House of Commons

The House of Commons is presented as one of the two Houses of Parliament, alongside the House of Lords, and as a forum before which the Crown’s political claims could be advanced. Its clearest appearance comes during the attainder against the Plantagenet family: Thomas Cromwell offers an old badge as evidence, while the Houses’ subdued response leaves the accused exposed to punishment without trial or proof.

Institutional Setting

The book places the House of Commons within a Parliament where royal authority is being asserted over competing claims of law, church, and succession. Elsewhere in this political crisis, Henry VIII is described as claiming control over the Church in England, while Thomas More resigns rather than accept the new order. The Commons is not shown directing these developments; they form the larger context in which its parliamentary role becomes visible.

The account also distinguishes parliamentary action from other forms of royal command. In 1534, peers are summoned to the Privy Council at Westminster Palace to take the oath of succession. That episode concerns the nobility assembled before Thomas Cromwell, not a recorded proceeding of the House of Commons, and therefore does not establish that the Commons itself administered or debated the oath.

The Attainder Against the Plantagenet Family

When Parliament meets, Thomas Cromwell brings forward an Act of Attainder declaring members of the House of Plantagenet traitors. The measure strips them of property and disinherits their children, while the narrator emphasizes that the charges are made without trial or evidence. The Commons is named alongside the House of Lords as one of the Houses before which Cromwell’s case is presented.

Cromwell’s chief exhibit is a white-silk badge embroidered with the Five Wounds of Christ and a white rose, which he produces from a satchel. The badge had been given to Margaret Pole by Thomas Darcy and kept in an old box. Cromwell treats it as conclusive proof, although possessing such an emblem is not itself a crime and the scene supplies no further evidence of wrongdoing. The Houses barely respond. The passage does not specify a debate, vote, or separate declaration by the Commons, so its precise procedural action remains unstated.

Silence and Political Consequence

The Commons’ recorded silence is consequential precisely because the accusation is so weak. The narrator suggests that the members may be weary of repeated attainders or that some may have kept similar badges from the time of the northern pilgrimage. Whatever their reasons, their muted response does not prevent Margaret Pole and her grandson Harry from being held in the Tower at Henry VIII’s command, while Gertrude Courtenay and her young son are also detained.

The episode presents Parliament as a place where royal power can acquire the appearance of institutional process, even when the evidence described is plainly inadequate. Yet the account gives no grounds for treating the Commons as an active author of the charge or as having voiced support for it. Its importance lies in the gap between the grave consequences of the measure and the chamber’s near-silence: the institution is present, but the narrative records no effective resistance from it.