Political effect of

mation.

it was to take place from without or from within, was now imminent.

The Reformation in England was the result of many conthe Refor flicting currents of interest. But we must look at the matter from the point of view of Parliamentary history. By the dissolution of the monasteries the Church lost much besides wealth; it lost social influence, for the monasteries had been the great educational centres and the great dispensers of charitable relief; it lost political influence when the mitred abbots no longer formed, as they had previously formed, a large number of the House of Lords.

Maintenance of

tional

forms by

the Tudors.

Thus many things combined to enhance the power of the Crown. The destruction of the baronage not only freed the king from men who might control his policy and action, but enabled him to fill the great offices of state with new men. The Council was changed in composition; the great nobles bore a small proportion to the officials on their promotion; it was changed in its mode of working, split into departments with special business assigned to them; it ceased to be a check upon royal power; it became instead a formidable instrument in the hands of the Crown. The breach with Rome placed the king at the head of the national church, and the spoils of the monasteries gave him an immense accession of wealth.

And yet in other ways the growing importance of Parliaconstitu- ment was noticeable. The two great Tudor monarchs, Henry VIII and Elizabeth, showed their statesmanship in nothing more conspicuously than in their acceptance of all the forms of the constitution. When Henry VIII obtained for his Proclamations the force of law, and was permitted to devise the Crown by will, these extraordinary powers were in each case conferred by Parliament and in statutory form. When Elizabeth desired to control the growing interest of the House of Commons in public affairs she packed the House with subservient members, representing small boroughs upon which she had conferred the franchise in order that they might return persons who would be under the influence of the court

or its ministers.

The Tudors were content with the substance

of power, and left to Parliament everything but the reality of control over legislation and policy.

The issues between the Stuarts and Parliament.

But this expedient for harmonising the wishes of the Disregard House of Commons with the action of the executive is of

of them

by the

itself an indication that a new struggle was beginning on Stuarts. the old ground. The Commons had begun to demand a voice in the general policy of the country, and to criticise the action of the executive in modern fashion. The first two Stuarts chafed at constitutional forms, and were incapable of a generous acceptance of a policy they disliked.

money

Chamber.

The practical issue between the Crown and the Commons Ship came to this, that the Crown claimed to tax without consent and the of Parliament, and to administer justice without the forms of Star law. Both parties appealed to the letter of old statutes, and neither seemed to see that with the change of times, and after the long lapse of political interest under the Tudors, the mediaeval constitution needed to be restated, or even recast, if the Commons were to resume their old place in political life.

The Petition of Right was the first attempt to restate the 1628. rules of constitutional liberty laid down in the Great Charter, but in defiance of its provisions Charles tried to dispense with Parliament in matters of taxation, and with the Courts of Law in matters of criminal justice. The Star Chamber, which acquired the coercive judicial powers of the Privy Council, had once been a useful means of bringing great offenders within the reach of the law by the strong arm of the executive. It now became an instrument of political and ecclesiastical tyranny, enabling the king to dispense with the forms of law where they were inconvenient, and to get the course of criminal justice into his hands.

Want of money brought the king back to Parliament at last, and the first acts of the Long Parliament were to sweep

Revenues

of the Crown in 1660.

away the criminal jurisdiction of the Privy Council, and to close every avenue against the raising of money by the Crown without the consent of the Commons. But the executive and the representative parts of the constitution had by this time. drifted too far apart, and the monarchical policy of the first Stuarts ended in the catastrophe of the Civil War and the premature reforms of the Commonwealth.

Relations of Crown and Parliament, 1660-1688.

The Restoration did not give back what the Long Parliament had taken away-the criminal jurisdiction of the Privy Council; nor did it revive what the Long Parliament had set at rest—the right of the Crown to raise money, whether by direct or by indirect taxation, without Parliamentary grant. The executive was weakened for the purposes of conflict with the legislature, but nothing was done to bring the ministers of the Crown into closer relation with the power which was fast becoming paramount in the constitution, the House of Commons.

