Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Constitutional Experiments of the Commonwealth: A Study of the Years 1649 1660
Parliaments of the Middle Ages took any direct part in the government. Their utmost ambition (rarely gratified) extended to some voice in the appointment of Ministers, and their constitutional right consisted only of criticism, enforced by finance control and the occasional impeachment of the king's advisers. Even this right of impeachment fell into abeyance under the Tudors, and the substitution for it of bills of attainder was an idle form, for bills of attainder were, practically, the weapons, not of the Parliament, but of the Crown.
Still less in the Tudor period was the business of the country in the hands of Parliament. Henry VIII. And Elizabeth were the last persons to admit such a theory. It was the King's Council and not the Parliament which ruled England. The offshoots of the Council, the star-chamber, the Court of High Commission, the Councils of the North, of Ireland, and of Wales, were the centres of public business. The rebukes administered by Elizabeth to her most loyal Parliaments on the rare occasions on which they ventured to discuss matters of State, are too well known to need special reference. And to this day it is a matter of dispute whether Charles, in all his tyranny, really violated the forms of the constitution. It was his folly, not his illegality, which lost him the kingdom.
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