English Parliament

Parliament of England is the principal legislative arena through which Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell seek to reorder England’s relations with the Church, Rome, and the succession. The novel presents it neither as an independent modern legislature nor as a mere instrument: its membership depends on power at court, its procedures can expose and divide opposition, and its acts become the focus of disputes over who has authority to make law.

Membership and Political Leverage

In the winter of 1529–spring 1530, the Commons is depicted as a body whose seats are largely controlled by lords, bishops, and the king. Elections are few, and electors under pressure from above generally do as they are told. Cromwell sends Rafe Sadler to sound out the Duke of Norfolk’s intentions and help secure a seat for him. Rafe obtains Taunton, territory associated with Thomas Wolsey, with the king’s and Norfolk’s assent. The episode makes the practical precondition of parliamentary action plain: before Cromwell can influence legislation, court patronage must make his presence in the Commons possible.

Norfolk tells Cromwell that he must take instructions from both the king and the duke. Cromwell asks whether those instructions will agree; Norfolk’s reaction suggests the answer may be no. The exchange establishes Parliament as a place where royal policy and aristocratic interests meet, but do not necessarily coincide. Cromwell’s own earlier opposition to the king’s war with France also remains politically relevant: Norfolk warns that Henry remembers it, so a member’s position in Parliament can follow him into later negotiations at court.

From Church Grievance to Parliamentary Action

By early 1532, Parliament is a working instrument in the effort to challenge ecclesiastical jurisdiction and reduce Rome’s authority in England. In the Commons, a petition attacks the church courts as arbitrary and presumptuous, questioning both the reach and the very existence of their jurisdiction. Cromwell works through the papers overnight with Rafe Sadler and Thomas Wriothesley, adding amendments and identifying resistance. Stephen Gardiner, despite serving as the king’s Secretary, is drawn into leading the opposing prelates.

The debate is not only about particular church practices; it concerns which authority can govern the clergy. Henry presses Gardiner to answer whether the clergy are his subjects if they take an oath to support the Pope. Cromwell’s treatment of the question is institutional: he wants to overcome opposition through argument and legislation, not simply by defeating opponents personally. The account of the Commons’ petition therefore links parliamentary procedure to a larger contest over jurisdiction between the Crown and the Church.

A related measure seeks to suspend payment of annates to Rome. Cromwell proposes an unusual division in the Commons, asking members to separate according to whether they support or oppose the bill. The king attends and watches, learning who stands with him; afterward he gives Cromwell a nod of approval. The same tactic does not work in the Lords, where Henry must appear in person three times to argue the case. Parliament thus offers different forms of leverage in its two chambers: a visible division can disclose alignments in the Commons, while opposition among aristocratic families in the Lords requires direct royal intervention.

Legislation, Sovereignty, and the Limits of Authority

The novel places parliamentary law within a wider argument about the source and limits of political power. When Katherine of Aragon challenges Cromwell’s role in drafting laws against the Church, she points to legislation that accuses the clergy of complicity in the same offence used against Wolsey and demands more than one hundred thousand pounds. Cromwell calls the payment a benevolence; Katherine calls it extortion. Their disagreement shows how the language of government can present a transfer of money either as a lawful contribution or as coercion, while the parliamentary process gives the Crown a means to advance its interpretation.

In 1534, Cromwell presents Henry with propositions from Marsiglio of Padua. As he expounds them, the argument locates the king’s authority in a legislative body acting for the people, rather than in a grant of power from the Pope. The novel also gives this theory a boundary: Parliament can legislate in temporal matters, but the dispute with Thomas More turns on whether it can determine spiritual jurisdiction. More argues that Parliament may name the king head of the Church in England as a matter of temporal jurisdiction, but cannot exercise spiritual jurisdiction that lies outside the realm. The conflict is consequently not just over which policy should prevail; it is over whether Parliament has competence to decide the question at all.

The distinction has immediate political force. Cromwell argues that Rome has no legitimate voice in England and that Parliament can state a position for the realm to endorse. Katherine, by contrast, insists that the Pope remains the head of the Church and that the king’s changes cannot remove England from the Church without endangering salvation. The competing claims reveal legal pluralism at the heart of the crisis: royal authority, parliamentary enactment, Church law, and papal jurisdiction are presented as rival sources of binding judgment.

Succession and the Oath

Parliament’s authority becomes especially consequential when Cromwell drafts legislation to secure the succession of Anne Boleyn’s children. The bill provides for a male heir lawfully begotten and addresses what is to happen if Anne dies or Henry has no son by a lawful wife. Its careful, impersonal wording excludes Mary Tudor from the line of succession without spelling out every consequence in personal terms. Anne objects that the draft anticipates her death and threatens her daughter’s claim; Cromwell answers that legislation must provide for possibilities, while Henry insists the provision is only notional.

Cromwell proposes that Parliament’s settlement be confirmed by an oath. He argues that an oath can answer those who might claim that Parliament was misled or lacked authority in matters supposedly reserved to Rome. His plan is to have the country endorse the settlement, not merely to rely on a vote in the Commons or the agreement of the king’s advisers. He insists that the oath of an ordinary Christian is as valid as a bishop’s and imagines it being administered across the country, including to women of consequence such as widows with inheritances and landowners. In this account, parliamentary legislation is not complete in practical terms until it is carried into communities through sworn consent.

That program also exposes the distance between formal law and the people expected to uphold it. Cromwell says that people can learn to read and that England can be otherwise; Gardiner challenges how many can be sworn, especially when many are poor or unable to read. The argument over the oath therefore concerns more than the succession: it tests whether the political community can be made to recognize Parliament’s authority beyond the court and the chambers at Westminster.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The novel repeatedly links Parliament’s decisions to changes in status and government. After a bill passes, Henry gives Cromwell the office of chancellor of the exchequer. Elsewhere, a parliamentary act of attainder is proposed as a way to address Elizabeth Barton and her supporters without a sprawling common-law trial. These episodes show that legislation serves distinct purposes: it can make a political settlement, assign consequences, and give the Crown a procedure suited to a case that ordinary law does not readily address.

Yet the reach of Parliament remains contested even after an act has been passed. More’s discussion with Richard Riche distinguishes temporal matters, which Parliament can determine, from spiritual jurisdiction, which More holds to be beyond its power. Cromwell recognizes the danger in turning that distinction into a treason charge: More has not plainly denied Parliament’s capacity, and the statement was made in a hypothetical discussion. The episode shows how a parliamentary claim can have consequences beyond the statute book, becoming a test of conscience and a possible basis for prosecution.

Parliament is thus the novel’s institutional hinge between argument and enforcement. Seats are secured through patronage; bills are drafted, amended, and divided; the king’s attendance and approval give proceedings political weight; and statutes may be followed by oaths that carry their claims into the country. But the same acts provoke resistance from the Church, the papacy, and those who distinguish parliamentary authority in temporal matters from divine or spiritual law. The result is not a single decisive settlement so much as a continuing struggle over who may speak for England and make that claim binding.