance of its cooperation in domestic government.
World History
