Historical counterfactuals are invariably
entertaining, and occasionally instructive.
As a Catholic, I’ve become familiar with certain counterfactuals regarding
the English Reformation—What if Catherine had been able to bear a healthy
son? What if Henry had died before his
divorce? What if Mary had conceived, or
Elizabeth married a Catholic (a prospect which at times she did contemplate, to
the alarm of certain hardliners in her court)?
But these are counterfactuals
involving matters largely outside of human control; they ask, in essence, What if God had chosen to intervene here? Perhaps a more interesting kind of historical
counterfactual—more interesting, because it tells us something about the power
and responsibility which human beings have in making history—arises in David
Loades’s Tudor Government.
By 1536 there was no doubt that
the Reformation parliament had trespassed upon hitherto forbidden ground. Why so
conservative a body should have leant itself to a revolutionary programme of
action requires some explanation, because the whole subsequent course of
English government was altered by the events of these years. The habit of obedience was deeply engrained,
and both Henry VIII and his father had made effective use of the
fifteenth-century wars to discourage opposition. It was also generally recognized that the
king needed a male heir. Anti-clericalism
in the traditional sense, and disillusionment with a papacy which had consistently
failed to provided [sic] the English church with a much-needed programme of
reform, also made their contribution.
But the most important factor was
probably a deeply rooted scepticism about the king’s intentions. Once Catherine had gone and the succession
issue had been resolved, no one really
believed that Henry would persist with his ecclesiastical supremacy. … the rhetoric was not taken seriously, and
neither individual lords nor members of the Commons were prepared to risk their
lives and fortunes for a cause which would be restored by negotiation as soon
as it suited Henry’s convenience. That
may even have been the king’s original intention, since his own cast of
mind was a conservative as any. However, by the summer of 1536 he had
changed his opinion. With a capacity for self-persuasion which
was typical of him, he had become convinced that the royal supremacy did indeed
represent the way in which God intended his church to be run, and when both
Catherine and Anne were dead, he declined to renegotiate his relations with the
pope. By then it was also beginning to
occur to his parliamentary accomplices that there were great possibilities for
their own profit in the new situation, and by the time Cromwell had fallen in
1540 the king’s right to govern the church had been accepted by the vast majority
of his subjects. In doing that they
sanctioned the new role which parliament had adopted in the affairs of the
kingdom.
In 1565 Sir Thomas Smith
summarized parliament’s functions in sweeping terms:
The
Parliament abrogateth old laws, maketh newe, giveth orders for thinges past,
and for thinges hereafter to be followed, changeth rights and possessions of
private men, legitimateth bastards, establisheth forms of religion, altereth
weights and measures, giveth forms of succession to the Crown, defineth of
doubtful rights whereof is no law already made, appointeth subsidies, tallies,
taxes and impositions, giveth most free pardons and absolutions, restoreth in
blood and name as the highest court, condemneth or absolveth them whom the
prince will put to that trial. And, to
be short, all that ever the people of Rome might do either in Centuriatis comitiis or tributis, the same may be done by the
Parliament of England.
From
being a specialized instrument, used for a limited number of purposes, statute had
become the standard means of authorization for all types of business. In 1536 statute abolished the ancient
franchises of the Welsh marches, reduced Wales to shire ground, and conferred
parliamentary representation upon the new counties. In the same year all religious houses worth
less than £200 per annum were delivered into the king’s hand, and in 1539 the
Act of Six Articles laid down a standard of orthodoxy for the English
church. A decade earlier none of these
things could have been done. Had a Succession Act been a viable option
in 1527, the king’s Great Matter might never have come about. By the time he died Henry had rearranged the
succession three times by that means, and in 1571 parliament was to declare it
to be high treason to deny the authority of statue to determine the identity of
the next ruler. (Loades, 44-5).
What might have been here belongs
clearly to the area of human choice and political determination. Ironically, had England possessed a more centralized
government to begin with, one that recognized the king’s power in parliament to
do pretty much as he willed, Henry might well have been able simply to declare
one of his illegitimate children, or a nephew or cousin, his heir (though his
own considerable pride would perhaps have stood in the way of that
recourse). On the other hand, had Henry
been less “self-persuasive”, or members of parliament more clear-sighted, it
would have been possible at multiple points throughout Henry’s reign to set
things right. Henry II, after all, as
well as John, had both run afoul of Rome before; and in the end both their
cases were resolved without serious damage to the English church. It
should be no surprise, even with the benefit of hindsight, that English
Catholics in those days largely shrugged, laid low, and assumed that everything
would return to normal soon enough.
