Conflicts
and Loyalties: the Parliaments of Elizabeth I
: R. E. Foster surveys the
changing interpretations and introduces the key facts.
Introduction
‘During
the time of the Tudors, especially in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth,
the power of parliament had been much lessened.’ So wrote H. E. Marshall in
Our Island Story, a child’s history of Britain which first appeared in 1905.
Her comments reflected an historical orthodoxy that purported to identify a
Tudor despotism. By the time her book was reprinted in 1953, however, this
interpretation had been overthrown. The chief exponent of the new orthodoxy was
Sir John Neale. For Neale, the reign of Elizabeth was one in which the House of
Commons contested with the crown for political supremacy. The vanguard of this
unprecedented parliamentary opposition was provided by a group of some 43
puritan MPs whom he named the ‘choir’. Elizabeth’s acumen averted
catastrophe, he argued, but within two generations of her death the
crown-parliament battles became a full blown civil war.
Yet
by the late 1980s Neale’s views were as discredited as those of the Tudor
despot school he had demolished. The main catalyst was provided by scholars who
challenged the idea of parliament’s centrality in causing the civil war. A
re-examination of Elizabeth’s parliaments was a natural corollary. The lead in
this ‘revisionism’ was taken by a former Neale pupil, Professor Sir Geoffrey
Elton. I can well remember sitting amongst an audience of sixth-formers and
undergraduates whilst he lambasted what he saw as the inappropriateness of the
evolutionary metaphor as applied to an institution such as parliament. In his
written works he insisted that parliaments should be seen as they were, not
interpreted to fit into some larger unfolding story of constitutional advance.
Neale’s ‘choir’ was exposed as a fiction. Far from being an independent,
organised opposition, at least 12 of its number were actually closely connected
to members of the Queen’s privy council and were attempting to carry out its
bidding. Parliament, Elton concluded, was a mostly tame and cooperative junior
partner in the Tudor governmental process.
The
revisionists’ views have not gone unchallenged, not least by some of Elton’s
own former pupils such as John Guy; and some of Neale’s, most notably Patrick
Collinson. Where, then, does the history of Elizabethan parliaments currently
stand?
The When
and Why
Parliament,
in the modern sense as a permanent body, has existed only since the late
seventeenth century. In Elizabethan England there were parliaments (plural).
They were infrequent. In 1509-1603 there were 43 years during which parliaments
were not called at all, and 26 of these occurred during Elizabeth’s reign.
When parliaments did meet, moreover, they were short-lived. The ten parliaments
(thirteen sessions) of her reign lasted only 126 weeks in total, or 5.5 per cent
of her long reign. If length of sitting is the criterion by which we judge
parliament’s importance, we could only conclude that, compared to the late
medieval period (there were only 42 years in 1327-1485 when parliament was not
summoned), the institution was in decline.
This
prompts the obvious question of why parliaments met at all. Partly it was
convention: parliaments were traditionally held at the start of a reign.
Law-making was also a recognised function. In this respect parliament’s
importance was growing before Elizabeth’s accession, for Henry VIII had turned
to it as an ally in his reformation of the 1530s. Less obviously, parliament was
a point of contact between monarch and ruled, providing a platform from which to
explain royal policies and also an opportunity for the political nation to make
its views known to the crown.
Above
all else, as inflation and land sales eroded the crown’s income from the royal
estate, parliaments were necessary as a source of revenue. By convention,
parliament endorsed the crown’s right to collect customs duties for life at
the start of each reign. Since the mid-14th century it had also been recognised
that the Commons took the lead in sanctioning the collection of subsidies for
extraordinary purposes, usually the waging of war. It was only in the 1572
parliament that a subsidy was not requested.
Elizabeth’s
reign did mark something of a departure in the use of subsidies. Her councillors
increasingly argued that the threat of war, as opposed to its actuality,
justified requests for one. Novel as this was, this did not provoke resistance
on constitutional grounds. Disquiet was expressed rather in the form of
grumbling about the sums requested. This was understandable: ten subsidies were
voted between 1593 and 1601 compared to the nine in over three decades
previously. But parliament never used the threat of withholding subsidies as a
bargaining counter. They were granted loyally, if somewhat begrudgingly.
Elizabethwas
hardly fond of parliaments. She was only partly telling the truth when she said
that she desired short sessions for the ease of Members. But this does not mean
that there was serious conflict between her and those who wanted longer and more
frequent parliaments. Infrequent parliaments reflected stability; there were 28
sessions in the turbulent 30 years before she ascended the throne. Sir Thomas
Smith was speaking from experience when he wrote rhetorically in 1569: ‘What
can a commonwealth desire more than peace, liberty, quietness, little taking of
base money, few parliaments?’
One
must also see parliament in the broader perspective of the Tudor regime.
