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  • Debate and Dissent in Henry VII's Parliaments*
  • P.R. Cavill

In the grand whig tradition of English history, the parliaments of Henry VII were a disappointing hiatus in the onward march of liberty towards parliamentary democracy.1 Bishop Stubbs identified the precocious parliaments of Henry IV as 'the Lancastrian constitutional experiment'; thereafter the power of parliament waned as England sank into the quagmire of civil war. The kingship to emerge after the demise of the Lancastrian monarchy was stronger but less constitutional: 'Servile as his parliaments were, [Edward IV] would rather rule without any such check.'2 The historical populariser J.R. Green characterized the reigns of the Yorkist and Tudor kings as a 'new monarchy'.3 This 'new monarchy' managed with as few parliaments as possible, rigorously controlled those sessions that it did summon, and aspired to govern without parliament altogether. In Green's view, 'Parliamentary life is almost suspended, or is turned into a form by the overpowering influence of the Crown.'4 This interpretation slotted neatly into the whig view of English history: 'the medieval origin of modern political liberty, the serious threat to that liberty during . . . the "New Monarchy," and, finally, the restoration of that liberty in the 17th century with the aid of the "great precedent" from medieval history'.5

In this whig interpretation the 'new monarchy' has fared better than other components. In 1938 K.B. McFarlane dismissively commented that England's only 'new monarchy' had been introduced in 1066, and thus rejected Green's thesis of parliamentary decline.6 Yet subsequent authors have been more willing to resuscitate the [End Page 160] idea of a 'new monarchy', although usually without Green's pejorative connotations.7 Little scrutiny has been made of Green's claims about parliament, however. What work has been conducted has tended to reinforce the sense of a quiescent Commons, packed with royal servants and managed by a Speaker who was a royal nominee.8Faute de mieux, interpretations of Henry VII's parliaments are still descended from Green and Stubbs: in 1991 it was stated that 'The king's control of parliament was at this period almost total.'9 'Complaisance' remains the hallmark of Henry's parliaments.10 This essay therefore sets out to reconsider one aspect of the 'new monarchy' thesis: that in Henry VII's parliaments debate was redundant, dissent impossible to express.11

The principal records of parliamentary business are the parliament rolls.12 The rolls do not provide a comprehensive account of what happened in a parliament. What was entered had changed over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.13 In the mid-fifteenth century the rolls contained a selective account of parliamentary business. Thereafter they became increasingly a record of acts passed, which may explain why a separate statute roll ceased to be drawn up.14 In Henry VII's reign the rolls scarcely record parliamentary activity which did not result in legislation. For the first session of the 1485-6 parliament, the roll reported the king's address, the request that he marry Elizabeth of York, and the taking of an oath to uphold the law.15 Thereafter of non-legislative business only opening proceedings, prorogations, and dissolutions were enrolled. The only speeches recorded on the parliament rolls are summaries of the opening sermons and the announcements of prorogations delivered [End Page 161] by the chancellor. The parliament rolls do not record debates, votes, or bills which failed to be enacted. For evidence of these we have to search elsewhere.

There are no journals of proceedings in the Lords or in the Commons for Henry's reign. The only day-by-day account to have survived is the diary of the first session of Henry's first parliament written by the burgesses of Colchester, Thomas Christmas and John Vertue, which was entered in the borough's 'Red Paper Book'.16 A list of bills read in the parliament of 1495 survives. It names 13 bills which did not succeed.17 In the National Archives there are three classes of parliamentary bills and petitions from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.18 Not all of these bills and petitions were successful, and not...

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