Revolution.
The Magna Carta and the first elected Parliament
notwithstanding, political conflict continued over the powers
of the monarchy and who was to be king. This intra-elite
conflict ended with the War of the Roses, a long duel
between the Houses of Lancaster and York, two families
with contenders to be king. The winners were the
Lancastrians, whose candidate for king, Henry Tudor,
became Henry VII in 1485.
Two other interrelated processes took place. The first
was increasing political centralization, put into motion by
the Tudors. After 1485 Henry VII disarmed the aristocracy,
in effect demilitarizing them and thereby massively
expanding the power of the central state. His son, Henry
VIII, then implemented through his chief minister, Thomas
Cromwell, a revolution in government. In the 1530s,
Cromwell introduced a nascent bureaucratic state. Instead
of the government being just the private household of the
king, it could become a separate set of enduring
institutions. This was complemented by Henry VIII’s break
with the Roman Catholic Church and the “Dissolution of the
Monasteries,” in which Henry expropriated all the Church
lands. The removal of the power of the Church was part of
making the state more centralized. This centralization of
state institutions meant that for the first time, inclusive
political institutions became possible. This process
initiated by Henry VII and Henry VIII not only centralized
state institutions but also increased the demand for
broader-based political representation. The process of
political centralization can actually lead to a form of
absolutism, as the king and his associates can crush other
powerful groups in society. This is indeed one of the
reasons why there will be opposition against state
centralization, as we saw in chapter 3. However, in
opposition to this force, the centralization of state
institutions can also mobilize demand for a nascent form of
pluralism, as it did in Tudor England. When the barons and
local elites recognize that political power will be
increasingly more centralized and that this process is hard
to stop, they will make demands to have a say in how this
centralized power is used. In England during the late
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this meant greater efforts