Students too often equate parliament with government. It was Elizabeth who
governed with the advice of her council. There was no collective responsibility
in the modern sense. Councillors were appointed by, and answerable to, her.
Parliament was not necessary to the survival of her government; nor did it have
any say in the choice of the Queen’s advisers. Impeachment, which had been
significant in the 14th century, lapsed from 1450 and did not reoccur until
1621. Parliaments met at her behest and for as long as she wished. They were
useful for passing laws, but Elizabeth happily proceeded between parliaments by
means of proclamations. At least 382 were issued during her reign.
Tudor
England was a one party state. Parliaments, to use a modern analogy, were rather
like its party conference. They were gatherings of loyalists, who though
occasionally querulous, tended to rally behind the leadership. Any chances of a
Tudor despotism being established, however, were negated by the fact that
Elizabeth’s wishes could only be executed by an amateur and unpaid system of
local government consisting of gentlemen acting as justices of the peace. In
this overall structure, parliaments played a secondary because irregular and
impermanent part.
The Who
and Where
Parliament
met at Westminster Palace: the Lords in the parliament house, the Commons in St.
Stephen’s Chapel. The latter meeting place had been acquired less than a
decade before Elizabeth’s accession, in succession to the chapter house of
Westminster Abbey. This fact of the Lords being longer established has been
cited by revisionists as evidence of the continuing importance of the upper
house. As the manoeuvrings over the church settlement in 1559 demonstrated (see
History Review, no. 54), they were not always prepared simply to do the royal
bidding, but their propensity to independence can easily be exaggerated.
Before
the 1530s members of the Lords had numbered roughly 100. The end of the
monasteries, however, saw the removal of the senior abbots, bringing the number
down to about 75. Roughly a third of this number consisted of the archbishops
and bishops. Since all but one of the Marian bishops were deprived in 1559,
Elizabeth was able to effect wholesale replacements. She never got the same
opportunity with the lay peers, whose numbers fluctuated between 55 and 62, but
they became very much her Lords for she created ten new titles and restored
eight old ones. Perhaps two-thirds of the Lords in her later parliaments,
therefore, owed their seat there directly to her. With religious soul-mates such
as Archbishop Whitgift, and political confidantes such as Burghley giving the
lead, there was no real prospect that the House would prove difficult to manage.
The
manageability of the Commons has also struck recent historians as its salient
characteristic. Its presiding officer, the Speaker, though elected each
parliament by the House itself, was invariably a crown nominee. Around him sat a
handful of privy councillor MPs. The indefatigable William Cecil sat there
before 1571. On his elevation to the Lords he continued to exercise influence
over the House by use of ‘men of business’, Members who effectively acted as
his eyes and ears and of whom Thomas Norton is the best documented example.
Members of the government were also able to influence the composition of the
House to some extent. In the 1601 parliament, Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil,
controlled up to 31 MPs, including six who were either his secretaries or
servants. Key figures such as the Cecils inevitably had an advantage over
ordinary MPs, two-thirds of whom sat in only one parliament and fewer than ten
per cent of whom were regular speakers. Perhaps the lack of opportunity to
contribute accounts for the ongoing problem of poor attendance. In the 1601
parliament, one of the more excitable of the reign, the average attendance was
only 44 per cent.
This
information is a valuable corrective to the notion that the Commons was an
independent body. That said, it was changing in Elizabeth’s reign, perhaps
becoming less malleable as the Lords became more so. Quantitatively, the House
grew from 398 Members in 1558 to 460 by 1603, and the larger an assembly the
less controllable it is likely to be. Qualitatively, the educational standard
amongst MPs was rising too. In the parliament of 1563 roughly a third of the
members had either attended university or one of the inns of court; by 1593 the
corresponding figure was 54 per cent. Even prominent men of business, supposedly
clients of councillors, had their own minds. In 1581 Thomas Norton got himself
sent to the Tower for his comments against the proposed Anjou marriage - hardly
the place to be of much service to his patron Burghley!
Moreover,
even if roughly a fifth of members did owe their return to patrons, the patrons
were not always of one mind: the excitability of the 1590s parliaments was
partly the result of the rivalry between Robert Cecil and the Earl of Essex
overspilling into the Commons. In the later parliaments too, it does seem as if
there was a contest of sorts to determine the representation for about half of
the 90 county seats. In these, as in others, Professor Collinson has suggested
that puritans may have collaborated in an attempt to return sympathetic members.
This made for a House that was sometimes more than a lamb, if not yet a lion.
