{"id":17222,"date":"2025-05-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/?p=17222"},"modified":"2025-05-27T15:02:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T14:02:00","slug":"parliament-and-the-church-c-1530-c-1630","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/2025\/05\/29\/parliament-and-the-church-c-1530-c-1630\/","title":{"rendered":"Parliament and the Church, c.1530-c.1630"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this blog, Dr Alex Beeton <\/a>reviews a fascinating colloquium, held recently at the History of Parliament\u2019s office in Bloomsbury Square<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early modern period, both England\u2019s Church and its Parliament changed. A Catholic country split from Rome and the importance and prominence of the two Houses of Parliament dramatically increased. These two seismic shifts were not isolated from one another. Parliament\u2019s role in the transformation and governance of England\u2019s ecclesiastical settlement has been much debated, especially since the seminal work of Sir Geoffrey Elton, who argued Parliament\u2019s role in enacting the early stages of the Reformation was a formative moment in parliamentary history. To address this complex relationship, the History of Parliament hosted a colloquium on 26 April 2025 entitled \u2018Parliament and the Church, c.1530-c.1630\u2019. Convened by Dr Alexandra Gajda (University of Oxford) and Dr Alex Beeton (History of Parliament), eight speakers and almost twenty audience members, many of them leading academics, debated a myriad of issues and topics in an energising and convivial atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The House of Lords during the reign of Henry VIII. Wriothesley garter book, c.1530.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The eight speakers, split between three chronological panels, had produced their papers, (which will be published in a special edition of Parliamentary History<\/em>) for pre-circulation; this meant the majority of the day was spent in discussion of their findings. In the first panel, Dr Gajda and Dr Paul Cavill (University of Cambridge) delved into the first half of the sixteenth century. Dr Cavill launched a vigorous attack on a famous essay of Elton\u2019s, \u2018Lex Terrae Victrix<\/em>: the triumph of parliamentary law in the sixteenth century\u2019 which argued that in the 1530s emerged the twin ideas of the supremacy of parliamentary law (i.e. common law) and the notion of the king-in-Parliament being the ultimate authority in the kingdom. Using the example of the court of delegates, Dr Cavill\u2019s paper skilfully showed how laws other than common law continued to be used, and that the monarchy ruled through the common law rather than under it. Dr Gajda took the discussion forward into the mid-century, showing that the Parliaments of Edward VI deserve to be known as Reformation Parliaments which enacted sweeping reforms via statute. This process did not occur because the crown believed the two Houses to be particularly appropriate as authorities on religious matters, but because parliamentary statute reached all the monarchy\u2019s subjects and because the lay members of Parliament were more amenable to changes in religious practices than Convocation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a lunch break, the second panel of the day focussed largely on the reign of Elizabeth I. Dr Paul Hunneyball (History of Parliament) produced an excellent study of the bishops in the Lords as a group during the 1584-5 Parliament. Drawing on the cutting-edge research of the Lords 1558-1603<\/em> project, Dr Hunneyball teased out a number of insights about the bishops and their political activities, showing the value of investigating the Lords Spiritual as a body. Dr Esther Counsell\u2019s (Western Sydney University) fascinating contribution focussed on the same Parliament, investigating a manuscript speech-treatise written by Robert Beale, clerk of the privy council, which was intended for the Parliament but never delivered. Dr Counsell argued that Beale was representative of a group within the English establishment which was eager for further religious reformation, worried about the encroachment of Catholicism, opposed to the jurisdictional overreach of ecclesiastical authorities and courts, and concerned that the denial of Parliament\u2019s authority to determine ecclesiastical matters would undermine the stability of Elizabeth\u2019s reign. The third speaker, Adam Forsyth (University of Cambridge), took the panel into the early seventeenth century with an impressive analysis of statutory interpretation and multilateralism in judicature, delineating the disputes between civil and common lawyers about who could interpret statutes and the different positions which civil lawyers adopted concerning the prerogatives of statutory interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The House of Lords during the reign of Elizabeth I. R. Elstrack, c.1608.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Despite the hot weather and the lack of air conditioning in the History of Parliament\u2019s common room, spirits and energy remained high for the third and final panel of the day. Professor Kenneth Fincham (University of Kent), who was chairing, prefaced the panel with an elegantly concise set of remarks about Parliament and religion in the 1630s before introducing the speakers. Emma Hartley\u2019s (University of Sheffield) paper insightfully investigated the early Jacobean Parliaments, showing how their disputes and proceedings demonstrated that the future of the English Church was still considered to be uncertain at the time. Enormous tensions existed over ecclesiastical jurisdiction, Parliament\u2019s role in religious matters, and the constitutional positions and authority of bishops and Convocation. She was followed by Dr Kathryn Marshalek (Vanderbilt University) whose paper offered a brilliant account of how, pace <\/em>earlier revisionist historiography, religious issues and constitutional crisis became a deadly combination in English politics well before the end of the 1620s. Dr Marshalek\u2019s study of the 1620s Parliaments argued that the European geo-political situation made a re-negotiation of the English religious settlement, and the place of English Catholics within it, possible. It was in this context that calls from Parliament for the enforcement of religious conformity became more forceful and provoked a broader consideration of the relationship between the king, royal prerogative, and parliamentary statute. Closing the day\u2019s proceedings, Dr Andrew Thrush (History of Parliament) offered a thought-provoking overview of the right of the House of Commons to debate religious matters between 1566-1629. He discussed why the Commons right to do so was not clearcut and why the crown, despite strenuous efforts, repeatedly failed to prevent the lower House from considering religious matters. He finished by concluding that the Commons achieved little in the way of tangible results through their extensive debates since they lacked the ability to enforce their will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with