Parliament of England

Parliament of England is the arena in which the novel’s struggle over church, crown, and law becomes a sequence of practical measures rather than a single declaration. Its proceedings allow Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell to contest Rome’s jurisdiction, press the clergy into submission, reshape succession, and make royal authority enforceable across the realm. Yet the institution’s reach is also the subject of argument: Cromwell treats Parliament as the legislative voice through which kingship is constituted, while Thomas More insists that Parliament cannot command spiritual jurisdiction.

Composition, Leverage, and Political Method

The Commons is not portrayed as an assembly independent of court power. Seats are largely controlled by lords, bishops, and the king, and a small number of electors generally comply when pressured from above. Rafe Sadler’s election for Taunton, on territory associated with Thomas Wolsey, depends on approval from both Henry and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. The episode establishes the setting in which Cromwell works: parliamentary representation can be negotiated through patronage and royal consent, while political intelligence about a nobleman’s intentions matters as much as the formal business of a session.

Parliament nevertheless gives that pressure an institutional form. In the winter of 1529–spring 1530, Cromwell has entered the new Parliament after sending Rafe to sound out Norfolk. The episode places his parliamentary advancement within the unsettled aftermath of Wolsey’s fall: Norfolk believes Wolsey has hidden treasure and suspects Cromwell knows its whereabouts, while Cromwell must manage the duke’s possible attempt to recruit him. Court access, factional calculation, and parliamentary membership are therefore interwoven from the outset.

Challenging Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction

In early 1532, Parliament’s business is to overcome the bishops’ resistance to Henry’s new order. A proposed body of legislation would reduce revenues sent to Rome and give practical substance to the king’s supremacy in the church. The Commons drafts a petition against the church courts, attacking their arbitrary procedures and questioning not merely their jurisdiction but their continued existence. Cromwell works through the papers overnight with Rafe and Thomas Wriothesley, revising the text and identifying opposition. Stephen Gardiner, although the king’s Secretary, leads the prelates against the measures, bringing the constitutional conflict into the king’s immediate political circle.

The Commons also considers the payment of annates to Rome. Cromwell proposes an unusual division: members physically separate according to whether they support or oppose the bill. Henry attends, watches, and learns who is on each side before giving Cromwell a grim sign of approval. The tactic makes parliamentary alignment visible and helps the king identify opponents. In the House of Lords, however, the same method cannot carry the case; Henry must attend in person three times to argue it. The contrast shows how parliamentary procedure depends on the composition and political confidence of each chamber, and how the monarch’s direct presence may be needed where ministerial tactics prove insufficient.

The confrontation with the church also becomes a contest over who may legislate. On 15 May, the bishops submit to the king: they agree not to make new church legislation without royal licence, to submit existing laws to a commission including laymen and royal appointees, and not to meet in Convocation without permission. The agreement places ecclesiastical lawmaking under royal supervision and opens it to parliamentary and lay involvement. Parliament’s role is thus not confined to passing statutes; it is part of a larger transfer of authority over the rules by which the church governs itself.

Royal Supremacy, Revenue, and the Reach of Law

In 1534, Cromwell explains royal authority to Henry through the political arguments of Marsiglio of Padua. In this account, Christ did not give the Pope or other churchmen the right to rule, tax, or legislate over earthly subjects. Priests remain subjects; the secular prince governs, including questions of marriage and legitimacy; and the prince’s authority is exercised through a legislative body acting for the citizens. Cromwell tells Henry that kingship derives from the people’s will expressed in Parliament. He also reassures the king that this theory does not authorize rebellion against a lawful monarch.

The argument connects constitutional authority to control of church property. Cromwell maintains that grants of land, monopolies, offices, and promotions belong to secular power, and that a legislative body should provide for clergy before using church wealth for the public good. Henry quickly imagines the destruction of shrines, while Cromwell had intended to guide him through a more intricate legal process of reclaiming what he presents as ancient sovereign rights. The episode captures the novel’s account of institutional change: an argument about jurisdiction can lead to questions of revenue and property, and those questions can in turn prompt a more radical policy than the minister initially proposed.

The practical administration of royal power accompanies these constitutional claims. Cromwell prepares a concise memorandum for Henry setting out the sources of yearly revenue and the government offices through which that income passes. He also visits the Mint, proposes checks on the weight of the coinage, and seeks to make English money reliable to overseas merchants. Parliament’s authority in the novel is therefore connected to the administrative and financial capacity needed to carry decisions into effect: statutes and claims of jurisdiction depend upon offices, records, revenue, and measures capable of being enforced.

Succession, Oaths, and the Limits of Parliamentary Power

Parliament becomes central to the planned succession of Anne Boleyn’s children. In 1534, Cromwell drafts an oath of loyalty to Henry and the expected child, intending it to be administered in every town and village to men and to women of consequence, including widows with inheritances and landowners. He sees the task as a test of language made effective through law: the oath must reach beyond court and Parliament to people who may barely know Anne Boleyn. The proposed undertaking binds local subjects to a dynastic settlement through a repeated act of sworn allegiance.

The novel also distinguishes between the legal validity of Parliament’s decisions and their acceptance by those affected. When Mary Tudor asks how Parliament can lawfully exclude her from the succession, Cromwell replies that it is lawful if Parliament makes it so. He grounds the answer in the institution’s legislative authority, while Mary invokes a law above Parliament, the law of God. Their exchange makes succession more than a family dispute: it exposes competing accounts of the source and limits of law, and the consequences of treating parliamentary enactment as decisive.

The same conflict sharpens around Thomas More. When Richard Riche reports a conversation in which More accepted, as a hypothetical, that Parliament could make Riche king, but denied that Parliament could make God other than God, Cromwell recognizes the distinction More is drawing. More argues that a temporal jurisdiction may be altered by Parliament, whereas spiritual jurisdiction lies beyond the realm and cannot be exercised by it. Cromwell considers whether this position amounts to denying the king’s title, but the distinction leaves a difficult question of proof: whether More has committed treason through a malicious denial or merely expressed a view in conversation. Parliament’s authority is asserted forcefully, but the novel does not make the conflict between statute and conscience disappear.

The Institution’s Contested Legacy

The legislative programme culminates in measures that define the king’s status and the penalties attached to dissent. The Act of Supremacy states that Henry is, and always has been, head of the church; a further enactment broadens treason to include denying his titles or jurisdiction, or speaking or writing maliciously against him. Cromwell presents the treason measure as clarification of existing common law rather than as a wholly new principle. Its effect, however, is to make words about royal authority legally consequential, reaching preachers and friars who challenge the king’s jurisdiction or dispute the succession.

Parliament’s importance lies in this accumulation of functions. It contests the jurisdiction of church courts, regulates the clergy, redirects the resources of the church, articulates the basis of royal supremacy, and legislates on succession and treason. At the same time, the institution’s authority remains politically pressured and philosophically disputed: its decisions can define temporal status and obligations, but More’s resistance insists that Parliament’s reach cannot settle every claim of spiritual law. The novel presents Parliament both as an instrument of royal consolidation and as the contested forum in which the boundaries of that consolidation are argued.