Anticlericalism and the Early Tudor Parliament

Abstract

This article reconsiders one aspect of C hristopher H aigh's influential article ‘Anticlericalism and the E nglish Reformation’. His article argued that anticlericalism in early 16th‐century England had been exaggerated, mislabelled and (in effect) invented as a scholarly construct. Dr H aigh proceeded to dismantle the foundations of anticlericalism in literature, in litigation, and in legislation. Evidence of anticlericalism in parliament, he maintained, was discontinuous, opportunistic and unrepresentative. This article suggests, however, that H aigh's claim makes insufficient allowance for the scarcity of the sources, underestimates the degree of continuity before and after 1529, and fails to take into account the inherently public character of parliamentary petitioning. It proposes, instead, that the challenging of the Church's wealth, the criticizing of clerical abuses, and the questioning of ecclesiastical jurisdiction recurred in early T udor parliaments, and that the significance of such thwarted attempts at legislative reform crossed sessions and became cumulative.