their predecessors, this final panel stimulated plenty of questions and debate between speakers and audience which continued in a more relaxed atmosphere following the end of official proceedings. As the vivacity of the day demonstrated, the relationship between Parliament and Church in early modern England remains a topic with potential for important discoveries and exciting insights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this blog, Dr Alex Beeton reviews a fascinating colloquium, held recently at the History of Parliament\u2019s office in Bloomsbury Square. In the early modern period, both England\u2019s Church and its Parliament changed. A Catholic country split from Rome and the importance and prominence of the two Houses of Parliament dramatically increased. These two seismic shifts were not isolated from one another. Parliament\u2019s role in … Continue reading Parliament and the Church, c.1530-c.1630<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":255408057,"featured_media":17226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[754660295,103464271,7086711,407218,774276010,774276090,48731,774275558,774275534],"tags":[2416,35890],"class_list":["post-17222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-revolutionary-stuart-parliaments","category-16th-century-history","category-17th-century-history","category-conferencesseminars","category-edward-vi","category-legislative-history","category-religious-history","category-stuart","category-tudor","tag-church","tag-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historyofparliament.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/ph-images-of-the-lords-elizabeth-i-in-parl.webp?fit=1200%2C1886&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QYNW-4tM","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":276,"url":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/2013\/04\/25\/writing-the-history-of-parliament-in-early-modern-england-colloquium-report\/","url_meta":{"origin":17222,"position":0},"title":"Writing the History of Parliament in Early Modern England – colloquium report","author":"History of Parliament","date":"April 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Dr Paul Cavill, lecturer in early modern history at the University of Leeds, reports back from last weekend's colloquium 'Writing the History of Parliament in Early Modern England'... The History of Parliament Trust and the Centre for Early Modern British and Irish History at Oxford University joined forces last Saturday\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Stuart"","block_context":{"text":"Stuart","link":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/category\/periods\/stuart\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historyofparliament.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Holding-Featured-Image-4.jpeg?fit=1200%2C658&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historyofparliament.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Holding-Featured-Image-4.jpeg?fit=1200%2C658&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historyofparliament.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Holding-Featured-Image-4.jpeg?fit=1200%2C658&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historyofparliament.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Holding-Featured-Image-4.jpeg?fit=1200%2C658&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historyofparliament.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Holding-Featured-Image-4.jpeg?fit=1200%2C658&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":957,"url":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/2015\/05\/14\/early-modern-ideas-about-parliaments-origins\/","url_meta":{"origin":17222,"position":1},"title":"Early Modern ideas about Parliament\u2019s origins","author":"History of Parliament","date":"May 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Our series celebrating the anniversaries of Magna Carta and Simon de Montfort\u2019s Parliament continues today. Dr Paul Cavill, Lecturer in Early Modern British History at Cambridge University discusses how the origins of Parliament were viewed in the early modern period\u2026 When did the first parliament in England meet? In modern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Stuart"","block_context":{"text":"Stuart","link":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/category\/periods\/stuart\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Drawing of Polydore Vergil","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/historyofparliament.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/polidorovirgili.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":887,"url":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/2015\/03\/02\/1624-the-last-parliament-of-james-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":17222,"position":2},"title":"1624: The Last Parliament of James I","author":"History of Parliament","date":"March 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In the second in our series of blogs marking the release of the Commons\u2019 proceedings of the 1624 Parliament \u2013 with those for March 1624 available here from today \u2013 Professor Chris Kyle, of Syracuse University, considers the historical significance of the assembly and the publication of its debates. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Stuart"","block_context":{"text":"Stuart","link":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/category\/periods\/stuart\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3510,"url":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/2019\/08\/29\/the-cavalier-parliament\/","url_meta":{"origin":17222,"position":3},"title":"The Cavalier Parliament","author":"Paul Seaward","date":"August 29, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Our 'Named Parliaments' series continues. Today Paul Seaward, British Academy\/Wolfson Research Professor at the History of Parliament Trust explores the Cavalier Parliament, the first Parliament after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660... 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His paper, \u2018The Significance (and Insignificance) of Precedent in Early Stuart Parliaments\u2019 was a longer version of one presented at April\u2019s \u2018Writing the History of Early Modern Parliament\u2019 colloquium in Oxford.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Stuart"","block_context":{"text":"Stuart","link":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/category\/periods\/stuart\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13181,"url":"https:\/\/historyofparliament.com\/2024\/05\/28\/parliament-and-revolutionary-britain\/","url_meta":{"origin":17222,"position":5},"title":"Crisis? What Crisis? Parliament and Revolutionary Britain","author":"Alex Beeton","date":"May 28, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"At the end of April, the History of Parliament hosted a colloquium to celebrate the publication of the House of Commons 1640-60 volumes and the beginning of a new section on the Lords in the same period. 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