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Authors: Jeffrey L. Forgeng
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not be officially readmitted until the late 1600s, but there were Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London and other major ports, officially purporting to be Catholics. Such men included Hector Nuñez, an associate of several leading figures in Elizabeth’s Privy Council. The most famous was Rodrigo Lopez, who served for a time as personal physician to the earl of Leicester and ultimately to the Queen herself. Changing political tides led to Lopez’s trial for treason on fabricated charges of attempting to assassinate the monarch, resulting in his execution in 1594—not long before Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice appeared on the stage.
THE STATE
Since the Middle Ages, English government had been organized around the principle of laws. Elizabethan England had a highly developed—in some ways overdeveloped—legal system that guided the roles and operations of the country’s various governmental authorities. Law and government were indistinguishable: any given government authority might fulfill political, legislative, and judiciary roles, and the typical Elizabethan court was an administrative and legislative body as well as a court in the modern sense. Yet Elizabethan law was never embodied within a single written code. It consisted of a variety of traditions, practices, and jurisdictions informed but never defined by written documents.
The entire system rested on the principle of custom: things were done in a certain way because they had been done so since time out of mind.
This system ensured stability, but also accommodated change, since customs could fall out of use if no one was inclined to enforce them, and new practices could become customary over time. It could also lead to conflict when different elements in society adhered to different ideas of which customary practices had the force of law—this dynamic would be a major factor in the story of Elizabeth’s Stuart successors, when conflict between royalist and parliamentarian views of authority came to Civil War in 1642.
Government
The most unambiguously powerful organ of government was the
monarch acting in concert with Parliament. Parliament had emerged as a Society 31
consultative body during the Middle Ages. By the 1500s, one of its most important roles was to approve taxation. Ordinary royal income, based on such sources as crown lands, customs, and legal fines, was never adequate to support extraordinary expenses such as the costs of war. When additional revenue was needed, Parliament might vote a subsidy, a tax on property to supplement the crown’s ordinary income. Equally important, Parliament had become a forum where the monarch could build support and consensus for royal policies among the privileged classes. Henry VIII had made unprecedented use of Parliament in this way in order to legiti-mize his transformation of the English church.
Elizabeth inherited from her father a powerful alliance with Parliament, and she managed her relations with Parliament successfully to ensure support from those who had the ability to facilitate or obstruct her will.
But this relationship was far from a guaranteed success. The House of Commons in particular had become accustomed to playing a more active part in government under the earlier Tudors, and was becoming increasingly assertive and self-confident. Elizabeth’s Stuart successors, lacking her instinct for public relations and political management, would find themselves increasingly at odds with their Parliaments.
Parliament was divided into two houses. The House of Lords was
attended by approximately 50 lay peers, 24 bishops, and 2 archbishops.
The House of Commons consisted of 2 representatives from each English shire (with the exception of Durham—a holdover from the Middle Ages when this was an independent feudal jurisdiction), 2 from each of about 180 English cities and towns (with some exceptions, including London, which sent 4), plus a single representative from each of 12 Welsh shires and
THE STATE
Since the Middle Ages, English government had been organized around the principle of laws. Elizabethan England had a highly developed—in some ways overdeveloped—legal system that guided the roles and operations of the country’s various governmental authorities. Law and government were indistinguishable: any given government authority might fulfill political, legislative, and judiciary roles, and the typical Elizabethan court was an administrative and legislative body as well as a court in the modern sense. Yet Elizabethan law was never embodied within a single written code. It consisted of a variety of traditions, practices, and jurisdictions informed but never defined by written documents.
The entire system rested on the principle of custom: things were done in a certain way because they had been done so since time out of mind.
This system ensured stability, but also accommodated change, since customs could fall out of use if no one was inclined to enforce them, and new practices could become customary over time. It could also lead to conflict when different elements in society adhered to different ideas of which customary practices had the force of law—this dynamic would be a major factor in the story of Elizabeth’s Stuart successors, when conflict between royalist and parliamentarian views of authority came to Civil War in 1642.
Government
The most unambiguously powerful organ of government was the
monarch acting in concert with Parliament. Parliament had emerged as a Society 31
consultative body during the Middle Ages. By the 1500s, one of its most important roles was to approve taxation. Ordinary royal income, based on such sources as crown lands, customs, and legal fines, was never adequate to support extraordinary expenses such as the costs of war. When additional revenue was needed, Parliament might vote a subsidy, a tax on property to supplement the crown’s ordinary income. Equally important, Parliament had become a forum where the monarch could build support and consensus for royal policies among the privileged classes. Henry VIII had made unprecedented use of Parliament in this way in order to legiti-mize his transformation of the English church.
Elizabeth inherited from her father a powerful alliance with Parliament, and she managed her relations with Parliament successfully to ensure support from those who had the ability to facilitate or obstruct her will.
But this relationship was far from a guaranteed success. The House of Commons in particular had become accustomed to playing a more active part in government under the earlier Tudors, and was becoming increasingly assertive and self-confident. Elizabeth’s Stuart successors, lacking her instinct for public relations and political management, would find themselves increasingly at odds with their Parliaments.
Parliament was divided into two houses. The House of Lords was
attended by approximately 50 lay peers, 24 bishops, and 2 archbishops.
The House of Commons consisted of 2 representatives from each English shire (with the exception of Durham—a holdover from the Middle Ages when this was an independent feudal jurisdiction), 2 from each of about 180 English cities and towns (with some exceptions, including London, which sent 4), plus a single representative from each of 12 Welsh shires and
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