ine was at his own command, he
used it as it had never been used before. Instead of rare and short
assemblies of Parliament, England saw it gathered year after year. All
the jealousy with which the Crown had watched its older encroachments on
the prerogative was set aside. Matters which had even in the days of
their greatest influence been scrupulously withheld from the cognizance
of the Houses were now absolutely forced on their attention. It was by
Parliament that England was torn from the great body of Western
Christendom. It was by parliamentary enactment that the English Church
was reft of its older liberties and made absolutely subservient to the
Crown. It was a parliamentary statute that defined the very faith and
religion of the land. The vastest confiscation of landed property which
England had ever witnessed was wrought by Parliament. It regulated the
succession to the throne. It decided on the validity of the king's
marriages and the legitimacy of the king's children. Former sovereigns
had struggled against the claim of the Houses to meddle with the royal
ministers or with members of the royal household. Now Parliament was
called on by the king himself to attaint his ministers and his Queens.

[Sidenote: The New Nobles.]

The fearlessness and completeness of such a policy as this brings home
to us more than any other of his plans the genius of Cromwell. But its
success depended wholly on the absolute servility of Parliament to the
will of the Crown, and Cromwell's own action made the continuance of
such a servility impossible. The part which the Houses were to play in
after years shows the importance of clinging to the forms of
constitutional freedom, even when their life is all but lost. In the
inevitable reaction against tyranny they furnish centres for the
reviving energies of the people, while the returning tide of liberty is
enabled through their preservation to flow quietly and naturally along
its traditional channels. And even before Cromwell passed to his doom
the tide of liberty was returning. On one occasion during his rule a
"great debate" on the suppression of the lesser monasteries showed that
elements of resistance still survived; and these elements developed
rapidly as the power of the Crown declined under the minority of Edward
and the unpopularity of Mary. To this revival of a spirit of
independence the spoliation of the Church largely contributed. Partly
from necessity, partly from a desire