History of the English People, Volume IV | Page 3

growing despotism of the Crown. The policy of Cromwell fell in with
this revival of the two Houses. The daring of his temper led him not to
dread and suppress national institutions, but to seize them and master
them, and to turn them into means of enhancing the royal power. As he
saw in the Church a means of raising the king into the spiritual ruler of
the faith and consciences of his people, so he saw in the Parliament a
means of shrouding the boldest aggressions of the monarchy under the
veil of popular assent, and of giving to the most ruthless acts of
despotism the stamp and semblance of law. He saw nothing to fear in a
House of Lords whose nobles cowered helpless before the might of the
Crown, and whose spiritual members his policy was degrading into
mere tools of the royal will. Nor could he find anything to dread in a
House of Commons which was crowded with members directly or
indirectly nominated by the royal Council. With a Parliament such as
this Cromwell might well trust to make the nation itself through its very
representatives an accomplice in the work of absolutism.
[Sidenote: Growth of Parliamentary power.]
His trust seemed more than justified by the conduct of the Houses. It
was by parliamentary statutes that the Church was prostrated at the feet
of the Monarchy. It was by bills of attainder that great nobles were
brought to the block. It was under constitutional forms that freedom
was gagged with new treasons and oaths and questionings. One of the
first bills of Cromwell's Parliaments freed Henry from the need of
paying his debts, one of the last gave his proclamations the force of
laws. In the action of the two Houses the Crown seemed to have
discovered a means of carrying its power into regions from which a
bare despotism has often had to shrink. Henry might have dared
single-handed to break with Rome or to send Sir Thomas More to the
block. But without Parliament to back him he could hardly have

ventured on such an enormous confiscation of property as was involved
in the suppression of the monasteries or on such changes in the national
religion as were brought about by the Ten Articles and the Six. It was
this discovery of the use to which the Houses could be turned that
accounts for the immense developement of their powers, the immense
widening of their range of action, which they owe to Cromwell. Now
that the great engine was at his own command, he used it as it had
never been used before. Instead of rare and short assemblies of
Parliament, England saw it gathered year after year. All the jealousy
with which the Crown had watched its older encroachments on the
prerogative was set aside. Matters which had even in the days of their
greatest influence been scrupulously withheld from the cognizance of
the Houses were now absolutely forced on their attention. It was by
Parliament that England was torn from the great body of Western
Christendom. It was by parliamentary enactment that the English
Church was reft of its older liberties and made absolutely subservient to
the Crown. It was a parliamentary statute that defined the very faith and
religion of the land. The vastest confiscation of landed property which
England had ever witnessed was wrought by Parliament. It regulated
the succession to the throne. It decided on the validity of the king's
marriages and the legitimacy of the king's children. Former sovereigns
had struggled against the claim of the Houses to meddle with the royal
ministers or with members of the royal household. Now Parliament was
called on by the king himself to attaint his ministers and his Queens.
[Sidenote: The New Nobles.]
The fearlessness and completeness of such a policy as this brings home
to us more than any other of his plans the genius of Cromwell. But its
success depended wholly on the absolute servility of Parliament to the
will of the Crown, and Cromwell's own action made the continuance of
such a servility impossible. The part which the Houses were to play in
after years shows the importance of clinging to the forms of
constitutional freedom, even when their life is all but lost. In the
inevitable reaction against tyranny they furnish centres for the reviving
energies of the people, while the returning tide of liberty is enabled
through their preservation to flow quietly and naturally along its

traditional channels. And even before Cromwell passed to his doom the
tide of liberty was returning. On one occasion during his rule a "great
debate" on the suppression of the lesser monasteries showed that
elements of resistance still survived; and these elements developed
rapidly as the power of the Crown declined