Michael A. R. Graves (–2009)

Over the course of the 16th century, a succession of English monarchs sought to reshape the religion of their realms. One of the tools they used to that end was Parliament, a select group of leading figures called together whenever the crown needed to enact new laws or obtain revenue for extraordinary needs. Starting with Henry VIII the monarchs of the Tudor dynasty used it to pursue religious transformation, first to establish an Anglican Church, then to adopt doctrines and practices shaped by the ongoing Reformation that was embroiling much of Europe. In the process, Parliament itself evolved into an institution very different from its medieval predecessors – one more coequal with the monarch, with a bicameral form in which the two houses enjoyed parity with one another.

In the centuries that followed the English Parliament went on to eclipse the monarch as the dominant governing institution not just of England, but of the enlarged kingdom that emerged from its union with Scotland as well as the empire that followed. In the process, the lower house – the House of Commons – eclipsed the upper chamber, the House of Lords, to become the supreme body within Parliament. Because of this, histories have parliament have often focused on identifying the key events within this process, which can often distort our understanding of how Parliament worked in the context of its times.

One of the many merits of Michael Graves’s book is that he strives to overcome such misinterpretations in order to provide an account of the role that Parliament played during the Tudor era. It’s a masterpiece of synthesis: concise yet thorough in its coverage of over a century of parliamentary history. It is also unabashedly revisionist in its approach, as Graves makes it clear in his opening chapter that the excessive attention devoted to the House of Commons (most influentially in [author:J.E. Neale|1051944]’s three-volume history of the Elizabethan parliaments) has led to the undeserved diminishment of the role of the House of Lords in parliamentary activity, which Graves makes clear was the center of political and legislative activity throughout most of the era.

Graves demonstrates this by explaining the operations of Parliament and its role in 16th century governance. This involves summarizing the procedures of the two houses, the privileges enjoyed by their members, and the support they received from an increasingly professionalized staff. After that Graves breaks the history of the parliaments of the Tudor era into five eras, corresponding to the pre-Reformation period, the parliaments of the early Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI, the Marian Parliaments, and the parliaments that met during Elizabeth’s reign, subdivided into the period before and after Lord Burghley took over as manager. This subdivision highlights Graves’s examination parliamentary management, which involved not just shepherding legislation through the houses but ensuring adequate attendance and managing the factionalism that characterized the politics of the era. Such management by key individuals points to the important integration of the crown in parliament, demonstrating that the two branches were not adversarial but worked together relatively harmoniously to achieve the common goals of the governing class.

To support his arguments, Graves draws upon not just his own research on the House of Lords during the reigns of Edward and Mary but the full range of available scholarship on the subject. This he assesses with a critical eye, making his own judgments clear to the reader. While Graves’s summary of the historiography is understandably dated at this point and his lack of consideration of elections to the House of Commons is unduly dismissive, it nonetheless remains a valuable work that should be read by anyone seeking to understand Tudor government or Parliament’s storied and often complicated history.… (mehr)