in opposition to the Crown, owed their power to gifts out of the revenues of the suppressed monasteries. The smaller gentry also claimed a share in the general advancement to wealth and prosperity among the landed proprietors, and a sudden burst of political activity in the Lords and Commons bore witness to the fact that the Houses had once more asserted their right to govern. This brings us to Cromwell’s relations with Parliament. It is here that we find the most striking instance of the contradiction between the immediate and the permanent effects of the changes he wrought. We have seen how his attitude towards Parliament differed from that of his predecessor. We have seen how Wolsey had looked upon the national assembly as a great force which continually hampered his schemes, so that his dislike of it led him to summon it as infrequently as possible, and only when it was absolutely necessary. We have seen how Cromwell was destined to go one step further, and how by packed elections, fraud, and violence, he succeeded in converting it into an utterly subservient instrument of the royal will. It was now no longer a power to be feared, but one to be relied on; a firm ally that consistently obeyed the slightest hint of the wishes of the Crown. Consequently instead of rarely assembling as under Wolsey, it was being constantly summoned, as a necessary means to accomplish the designs of Henry and his minister. While the latter lived, everything worked exactly as he had intended, and the Parliament remained ‘tractable.’ But when after his death the idea of autocracy had passed away, and England had begun to recover from the terror Cromwell’s ministry had inspired, Parliament suddenly realized that it had a power of its own. Its frequent assemblings which of course had helped the Crown, as long as under Cromwell the Houses had remained subservient, now began to work just the other way, and aided it in shaking off the fetters that bound it to the King. It had been Cromwell’s plan that it should keep up the forms of constitutional liberty, as a sort of sop to the popular feeling, while in reality all its legislative vigour was lost. Now that the pressure of his hand was removed, the animating spirit revived, and finding all the old traditionary customs still intact began to infuse itself into Lords and Commons. The earlier independence of the Houses returned and increased, so that the final result of the work of Cromwell was on the one hand to thwart all efforts to compass the omnipotence of the Crown, and on the other to lay the basis for a constitutional government.