bling to his fall. The enmity shown
in Parliament to his doctrinal tendencies was not the result of royal
dictation; for even this Parliament, which gave royal proclamations
the force of law, could be independent when it chose. The draft of the
Act of Proclamations, as originally submitted to the House of Commons,
provoked a hot debate, was thrown out, and another was substituted
more in accord with the sense of the House.[1086] Parliament could
have rejected the second as easily as it did the first, had it (p. 392)
wished. Willingly and wittingly it placed this weapon in the royal
hands,[1087] and the chief motive for its action was that overwhelming
desire for "union and concord in opinion" which lay at the root of the
Six Articles. Only one class of offences against royal proclamations
could be punished with death, and those were offences "against any
proclamation to be made by the King's Highness, his heirs or successors,
for or concerning any kind of heresies against Christian doctrine".
The King might define the faith by proclamations, and the standard of
orthodoxy thus set up was to be enforced by the heaviest legal
penalties. England, thought Parliament, could only be kept united
against her foreign foes by a rigid uniformity of opinion; and that
uniformity could only be enforced by the royal authority based on lay
support, for the Church was now deeply divided in doctrine against
itself.

[Footnote 1086: Husee (_L. and P._, XIV., i., 1158)
says the House had been fifteen days over this
bill; _cf. Lords' Journals_, 1539.]

[Footnote 1087: Parliament is sometimes represented
as having almost committed constitutional suicide
by this Act; but _cf._ Dicey, _Law and Custom of
the Constitution_, p. 357, "Powers, however
extraordinary, which are conferred or sanctioned by
statute, are never really unlimited, for they are
confined by the words of the Act itself, and what
is more by the interpretation put upon the statute
by the judges". There was a world of difference
between this and the prerogative independent of
Parliament claimed by the Stuarts. Parliament was
the foundation, not the rival, of Henry's
authority.