Sir John Neale has shown how mistaken this view is: queen and Commons clashed frequently throughout the reign, but this did not prevent equally frequent co-operation. Secondly the conventional view supposes that serious conflict on the parliamentary stage is somehow normal: that "the Commons" misbehaved unless they opposed the Crown. This is nonsense. Parliament was part of the king's government, called to assist him by making grants and laws, but also designed to keep the Crown in touch with opinion and an accepted occasion for complaint and protest. It was, and is, a talking institution, a place for debate. The historian who supposed that debate must mean "inevitable conflict" had better investigate his subconscious.
British historian (1921–1994)
Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton FBA (born Gottfried Rudolf Otto Ehrenberg; 17 August 1921 – 4 December 1994) was a German-born British political and constitutional historian who specialised in the Tudor period. He taught at Clare College, Cambridge, and was the Regius Professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
Gottfried Rudolph Otto Ehrenberg
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Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton
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Geoffrey R. Elton
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G. R. Elton
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Geoffrey R Elton
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G R Elton
From Wikidata (CC0)
[Replying to the criticism of J. P. Cooper] I hope to show that he has arrived at a mistaken view from partial, and partially misinterpreted, evidence. In a field in which things are far from clear or straightforward this is neither surprising nor shocking; it is more disconcerting to find that one who so readily chastises others for their supposed failings should himself be strangely inclined to inaccuracy in discussing other people's views and even in transcribing documents. A self-appointed hound of heaven ought to be more precise in his quest.
The Reformation, then, was not the inevitable development of the text-books. Whether it would have come anyway it is idle to speculate; but it came in the 1530's simply because Henry's desire for his divorce was baulked by an international situation which made co-operation with the papacy impossible, and it came as it did because Thomas Cromwell produced a plan which achieved Henry's ends by destroying the papal power and jurisdiction in England and by creating in England an independent sovereign state. This policy was not present from the start; it had to overcome much caution and conservatism as well as fear of the consequences before its bold simplicity was permitted to develop. The Henrician Reformation reflects the ideas—one may say, the political philosophy—of Thomas Cromwell.
The Act in Restraint of Appeals to Rome was a government measure, affected slightly by opposition from the church and not at all by parliament. A proposal to authorize the archbishops by act of parliament to dissolve the king's marriage was soon replaced by a comprehensive attack on papal jurisdiction in England. In Cromwell's hands, the preamble turned into an unhesitating statement of the theory which underlay the whole practice of Henry VIII and his government: the theory of the imperial crown of England sovereign within its own realm over both laity and church.