Privileges
and Prerogatives
In
histories of the Commons, much attention has been devoted to what were in
reality the rare occasions when some Members raised the general question of
their privileges. Two elements stand out: the right of the House to regulate the
conduct of its members and free speech. On the first point, there was more
consensus than controversy. In Ferrers’ case of 1542 the Commons had shown it
could act to prevent the arrest of a Member when the House was in session. In
1571 Elizabeth clearly breached this in ordering William Strickland to stay away
for daring to move a Bill proposing reform of the 1559 prayer book. The
resulting furore led to the order being countermanded. When Peter Wentworth was
sent to the Tower in 1587 she and the council were careful to base their case on
Wentworth’s extra-parliamentary activities. Criticism from Members was
correspondingly muted.
It
was Peter Wentworth too who was foremost in raising the issue of free speech.
This was recognised as being essential if the Commons was to deliberate
effectively. But it was also clearly understood that the freedom did not
encompass incivilities, particularly towards the crown. It was for breach of
this rule that the House itself, not Elizabeth, sent Wentworth to the Tower in
1576 following his outburst about
two
things do great hurt in this place … The one is a rumour that runneth about
the House, and this it is ‘Take heed what you do; the Queen’s Majesty liketh
not such a matter; whoso preferreth it, she will be offended with him’ … The
other: sometimes a message is brought into the House, either of commanding or
inhibiting, very injurious to the freedom of speech and consultation.
Wentworth
nevertheless had a valid point in his protest about royal ‘messages’.
Elizabeth was breaking new ground in attempting to prohibit discussion of
matters which she regarded as her prerogative. Dr Bennet, MP for York, cautioned
that ‘He that will go about to debate her majesty’s prerogative royal must
walk warily’. According to Elizabeth, the royal prerogative included her
marriage, the succession, foreign policy and religion. Whilst she had a point,
the lines were considerably more blurred than she would admit.
Prerogative
matters had traditionally included foreign policy, even if in practice
parliamentary consent might be required to finance the policy pursued. The other
areas she claimed for herself, though, were greyer still. Henry VIII, for
example, had used parliament to reinforce his plans for the succession. Religion
meanwhile had entered uncharted territory from the 1530s onwards. Parliament had
declared – rather than made – Henry VIII Supreme Head of the English church
in 1534, but it was parliamentary statute which had enacted the Edwardian
Reformation and parliament again which had reversed a whole generation of
religious change in Mary’s reign. More obviously still, parliament had been
instrumental in creating Elizabeth’s church settlement in 1559. The Act of
Supremacy gave her ‘full power and authority ... to visit, reform, redress,
order, correct and amend all such errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences,
contempts and enormities whatsoever’. Taken literally, Elizabeth might have
argued that this indeed gave her sole right to determine church affairs without
parliamentary interference. But if parliament conferred such power, parliament
could abrogate it. She thus continued to base her claims to sole jurisdiction
over church matters on her prerogative. Here were the germs of a constitutional
conflict about the very nature of sovereign power: did it lie with the crown
acting alone or on the basis of the crown in parliament?
The
Business of Parliaments
The
research of the past generation has undoubtedly provided us with a more rounded
picture of the work of parliament. Neale’s two volume history touched on only
50 Acts, but in fact there are some 930 bills known to have been introduced, and
of these 433 made it to the statute book – on average just over 30 per
session. Most began life in the Commons and went through a settled procedure.
Some historians have claimed that the Commons was inefficient. In 1593, for
example, 73 per cent of the Bills introduced in the Lords were enacted compared
with only 30 per cent in the Commons. But it could be that the Commons was an
increasingly popular and more logical starting point for legislation and that it
was simply overwhelmed by the volume of business proposed. The 1572 parliament,
for example, met for approximately 150 hours in total, and half the time was
given over to discussing the fate of Mary Stuart and the Duke of Norfolk. Even
so, 11 Bills were passed and up to 70 considered. What parliament needed was
what the Queen was loath to allow – longer sessions.
A
good deal of the significant business discharged in parliaments concerned social
and economic questions. Here was an institution responding to ills in an ad hoc
fashion. Noteworthy is the 1563 Statute of Artificers, which attempted to
legislate on the giving or receiving of excessive wages in the wake of
substantial depopulation during the 1550s. The alleged evils of enclosure were
also a frequent target for legislation. A more recent but growing concern was
poverty: the reign culminated with the great consolidating Poor Law Acts of 1598
and 1601.
The
final two parliaments of the reign also concerned themselves with monopolies.
These were licences granted by royal prerogative which allowed the recipient to
trade in specific goods at prices fixed by them. For Elizabeth, the practice
yielded useful revenue but her subjects’ view of monopolists was forcibly
expressed by the Member who described them as ‘bloodsuckers of the
commonwealth’. In the face of such round condemnation - which again raised the
issue of the relationship of statute law to the royal prerogative - Elizabeth
cancelled 12, including those on salt, vinegar and brushes.
Such
controversies, however, were untypical. About 40 per cent of the Acts passed
each session were local in nature or concerned the rights of an individual.
