Abstract
Parliament had originated in the king’s need to consult his subjects more widely than the nature of his council and court permitted. It had at first been less an institution than an event, summoned by writs when the king chose, and dissolved at his pleasure. The peers could be summoned separately, but in that event the assembly was termed a Great Council and not a parliament. Because of this, parliament tended to be used either when the business in hand specifically required the participation of the Commons — for instance the voting of taxation — or when the king for some reason needed to make a demonstration of consensus. When Richard II wished to restrict papal access to his kingdom he had proceeded by means of statutes of Provisors and Praemunire. By the end of the fifteenth century custom had defined both the composition and the function of parliaments. For the raising of any kind of extraordinary revenue the consent of the Lords and Commons was essential. Unlike their counterparts in France, the kings of England had never succeeded in emancipating themselves from this constraint, nor were the Tudors to do so.
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Notes
G. R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1982), pp. 233–9.
A. G. R. Smith, The Emergence of a Nation State; the commonwealth of England 1529–1660 (London, 1984), Appendix D2.
Acts of the Privy Council, Vol. II, pp. 248–56; J. Loach, Parliament under the Tudors (Oxford, 1991), p. 90.
J. Loach, Parliament and the Crown in the reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1986).
R. A. de Vertot, Ambassades de Messieurs de Noailles en Angleterre (Leiden, 1763), Vol. V, p. 171.
D. M. Loades, Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge, 1965), p. 226.
R. S. Schofield, ‘Parliamentary Lay Taxation, 1485–1547’ (Cambridge Ph.D, 1963), pp. 198–215; J. A. Guy, ‘Wolsey and the parliament of 1523’, in Law and Government under the Tudors, pp. 1–18.
G. W. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion in Early Tudor England; Henry VIII, Wolsey and the Amicable Grant of 1525 (Brighton, 1986). The Amicable Grant was a Benevolence, and repayment was never promised, which intensified resistance.
C. E. Challis, The Tudor Coinage (Manchester, 1978), pp. 81–111.
R. S. Schofield, ‘Taxation and the political limits of the Tudor state’ in Law and Government under the Tudors, eds C. Cross, D. Loades and J. Scarisbrick (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 227–56.
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© 1992 David Loades
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Loades, D. (1992). Parliament and Finance. In: The Mid-Tudor Crisis, 1545–1565. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22305-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22305-3_3
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