This secularisation of law had its effects upon the constitution. In England, as in several other States, government fell into the hands of the professional administrator, and “reasons of State” placed in his hands an extremely wide, over-riding discretion. In England this took the form of the dominance of the Council under all the Tudor sovereigns, and in the rise to importance of the office of Secretary of State. As long as Queen Elizabeth lived she was generally able to maintain this novel supremacy of the administration above the old feudal legalism, which was timidly asserted from time to time by the common lawyers. Only in her very last years did she suffer an occasional reverse. In general terms the conflict between the Council and the courts, between administration and law, is the theme of sixteenth- and also of seventeenth-century history, and its origins are clearly to be traced back to the Reformation and the resulting disorganisation of mediaeval political thought. During all this period the typical common lawyer was generally on the conservative side. He still pored over mediaeval books, he practised in mediaeval courts, and was often suspected of being secretly an adherent of the old religion. There was, therefore, a tendency to look outside of the legal profession for men to fill administrative posts, and it was to the civilians that Henry VIII turned when he was founding or reorganising such administrative courts as the Privy Council, the Star Chamber, the Court of Requests, the Court of High Commission, the Council of the North, the Council of Wales, and the rest.
Attendant upon the Reformation came the Church settlement. It is a striking feature of Henry VIII’s reign that he was able to use Parliament itself as a convenient machinery for effecting the complicated settlement. The results were momentous. Parliament thereby acquired the experience of carrying out measures which were in fact revolutionary. In one statute it declared that the supreme head of the Church was not the Pope, but Henry; in another it confiscated enormous quantities of property which had been held by the Church for centuries undisputed; in another even so sacred a thing as Christian doctrine was restated by Parliament in the Statute of Six Articles; soon it was to establish a prayer-book to replace the age-old formularies hitherto in use. When in later years the powers of the modern State came to be analysed, Parliament held a very large place in the scheme of things. Those who maintained the omnipotence of Parliament found their most striking illustrations in the acts which carried out the Reformation in England. Henry VIII has been well described as the “great architect of Parliament”.1
THE RECEPTION
And, finally, we come to the movement known as the Reception.2 This was a widespread tendency in various countries of Europe to receive the classical Roman law in place of the mediaeval customary law which had only been partially Romanised, if at all. The legal scholars of the day had taken anew to the study of the books of Justinian, ignoring the thousand years of history which had introduced serious modifications in adapting Roman law to current conditions. The same problem arose in England. Traditional Christianity as represented by the mediaeval Catholic Church was replaced by a system which to its adherents seemed simpler, more reasonable and more in accord with ancient history. Ought not a similar reform to be carried out in the sphere of law? Ought not the mediaeval common law which was inexpressible in any decent language, French, Latin or English, to be replaced by the pure and ancient doctrine of the Digest? This question was seriously considered. Reginald Pole, cardinal and last of the Yorkist line, who stood equally good chances of becoming King of England or Pope, had committed himself to the idea. Henry VIII was well aware of the merits of the civilians, and founded the still existing Regius Professorships at Oxford and Cambridge for the propagation of their learning. As administrators and as judges in the prerogative courts their influence was paramount. They also maintained an ancient feud with the canonists and the papacy. But against the courts of common law they stood little chance of success. The close organisation of the profession and the numerous vested interests which it contained, the strong tradition of its educational system centring in the Inns of Court, and the practical impossibility of superseding the courts by a newer system, had the result of entrenching the common lawyers within the tangles of their feudal learning, which, moreover, had become the basis of every family fortune in the land. We venture to suggest that once again the common law stood impregnable upon the foundations laid by Henry II. It was he who gave the common law its firm grip upon the land, and for the future the more elaborate the land law became and the more subtly it contrived to entangle both present and future generations in the maze of real-property law, the more impossible it became for the landed classes to contemplate any interference with the system which assured to them and their children the complicated benefits of inheritance. In Germany, France and Scotland the Reception was accomplished with varying degrees of thoroughness; but not in England. Nevertheless the common law for a time had to maintain a stubborn defence, and for the first time in its history it made a definite alliance with the members of the House of Commons, who were equally willing to accept the aid of the lawyers. In this way were laid the foundations of the coalition between the House of Commons and the common law which was to dominate English history during the seventeenth century.
The Tudor period had its own social problem. The transition from serfdom to copyhold was nearly complete, but nevertheless there was considerable economic distress, and from the later years of Queen Elizabeth proceeds a stream of legislation dealing with unemployment and the relief of paupers, while the mediaeval machinery for the fixing of wages was kept in steady operation and even enlarged. Then, too, we find English writers for the first time taking an interest in such topics as international law and in the international aspects of commercial and maritime law, of which we shall speak later.
TUDOR LEGISLATION
Finally some words must be said on the extremely important legislation of the Tudor sovereigns. The reign of Henry VIII saw an outburst of legislation which is almost comparable to that of Edward I. The great statutes which carried out the Reformation have already been mentioned, and their importance exceeds even their position as the foundation of the Church of England, for they were astonishing examples of the almost limitless powers assumed by Parliament. Besides this, a good deal of legislation was concerned with treason, illustrating the growth of the idea of the State and the inadequacy of merely mediaeval law for its protection against the new dangers which its own activities had aroused.1 Of the rest of Henry VIII’s legislation we must mention the Statute of Proclamations (1539). Although soon repealed it is nevertheless highly significant. The old view that this statute constituted a sort of Lex Regia conferring upon the Crown the power of wide legislation without the concurrence of Parliament has been abandoned.2 The growing complication of government had brought the proclamation into prominence for the first time as a useful means of supplementing statute law on points of detail, and of carrying out those processes which to-day are effected by administrative bodies with powers delegated from the legislature. The latest and best opinion is that
“the existing law was obscure and the inconvenience of this obscurity was not likely to be overlooked by a King who was remarkable for his political prescience. Henry VIII’s Statute of Proclamations was an extremely able attempt by King and Parliament to deal finally with the problem in a manner which should commend itself to the public opinion of the day.”3
The statute provided that in cases of emergency the King and Council may issue proclamations which shall have the force of an act of Parliament. They were to be published in a manner prescribed by the act, and offenders against them were to be tried by a board of councillors named in the act, constituting, as it seems, a special tribunal for the enforcement of proclamations.4 This device is certainly in accord with Henry VIII’s general policy of erecting special courts for special business, instead of enlarging the jurisdiction of the old common law courts. The second section of the statute contains carefully drawn safeguards to prevent proclamations being used in an oppressive manner; the principles of the common law, existing acts of Parliament, and property rights were put beyond the reach of proclamations. Moreover, it is equally clear that the use made of these powers by Henry VIII and his Council was moderate and reasonable; there is no evidence that the King hoped by means of proclamations to establish an absolutism or to supersede the legitimate activities of Parliament. The immediate occasion for the act was the refusal of the