Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

sanction of Parliament, supposing no expense to be incurred. Henry adopted the more constitutional course of preferring a legislative proceeding. Indeed he appears in some sort to have acknowledged the Parliament's right to legislate upon this subject; for he obtained an Act empowering the King in Council to make regulations touching the coin, which should have force until the beginning of the next session.'

But the most important event for the constitutionat least the most remarkable homage to its principles, and which affords the most striking proof that these were both understood and acknowledged-was the solemn pledge given by the Crown to the Commons, in answer to their prayer for a recognition of "the right at all times possessed by them" (such is their language) of not being bound by any laws to which their previous assent had not been fully given. The answer returned, though it be subject to observation, plainly enough admits the right of the Commons, and pledges the Crown that no Act shall ever pass without their authority. It must be remembered that, under the Edwards, not only had this most important principle never been admitted: it had been constantly violated. There had however been, at the beginning of Henry IV.'s reign, a recognition of it nearly as full as that made by his son.3

Rot. Par. iv. 35. This Statute does not appear in the Statutes of the Realm published by the Commissioners. The 2 Hen. V. St. 2, c. 4, relates to the coin; but is wholly different from the one cited in the text from Rot. Par.

2 Rot. Par. iv. 22.

See Note XLV.

[blocks in formation]

It was another homage to the supremacy of Parliament, that Henry laid before them his treaties with foreign States, and called for their sanction to the compacts which he had made by virtue of a prerogative to this day vested in the Crown, and constantly exercised. Not only did he thus act in his great treaty for uniting the monarchies of France and England under one crown (here it may be supposed that requiring a Parliamentary recognition was a matter of course), but his alliance with Sigismund belonged to a different class altogether, and yet the treaty, offensive and defensive, with that Prince was submitted to the approval of Parliament. This practice prevailed in foreign countries which had States to assist in the Government; and Henry may possibly have adopted it in imitation of their proceedings, as well as in token of his good will towards his own Parliament.

It is hardly correct to regard the legislative promises which are made at the beginning of a reign, and before the Sovereign's power is fully consolidated, or his scheme of policy matured, as illustrating his character, or perhaps as in all instances proceeding from himself. In the times, especially, of which we speak, the Parliament generally availed themselves of the demise of the Crown to obtain some favourite measure. We ought hardly then to regard as Henry's acts two important laws passed immediately after his accession: the one requiring that knights of the shire and members for cities and boroughs should be resident inhabitants, and that only resident freeholders

2

should vote in counties; the other restraining the power of royal purveyors by attaching a severe penalty to the exacting for the appointed prices more grain than the standard quantity of eight bushels a quarter. The former Act was in all probability inoperative, unless in so far as it may have prevented the abuse of absent freeholders voting; for in the Acts of the next reign, confining the elective franchise to forty-shilling freeholders, residence is still more especially required both of the knights and the electors, and yet we know that it never has been considered as within the exigency of those important statutes. The Act restraining the malversation of purveyors was of great moment; for these had been used to require much more than the quantities specified to be furnished at given prices; consequently purveyance, always oppressive, had become intolerable.

3

But though the merit of these reforms in the State may not have been Henry's, certainly to him, next after the Lollards, we must ascribe whatever was done to correct abuses in the Church. Two classes of these had, probably in consequence of the progress made by the new doctrines, early forced themselves upon his attention; and the desire which he showed to repress them deserves the greater commendation because his whole policy, like that of his father (at least ever after his usurpation), was framed upon the plan of gaining the clergy. The non-residence of incumbents

11 Hen. V. c. 1.
21 Hen. V. c. 2.
38 Hen. VI. c. 7; 10 Hen. VI. c. 2.

was one ground of complaint; the dissolute lives of the friars, especially the Benedictines, was another. These, and almost all other abuses in the Romish Church of which the Lollards complained, had been very fully and indeed unsparingly set forth in a petition to the King from the University of Oxford, and made the ground of a prayer that, "as Providence had raised him up like another Constantine, Marcius, or Theodosius, so he would employ his power for effecting a reformation of the evils detailed." The papal encroachments, too, had become intolerable, setting at defiance the laws made under Edward III. and Richard II. to restrain them. These matters were made the subject of urgent remonstrance by Henry's representatives at the Council of Constance, as soon as Martin V. was chosen; and a Concordat was made by him in which he agreed to remove many grounds of complaint. Cardinals were only to be appointed with consent of a majority in the conclave; diocesans were to inquire into abuses in the sale of indulgences, but chiefly of such indulgences as enabled parties to transfer their payments to other churches than their own; a check was given to the appropriation of benefices, and provision made for the performance of the services by vicars; finally, no new dispensations for plurality were to be granted by the Holy See, and none already granted for non-residence were to be valid. It is, however, certain, that

L'Enfant, Con. Const. ii. 483 (App.). Rym. ix. 730. Henry sent a mission in 1419 to Martin on this subject.

R

although it suited Martin's plans to gain over the English at the Council by such compliances, yet as soon as it was dissolved and he returned to Italy, the whole was forgotten, and the abuses went on much as before. He actually conferred the archbishopric of Canterbury on his nephew, a boy of fourteen, who also held by his uncle's appointment fourteen benefices in England; he induced priests to vacate their livings by providing them with secular employments; and he excluded the English from all dignities at the Court of Rome.' Henry does not appear to have followed up his proceedings which had obtained the Concordat by any remonstrances on the violation of its articles, and he showed so much favour to the Pope's nephew as to allow his holding the preferment bestowed on him. But his general course was to refuse all the formal concessions which the See of Rome required, and yet to permit its encroachments in a temporizing manner. Thus, when Martin asked him by his Nuncio "to explain, repeal, or modify" the Statutes of Provisors, complaining of them as a very great grievance, Henry made answer, that they had been passed neither by himself nor by his father, but by former kings, that he was bound by his coronation oath to execute them, and that without the consent of his three Estates in Parliament he could neither explain, nor repeal, nor modify them.* The Pope, however, went on appointing bishops; but as he named those elected by the Chapters Rym. ix. 806.

L'Enfant, ii. 227.

2

« ZurückWeiter »