Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/275

 the nation. A king who had over his parliaments the strong hold that Henry had, who could dictate to them the measures he wished to pass, even down to the smallest details, and even make them petition for acts when he was the only man in the kingdom that desired them, might, we think, have contented himself with taking money through the overawed or subservient Commons. But he did not; he chose to exact money by loan and then to come to the nation that lent the money for exoneration; the very fact that he went about the loan by exactly the same process of assessment and collection that he used in assessing and collecting a legal tax, shows that he saw what he was doing: he saw that he had the power, and he used it. Wolsey might dislike the idea of meeting a parliament that might speak unreservedly about himself; Henry had no such dislike; he could browbeat, or bribe, or bully, or divide, or balance parties, but he never could have doubted for a moment that in the end he should get his own way.

Next to taxation, perhaps even more important than taxation, was the right of legislation; legislation of the temporalty could at no time be carried through without the king's enacting words; and the submission of the clergy in 1533, embodied in the Statute of Appeals in 1534, had established the same rule for the spiritualty. But this did not content the Lion. In the Proclamation Act of 1539 the parliament is made to surrender to the king the power of legislation; as head on earth of the Church he might already issue, and had issued, proclamations touching Christian faith; and by the natural power of king he had issued proclamations for the public peace: but, O strange wilfulness of human nature! men had not much minded: these proclamations alike were set at nought by those who would not consider the divinity of royalty; therefore, lest the king should be tempted to become a tyrant, lest the king should be compelled by the wilfulness of his subjects to extend beyond their natural limits the liberty and supremacy of his royal power and dignity, what was to be done? Was he to renounce the power of proclaiming, and bind the parliament to codify the