e study by Miss
C.A.J. Skeel, _The Council in the Marches of
Wales_, 1904. Cromwell's great constitutional idea
was government by council rather than by
Parliament; in 1534 he had a scheme for including
in the King's Ordinary Council (not of course the
Privy Council) "the most assured and substantial
gentlemen in every shire" (_L. and P._, vii., 420;
_cf._ his draft bill for a new court of
conservators of the commonwealth and the more rigid
execution of statutes, vii., 1611).]

[Footnote 1015: _L. and P._, vii., 1554.]

[Footnote 1016: _Cf._ Maitland, _English Law and
the Renaissance_, p. 70; Lee to Cromwell: "if we
should do nothing but as the common law will, these
things so far out of order will never be redressed"
(_D.N.B._, xxxii., 375; the letter is dated 18th
July, 1538, by the _D.N.B._ and Maitland, but
there is no letter of that date from Roland Lee in
_L. and P._; probably the sentence occurs in Lee's
letter of 18th July, 1534, or that of 18th July,
1535 (_L. and P._, vii., 988, viii., 1058), though
the phrase is not given in _L. and P._).]

But Ireland demanded even more than Wales the application of Henry's
doctrines of union and empire; for if Wales was thought by Chapuys to
be receptive soil for the seeds of rebellion, sedition across St.
George's Channel was ripe unto the harvest. Irish affairs, among other
domestic problems, had been sacrificed to Wolsey's passion for playing
a part in Europe, and on the eve of his fall English rule in Ireland
was reported to be weaker than it had been since the Conquest. The
outbreak of war with Charles V., in 1528, was followed by the first
appearance of Spanish emissaries at the courts of Irish chiefs, and
from Spanish intrigue in Ireland Tudor monarchs were never again to be
free. In the autumn of 1534 the whole of Ireland outside the pale
blazed up in revolt. Sir William Skeffington succeeded in crushing the
rebellion; but Skeffington died in the following year, and his
successor, Lord Leonard Grey, failed to overcome the difficulties
caused by Irish di