History of the English People, Volume 4

THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION

1540-1553

Cromwell and the Monarchy.

At the death of Cromwell the success of his policy was complete. The Monarchy had reached the height of its power. The old liberties of England lay prostrate at the feet of the king. The Lords were cowed and spiritless; the House of Commons was filled with the creatures of the Court and degraded into an engine of tyranny. Royal proclamations were taking the place of parliamentary legislation; royal benevolences were encroaching more and more on the right of parliamentary taxation. Justice was prostituted in the ordinary courts to the royal will, while the boundless and arbitrary powers of the royal Council were gradually superseding the slower processes of the Common Law. The religious changes had thrown an almost sacred character over the “majesty” of the king. Henry was the Head of the Church. From the primate to the meanest deacon every minister of it derived from him his sole right to exercise spiritual powers. The voice of its preachers was the echo of his will. He alone could define orthodoxy or declare heresy. The forms of its worship and belief were changed and rechanged at the royal caprice. Half of its wealth went to swell the royal treasury, and the other half lay at the king’s mercy. It was this unprecedented concentration of all power in the hands of a single man that overawed the imagination of Henry’s subjects. He was regarded as something high above the laws which govern common men. The voices of statesmen and priests extolled his wisdom and authority as more than human. The Parliament itself rose and bowed to the vacant throne when his name was mentioned. An absolute devotion to his person replaced the old loyalty to the law. When the Primate of the English Church described the chief merit of Cromwell, it was by asserting that he loved the king “no less than he loved God.”