Alpha Book

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[Sidenote: Influence on Administration]
The right to demand an account of expenditures, to cause the removal of
royal officers, to request the king to abandon unpopular policies, or
otherwise to control administrative affairs, had occasionally been
asserted by Parliament, but not consistently maintained.
[Sidenote: Parliament under the Tudors]
From what has been said, it will now be clear that the fulcrum of
parliamentary power was control of finance. What had enabled the Tudors
to incline toward absolutism was the fact that for more than a hundred
years they had made themselves fairly independent of Parliament in
matters of finance; and this they had done by means of economy, by
careful collection of taxes, by irregular expedients, by confiscation
of religious property, and by tampering with the currency. Parliament
still met, however, but irregularly, and during Elizabeth's reign it
was in session on the average only three or four weeks of the year.
Parliament still transacted business, but rarely differed with the
monarch on matters of importance.


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