In the reigns of the last two Stuarts one may summarise the relations of Parliament and the Crown somewhat as follows.

The king could set up no claim to raise money without consent of Parliament: he possessed a revenue roughly calculated at £1,250,000 a year arising from the crown-lands and the proceeds of certain duties; he employed such ministers as he pleased, subject to the risk of their being impeached by the House of Commons if they and the House came to hopeless variance; and he conducted the business of government in concert with an inner circle of the Privy Council, consisting of such persons as he might think likely to promote the despatch or enliven the progress of business. Any increase in the productive power of the sources of the revenue went to the benefit of the Crown, which might to that extent Appropri- become independent of Parliament. Any increase in the supplies. liabilities of government beyond the ordinary revenue had to

ation of

be met by a subsidy, or extraordinary grant, from the Commons, and such grants were for the first time in the reign. of Charles II appropriated to the specific purposes for which they were made; that is to say, their use was limited to such purposes, and the money granted was not issued except under precautions that it should be so used. The Commons drew closer their control upon the action of the executive, but the periodical catastrophes of Charles the Second's reign-the exile of Clarendon, the impeachment of Danby-show how it was for a minister and a House of Commons to drift so far apart that no means were left for settling their disputes except recourse to violent measures.

easy

to har

executive and legis

The abortive Privy Council scheme of Sir William Temple Attempt in 1679 showed some consciousness of the risk arising from monise the slight correspondence between ministers and the Commons. The attempt to create an executive which should lature." represent all classes and opinions could hardly, have been. expected to succeed, but it was something that the constitutional problem should have been recognised though the solution was inadequate.

Taxation in Parliament and the free administration of The dispensing

justice had been secured by the Long Parliament; the last power.

of the Stuarts revived an earlier claim of the Crown to independent legislative powers. The final struggle arose out of the attempt of James II to annul, of his own authority, statutes which had been thought essential to the security of the Protestant religion. The issue between the first Stuart and his subjects turned on the security of person and property, the right of the king to tax without Parliament and imprison without legal sentence. The issue between the last Stuart and his subjects turned on the king's right to suspend the law at his pleasure and by his individual act. The offer of the crown to William and Mary, their acceptance of it, and the codification in the Bill of Rights of the limitations on the royal prerogative, mark the beginning of the modern constitution.

Altered conception of royalty.

Mediaeval royalty.

The Modern Constitution.

But the Bill of Rights is more than a summary of constitutional rules; it practically settles a number of disputed questions of principle. In opposition to the doctrine that the Crown was a piece of real property which could never be without an owner, it declares the throne vacant. In opposition to the doctrine that the succession to the throne was a matter of divine indefeasible hereditary right, it regulates that succession. In opposition to the doctrine of passive obedience, it affixes conditions to the tenure of the Crown.

The Bill of Rights is perhaps the nearest approach to a constitutional code which we possess, but it does not profess to be a written constitution. It merely states the points which had been from time to time in issue between the Crown and its subjects since the reign of Edward I, and on all points it declares in favour of the nation and against the Crown.

The Act of Settlement, which provided that the judges should no longer hold office at the pleasure of the Crown, and so took the control of justice from the hands of the king, was a fitting supplement to the constitutional provisions of the Bill of Rights.

This summary of constitutional rules, setting at rest matters which had long been a source of difference, represents the legal result of the Revolution. The process by which the crown was offered to William and Mary by the representatives of the estates of the realm is evidence of an altered conception of royalty which has practically determined the development of constitutional usage since 1688. It is worth considering how this conception of royalty has gradually been arrived at.

Feudalism, which linked political power with the holding of land, had found the king a tribal chief, had made him the ultimate landlord of every man, and had turned sovereignty into a piece of real property, the rights to which were regulated by the feudal land-law. The practice of Commendation, where fealty was to be rendered on one side and