Arguments were more likely to arise over the order of business rather than the
business itself. The controlling influence of the Speaker and privy council MPs
meant that royal business took priority. Thereafter much depended upon the
strength of a local lobby - the City of London was an important one, the city
having four MPs - or the ability to influence the key figures. The Commons’
Clerk and the Speaker were regular recipients of gifts. Even the crown itself
could be brought into play in this legislative game through use of the veto. In
most instances when it was exercised - up to 56 of the 66 occasions - Elizabeth
was, to use modern parlance, being used as an access point in the system by
those who had failed to stop something elsewhere. In 1597 for example, she
vetoed a Bill to regulate baize-making in Essex and Suffolk. It is difficult to
imagine that any great personal or constitutional issue was at stake.
Conclusions:
Reinstating the Politics
There
will never be agreement as to the precise role and importance of parliaments in
Elizabethan England. The reason is substantially evidential. Private diaries are
sparse for much of the reign. One reason why the 1590s seem more heated may be
that Hayward Townend MP wrote an account of the last four parliaments. This is a
far cry from today’s intensive media coverage of parliamentary affairs.
At
present, it can be said that the revisionists have performed an important
service in helping us to understand complexities in the workings of parliament
whilst giving full attention to areas of its work earlier twentieth-century
historians neglected. The danger is that, in so doing, they have downplayed the
significance of the political debates which they accused their predecessors of
exaggerating. Heated debates do not have to be frequent, let alone the norm, in
order to be significant. Perhaps, therefore, it is time to reinstate the
politics in the history of Elizabethan parliaments.
Remembering
the context in which the parliaments met is vital to this process. To view
Elizabeth’s reign as some general golden era is to adopt the judgement of
posterity. Those at the head of affairs could be forgiven for thinking that they
were living through years of semi-permanent crisis in which great fundamental
issues were at stake. All this was faithfully reflected in the parliaments: for
example, the church settlement (1559), the Queen’s marriage and the succession
(1563-7), religious reform (1571), Mary Stuart (1572, 1586-7), the catholic
mission and anti-catholic legislation (1581) and war with Spain (1589, 1593). It
was inevitable that such issues generated debate and disagreement.
But
what sort of disagreement? Neale spoke of ‘opposition’. That is too strong
and loaded a word. I would venture ‘tension’ as a more illuminating term.
This tension was sometimes the product of substantial differences, for instance
about the desirability or pace of further reform in the church or the use of
monopolies. More commonly, though, it was tension born of frustration,
particularly over Elizabeth’s failure to act decisively with respect to Mary
Stuart or the succession. For her part Elizabeth was mindful of provoking
international action against England or of creating a reversionary interest.
There was much to be said for inaction. But in the event of Elizabeth’s
untimely death, procrastination might prove fatal for the realm. At stake was
the very survival of protestant England. The tension, in other words, was
generated by MPs’ strength of loyalty towards the state, not from a desire to
share in the government. Peter Wentworth for once did speak for all when he said
with respect to the succession that, ‘It importeth more than all the
members’ heads and ten thousand more be worth.’
In
face of such fears and anxieties, Neale’s conclusion of over half a century
ago, that these preoccupations ‘hurried on the growth of the house of commons
as a hot-house hastens the growth of a plant’, does not seem so very
unreasonable.
Issues to
Debate
How
important a part did parliament play in the government of Tudor England?
What
are the pros and cons of comparing Elizabethan parliaments with their modern
equivalent?
Why
have views on this topic changed so much and aroused such heated debate?
Further
Reading
Patrick
Collinson, Elizabethans (Hambledon, 2003)
G.
R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559-1581 (Cambridge University Press,
1986)
Michael
A. R. Graves, Elizabethan Parliaments 1559-1601 (Longman, second edition, 1996)
Christopher
Haigh, Elizabeth I (Longman, 1988)
J.
E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments (Jonathan Cape, 2 vols, 1953-7)
Keith
Randell, Elizabeth I and the Government of England (Hodder and Stoughton, 1994)
Penry
Williams, The Later Tudors (Oxford, 1995)
Also
very useful is John Guy’s website at www.tudors.org
The
Parliaments
1.
January-May 1559 (dissolved)
2.
12 January-10 April 1563 (prorogued); 30 September 1566-2
January 1567 (dissolved)
3.
2 April-29 May 1571 (dissolved)
4.
8 May-30 June 1572 (prorogued); 8 February-15 March 1576
(prorogued); 16 January-18 March 1581 (dissolved)
5.
23 November 1584-29 March 1585 (dissolved)
6.
29 October 1586-23 March 1587 (dissolved)
7.
4 February-29 March 1589 (dissolved)
8.
19 February-10 April 1593 (dissolved)
9.
24 October 1597-9 February 1598 (dissolved)
10. 27 October-19 December 1601 (dissolved)
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