Parliament Flashcards
No. parliamentary sessions used to grant revenue
11/13
Function of parliament
Finance
Legislation (‘rubber stamp’ J Lingaard)
Point of communication between crown and nation
Called, prorogued and dissolved by monarch
No. Acts passed
438: divisions exception
Act of Exchange
1559: right to exchange church property in EI possession for temporal property in church possession
Reduced wealth of church, increased wealth of crown
Marian bishops deprived
1559: replaced with sympathetic replacements - links to Act of Exchange
Subsidy requests
1571, 1576, 1581
Financially favourable timing: no bad harvests until 1485
Monopolies
1597-01
First ignored. Conceded to Parliament 1601 promising to cancel and suspend some monopolies and investigate
Always present - ‘free patronage’ - issue result of socioeconomic unrest
Monopolies
1597-01
First ignored. Conceded to Parliament 1601 promising to cancel and suspend some monopolies and investigate
Always present - ‘free patronage’ - issue result of socioeconomic unrest
Monopolies Crisis: historiography
NEALE: clear evidence of organised rebellion against EI misuse of royal prerogative
GRAVES: spontaneous response to common grievance
Marriage/ succession
1563, 1566-67
Vetoed subject
Revisionist: pressure from Privvy Council; 1562 smallpox scare, petition drafted by council members, Cecil organised joint delegation
Monopolies: historiography
NEALE: Clear evidence of organised rebellion in Commons
GRAVES: “spontaneous response to a common grievance voiced by the governing class through its representatives” rather than any organised resistance or rebellion
Prerogative: Marriage/ succession
1563, 1566-67: to fund foreign policy
Revisionist: pressure from Privy Council rather than Parliament – smallpox scare, petition drafted by members of Council, Cecil behind joint delegation to the Queen, 1566
Veto: EI in control
Prerogative: Mary, Queen of Scots
1571, 1574-5, 1576-7: acted as a pressure group
1571: Parliament prorogued
NEALE: parliament used to promote own agenda - anti-Catholicism
Revisionist: Opposition from Privy Councillors in the Commons taking lead (Hatton, 1565)
EI refused to bow to pressure and would not commit herself until ‘Stafford Plot’
Privilege: Defence of freedom speech, Wentworth 1576
NEALE: leader of puritan opposition; Commons emerging as champion of parliamentary liberties
GRAVES: Wentworth “foolhardy, impetuous and politically inept”; no hero at the time. Merely nuisance
Imprisonment, Tower of London voted by Commons
Strickland Bill
1571
Reform of the Book of Common Prayer
Removed from Commons
Field’s Admonition to Parliament
1572
NEALE: orchestrated campaign to purify the Church
Revisionist: Anti-Catholic pressure from Council which feared for EI safety following Ridolfi Plot
Turner
1584
Suggested changes to Prayer Book and a Calvinist style church government
Parliament itself refused to hear Turner’s bill
Jailed
Cope’s Bill and Book
1586: assassination of William of Orange, Babington Plot7
Campaign to replace the Anglican prayer book and organisation with Calvinist ones
NEALE: well-organised group hijacked session
GRAVES: led by mere handful of men who “lacked general parliamentary sympathy or support, and were easily smothered by government action”
Treason Act
1571
Act ‘Against missionary priests, Jesuits and other such disobedient persons’
1585
Act Against Seditious Sectaries
1593
‘Men of Business’
Control and influence of commons by Cecil after 1671 (peerage) e.g. Thomas Norton
Time parliament called for
39 months / 45 years
Golden Speech
1601
‘for Elizabeth, Parliamentarians were little boys – sometimes unruly, usually a nuisance, and always a waste of an intelligent woman’s time’
Christopher Haigh
