They are not of course on that account to be neglected. Although the
House of Commons was no result of popular election, it consisted of
representative Englishmen, who would hardly have acquiesced in
statements notoriously untrue. Henry neither obtained nor asked the
opinion of the people, as we understand the phrase. The "dim common
populations" had no more to do with the Government of England then
than they have to do with the Government of India now. At the same
time it must be remembered that the King could not rely upon mere
force. He had no standing army, and a popular rising would have
swept him almost without resistance from his throne. It is almost as
hard for us to imagine his position as to understand his character.
Parliament, judges, magistrates, were subordinate to his sovereign
will and pleasure. From the authority of the Pope he cut himself
free, and neither Clement VII. nor Paul III. was strong enough to
stand up against him. He could hold his own with France, with the
Empire, with Spain. The one Power he never ventured to defy was the
English people. It was the essence of the Tudor monarchy to rely
upon the masses rather than the classes, to keep the aristocracy
down by expressing the popular will. So far as Henry took part in
it, the Reformation was not religious at all. As Macaulay drily
remarks, he was a good Catholic who preferred to be his own Pope. He
knew very well that Englishmen would like him none the worse for
resisting the pretensions of Rome, for insisting on the royal
supremacy, for taking every possible step to secure the succession
in the male Tudor line. If in his callous indifference to the fate
of the men or women who stood in his way he appears scarcely human,
we must consider, with Bishop Stubbs, his awful isolation. The whole
burden of the State was upon him, and he could not share it. Not
till the reign of his elder daughter did his subjects realise the