Permanent Council was constituted, in the fifteenth century, a smaller and more compact administrative body to which was assigned the designation of "Privy Council."[17]
VI. The Tudor Monarchy
18. Popular Absolutism.—The salient fact of the Tudor period of English history (1485–1603) is the vigor and dominance of the monarchy. From the Wars of the Roses the nation emerged in need, above all other things, of discipline and repose. It was the part of the Tudors to enforce relentlessly the one and to foster systematically the other. The period was one in which aristocratic turbulence was repressed, extraordinary tribunals were erected to bring to justice powerful offenders, vagrancy was punished, labor was found for the unemployed, trade was stimulated, the navy was organized on a permanent basis, the diffusion of wealth and of education was encouraged, the growth of a strong middle class was promoted—in short, one in which out of chaos was brought order and out of weakness strength. These things were the work of a government which was strongly paternal, even sheerly despotic, and, for a time at least, the evolution of parliamentary machinery was utterly arrested. But it should be observed that the question in sixteenth-century England was not between strong monarchy on the one hand and parliamentary government on the other. The alternatives were, rather, strong monarchy and baronial anarchy. This the nation clearly perceived, and, of the two, it much preferred the former.
"The Tudor monarchy," says an English scholar, "unlike most other despotisms, did not depend on gold or force, on the possession of vast estates, unlimited taxation, or a standing army. It rested on the willing support of the nation at large, a support due to the deeply-rooted conviction that a strong executive was necessary to the national unity, and that, in the face of the dangers which threatened the country both at home and abroad, the sovereign must be allowed a free hand. It was this conviction, instinctively felt rather than definitely realized, which enabled Henry VIII. not only to crush open rebellion but to punish the slightest signs of opposition to his will, to regulate the consciences of his subjects, and to extend the legal conception of treason to limits hitherto unknown. It was this which rendered it possible for the ministers of Edward VI. to impose a Protestant régime upon a Romanist majority, and allowed Mary to enter upon a hateful marriage and to drag the country into a disastrous war. It was this, finally, which enabled Elizabeth to choose her own line in domestic and foreign policy, to defer for thirty years the war with Spain, and to resist, almost single-handed, the pressure for further ecclesiastical change. The Tudor monarchy was essentially a national monarchy. It was popular with the multitude, and it was actively supported by the influential classes, the nobility, the gentry, the lawyers, the merchants, who sat as members of Parliament at Westminster, mustered the forces of the shire as Lords-Lieutenant, or bore the burden of local government as borough magistrates and justices of the peace."[18]
19. The Privy Council.—The times of the Tudors and of the early Stuarts have been designated with aptness the period of "government by council." Parliament continued to exercise a certain control over legislation and taxation, but it was in and through the Privy Council, together with certain subordinate councils, that the absolute monarchy, in the main, performed its work. The Privy Council—or simply "the Council"—comprised ordinarily about seventeen or eighteen persons, although under Henry VIII. its membership at one time approached forty. The councillors were almost invariably members of one or the other of the two houses of Parliament, an arrangement by which was facilitated the control of the proceedings of that body by the Government, but which did not yet involve any recognized responsibility of the executive to the legislative branch. After Queen Mary the councillors were, with few exceptions, laymen. Technically, the function of the Council was only advisory, but in practice even those sovereigns, as Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, who were most vigilant and industrious, were obliged to allow to the councillors large discretion in the conduct of public business, and under the early Stuarts the Council very nearly ruled the realm. Representing at all times the sovereign, who was supposed invariably to be present at its deliberations, the Council supervised the work of administration, regulated trade, granted licenses, controlled the press, kept an eye on the law courts, ferreted out plots, took measures to suppress rebellion, controlled the movements of the fleet, assisted in the management of ecclesiastical affairs, and, in short, considered and took action upon substantially all concerns of state. By virtue of its right to issue orders or ordinances it possessed a power that was semi-legislative; through its regulation of trade, its management of loans and benevolences, and its determination of military obligations, it participated actively in the control of taxation; and, under the presidency of the crown, it possessed the functions of a supreme tribunal, whose jurisdiction, in part original and in part appellate, was widespread and peculiarly despotic.[19]
20. Other Councils: The Star Chamber.—In 1487 there was created a special tribunal, consisting at the outset of seven great officials and members of the Council, including two judges, to take special cognizance of cases involving breaches of the law by offenders who were too powerful to be reached under the operation of the ordinary courts. This was the tribunal subsequently known, from its meeting-place, as the Court of Star Chamber. In effect it was from the beginning a committee of the Privy Council, empowered to exercise a jurisdiction which in truth had long been exercised extra-legally by the Council as a whole. The relation of the two institutions inclined in practice to become ever closer, and by the middle of the sixteenth century the Star Chamber had been enlarged to include all of the members of the Council, together with the two chief justices; and since the Star Chamber possessed a statutory sanction which the Council lacked, the judicial business of the older body was despatched regularly by its members sitting under the guise of the newer one. The tendency of the Tudor régime toward the conciliar type of government is manifested further by the creation of numerous subsidiary councils and courts whose history cannot be recounted here. Most of these were brought into existence during the reign of Henry VIII. Those of principal importance were (1) the Council of the North, set up in 1539; (2) the Council of Wales, confirmed by statute of 1542; (3) the Court of Castle Chamber, reproducing in Ireland the principal features of the English Star Chamber; (4) the Courts of Augmentation, First Fruits and Annates, and Wards; and (5) the Elizabethan Court of High Commission.[20]
VII. Parliament under the Tudors
21. Control by the Crown.—By the Tudors generally, and especially Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, Parliament was regarded as a tool to be used by the crown, rather than as in any sense an independent, co-ordinate power in the state. When innovations were to be introduced, such as those carried through by Henry VIII., it was Tudor policy to clothe them with the vestments of parliamentarism, to the end that they might be given the appearance and the sanction of popular measures; and when subsidies were to be obtained, it was recognized to be expedient to impart to them, in similar manner, the semblance of voluntary gifts on the part of the nation. It was no part of Tudor intent, however, that Parliament should be permitted to initiate measures, or even to exercise any actual discretion in the adoption, amendment, or rejection of proposals submitted by the Government. There were several means by which the crown contrived to impede the rise of Parliament above the subordinate position which that body occupied at the accession of Henry VII. One was the practice of convening Parliament irregularly and infrequently and of bringing its sessions to an early close. Another, employed especially during Thomas Cromwell's ministry under Henry VIII. and during the reign of Elizabeth, was that of tampering with the freedom of borough and county elections. A third was the habit, also notorious under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, of dictating and directing in all that was essential in the proceedings of the chambers. Henry VIII. bullied his parliaments systematically; Elizabeth, by cajolery, flattery, deceit, and other arts of which she was mistress, attained through less boisterous methods the same general end. Measures were thrust upon the chambers accompanied by peremptory demand for their enactment; objectionable projects originated by private members were stifled; and the fundamental parliamentary privileges of free speech, freedom from arrest, and access to the sovereign were arbitrarily suspended or otherwise flagrantly violated.
22. The Independence of the Crown.—Finally
