Modern Democracy's Dawn

“We The People” had very little to say about life at the dawn of the Sixteenth Century. Like children, we just tried to stay out of the way when “parents”—dukes, barons, knights—when at it with swords and lances. But, in England, the first real change was about to begin.
We should note an interesting fact. France went through nearly every phase England went through in the 1300 and 1400 hundreds. She consolidated her language into one Parisian dialect; she had a peasants’ revolt, vast numbers of her nobility were killed off—by English archers, and the Black Death wiped out much of her labor force.
But by the late 1700s England had a working constitutional monarchy with an influential house for the common people, whereas France had transformed herself into a monarchy so absolute that the king could declare that he, and he alone, constituted the entire state. Her parliament didn’t even meet.
A unique confluence of events conspired to make England (and her colonies) something totally different from France—or Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy or almost anywhere else you wanted to look. Only the Dutch came up with something remotely similar—and that was born, like England’s, out of a period of ghastly bloodshed.
England’s problem began when Henry had a problem conceiving children. It was the first duty of the monarch to make a son to succeed him. Otherwise there was no way for power to transfer peacefully. In England’s case this would mean a return to the bloody War of the Roses.
Henry VIII’s father, Henry VII had finally won a victory so overwhelming (this is the one where Richard III cries “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!”) that it put Henry VII, a Tudor, on the throne. The Tudor problem was that they had only a bastard’s claim to England’s throne. There were others with a conceivably more legitimate claim. The Tudors had to step very, very carefully.
And now Henry VIII couldn’t make an heir. (Of course, in those days, it was all the woman’s fault—never the fact that Henry’s untreated diabetes had probably made him nearly impotent.) Normally in medieval times it was a simple thing for an heirless king to petition the Pope for an annulment and move on to someone who could make a son for him. (Girls were considered dangerously weak in a time when kings were expected to lead troops into battle.)
Henry’s problem was that his wife was a SPANISH princess. (In fact she was the youngest child of the Spanish monarchs who had commissioned Columbus.) New World gold was pouring into Spain and she was becoming a superpower. Her armies even occupied Rome itself.
The Pope was in no position to annul Henry VIIII’s marriage. Enraged, Henry, who had been a dynamic and bloodthirsty supporter of Catholicism against the new movement called Protestantism, called for a law declaring himself to be the supreme head of the English church in 1534. Willy-nilly, England had become a Protestant nation—and much of future world history hangs on this fact.
Heavily indebted from his extravagant life style, the king expropriated church lands and monastic holdings , using the proceeds to pay his bills. He annulled Catherine and married Anne Boleyn. In a stroke he had overturned a millennium of English history.
If you are a king with a somewhat tenuous hold on your throne, you really cannot do something that radical without getting the peoples’ support. You don’t dare. So Henry summoned Parliament to back his play. (Henry had a popular politician’s charisma. He could have gotten elected to any job today.)
He got Parliament to annul his marriage—see? The people support me! Parliament voted to ban Papal bulls and Papal officials from England. Parliament even got to determine who was queen and what services could be held in church. No modern elective body had ever been given that kind of authority before—especially one that included ordinary people.
Henry had handpicked his Parliament; he knew it would be loyal to him. So he did not call for new elections—he just kept the same men in place. Handy for Henry and, counter intuitively, absolutely marvelous for democracy. Year after year the same people stayed in session. They began to work out rules for parliamentary procedure; they began to think of themselves as a significant part of the government of England.
Every step of the way, Henry was careful to be sure not to proceed without Parliament’s concurrence. But problems with an heir continued. The Spanish Catherine had given him only a daughter—“Bloody Mary”. Anne had given him a daughter—Elizabeth. He executed Anne. Wife three, Jane Seymour finally give him a boy—the sickly Edward VI. She died doing it. He then married and annulled ugly Anne of Cleves. He married and executed Katherine Howard. Then he married Catherine Parr—who urged him to go farther in his religious reforms and nearly got executed. But she became submissive very fast and outlived him. Every step of the way—Parliament was called upon to okay them, marriages, executions, annulments.
Parliament even became a significant, and one day, the final voice on just who would be king when it passed The Act of Succession—still in effect today. It could if it chose, remove Prince Charles from the line of succession and name one of his sons. This power goes back to Henry. Parliament determined that Edward VI, a teenager, would replace Henry at his death.
Death came on a January day in 1547. Henry was fifty –five.
Parliament looked around and concluded, “You know, we’re pretty much the government of England.” They began that year to keep records of whatever laws they passed. These compiled “Acts of Parliament” are today the only constitution England actually has.
You can thank Henry for it all. He was no democrat. His preferred way to deal with objections was the headman’s ax. But, entirely accidentally, Henry began the process of “We The People” government in the English speaking world—at that time only England but today, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, India, Pakistan—need we go on?
As they gavel their Parliaments and Congresses to order, they are still following in an unintentional track carved out by the charismatic, brilliant, dissolute and half-mad Henry, The Eighth.
France (Russia, The Germanies, Spain) had no such issue—and no such king.