The new stage of Henry’s career presents us with a problem at the outset. Hitherto, he had followed Wolsey’s counsels; very shortly, the Machiavellian maxims of Cromwell guided his course; but there is no one to bridge the gap between Wolsey and Cromwell. Sir Thomas More succeeded the Cardinal as Chancellor, but not as first minister--he never made any secret, to the king, of his conviction that the marriage with Katharine could not and should not be invalidated. Nothing points to Norfolk or Suffolk as guiding policy. The newly discovered Cranmer had suggested a principle for dealing with the divorce, but his appearance is merely in the character of a University doctor, not of a statesman. Precisely at this moment, before he knew anything of Cromwell, with Wolsey, so to speak, hanging on the very verge of the precipice, a Parliament is called suddenly, which remains undissolved until its seventh year. Since 1515 there had been only one Parliament, that of 1523-1524. Between 1500 and 1515 Parliaments had been rare. Henry VII., when he no longer felt the need of constant Parliamentary sanction, and Wolsey after him, had gone steadily on the rule of accustoming the country to have the government carried on almost without Parliaments, and of establishing absolutism on those lines. From this moment that attitude towards Parliament disappears. For the rest of the reign, there is no prolonged interval without one; Parliament itself is converted into the instrument and the buttress of despotism.
In the preceding study of Thomas Cromwell the view was adopted that he was the real author of what was one comprehensive design for establishing the royal power high over everything else, including therein the repudiation of Papal rivalry, and the subordination of the clerical organisation; while the method, of deliberately choosing to make Parliament share the responsibility, was his also. Yet the calling of this Parliament in 1529, and its initial measures of ecclesiastical reform, cannot be attributed to him. Henry did it out of his own head. It will be found, however, that the apparent contradictions are easily reconcilable.
Henry found, in 1529, that his determination to have a divorce would involve either a fight with the Papacy or a struggle to secure Papal support in despite of the emperor. Also he felt that the Cardinal was not to be depended on as the manager of that struggle. He had no one ready to take the Cardinal’s place, though Stephen Gardiner might have done so had he been a layman. He had formulated no plan of campaign beyond that of sending the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn’s father, with Cranmer in his train, on an embassy to Bologna. But he might find himself impelled to do more or less questionable things; the precedent of his father’s first years suggested that in that case it would be useful to be able to say that he had acted with the sanction of Parliament; and he had the Tudor instinct of appreciating the value of conciliating popular sentiment. Nothing would conciliate popular sentiment so much as inducing his subjects to believe that it was their interests and their opinions he was consulting. So he summoned Parliament.