Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

As Geoffrey Elton observed, Parliament was chief among the King’s ‘points of contact’ with his subjects. The frequent awkwardness and lack of co-operation in Parliamentary proceedings produced ultimate if grudging and ungracious consent. The relative stability of Tudor England was the product of ‘moderate contentment’. The King’s leading men were far more frequently Parliament men from the 1530s – more precisely, they became Commons men, if a peerage did not bar them and provide a seat in the other place. That produced a very different dynamic in the royal Council in the 1530s from the time of Henry VII or indeed the earlier years of Henry VIII, and matters did not change thereafter. From Thomas Cromwell’s time onwards, royal advisers mostly knew what it was to sit through the squabbles, the excitement and the tedium of a Tudor Parliamentary session. Other European rulers would have done well to foster such a political culture.48