The Abandonment of Medieval Pact-Based Rule

The independence of the kings from external authorities, such as the emperors and popes, was, however, not enough. Royal preeminence was also sought over every internal obstacle which had curbed monarchs’ power in the Late Middle Ages.

9.2.1 Cities' Loss of Political and Legal Autonomy

The principle of urban autonomy, favored by the emergence of great politically and legally autonomous cities in the Late Middle Ages, entered into crisis in the Modern Age, in large part because the most independent cities which had managed to stand up

to royal power came under military siege by monarchs. Such was the case in Ghent and Florence, whose respective rebellions were put down by Charles V; the Castilian cities, which fought the king in the War of the Communities; and the German cities, which were also militarily vanquished by the king-emperor in the early sixteenth century. It must be said that royal intervention encountered scant resistance from the masses, as the governments of the cities lay in the hands of local oligarchies which perpetuated their power by purchasing key offices from the monarchs,’ who needed the revenue obtained from their sale.^[373]

Inevitably, this situation sapped municipal autonomy, which was soon also restricted by the appointment of royal officials charged with overseeing those who held local offices. Thus, for example, in Castile, beginning in 1348, along with the municipal officials (regidores) there arose the figure of the corregidor: the royal agent who would end up controlling city life during the Modern Age up to the era of Liberal revolutions (Gonzalez Alonso 1970).^[374] In the legal sphere this diminished municipal autonomy was evident at the legislative level, where there was a “petrification” of anachronistic and obsolete municipal legal terms from the medieval period, which gave royal legislators ample leeway to adapt local legal ordinances to the times, especially after the defeat of the Comuneros Revolt at Villalar (1521).

Cities’ political decline was also evident in Italy, where powerful families gradually took over the governance of urban republics like Florence, Siena and Milan. The divisions between cities, meanwhile, opened the door to foreign inva­sions, from France as of the time of Charles VIII and Louis XII, and Spain, since the era of the Catholic Kings, thanks to the victories of the Gran Capitan (Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba)^[377] over the French in southern Italy.^[378] During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of Italy—essentially Milan, Sicily and Naples— was incorporated under the Spanish Crown which, in accordance with the model of the compound Catholic Monarchy, respected traditional public institutions.^[379] The king did appoint the governors, however, and Philip II created a Council of Italy at the royal court (corte regia). As a result, powerful city-states entered into decline, such as the Republic of Venice—though it was still powerful enough to fight victoriously with Spain against the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571).^[380]

In the United Provinces, the rebellion against the king of Spain (1566), sparked a war won by the cities, which had achieved considerable political autonomy thanks to their commercial prosperity. These would evolve into maritime republics governed by a bourgeois oligarchy of merchants, which enjoyed its greatest degree of prosperity in the seventeenth century, though ultimately this did not prevent the consolidation of hereditary monarchy and the rise to power of the House of Orange- Nassau.^[381]

In France, the cities fell under royal control during the reign of Louis XIV with the increase in the number of “Intendants” during the Colbert Era (Mousnier 1984, 519), which became an extremely effective instrument of centralization (Desrayaud 1996, 632).

9.2.2 The Subjugation of the Nobility

The nobility, which during the Middle Ages had shared political power with the monarchy, was finally overpowered by the absolute kings, with the result that the nobility, at least a section of it, generally ended up cooperating with the monarchs, to the point that, as Zmora (2001, 6) observes, absolutism essentially rested upon a renewed covenant between the monarchy and the nobility, though in every kingdom this relationship took featured different characteristics.

In France, it is worth noting the attitude of Louis XIII’s prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu, who waged a relentless struggle against the kingdom’s most powerful figures, determined to impose the king’s supremacy. The nobles did not truly lose their influence, however, until they were vanquished after the revolt known as the Fronde (1648-1653), during the reign of Louis XIV, thanks to the determined actions of Mazarin and the Queen Mother and Regent, Anne of Austria. Louis XIV finally, tamed the nobility by creating a vast court through which he distributed spoils and pensions to all the great French nobles, who settled near Versailles in an effort to curry favor with the Crown and secure royal pensions in what Desrayaud (1996, 515) calls the “domestication” of the French nobility. This approach was a costly but effective remedy. The nobles, close to and dependent upon the king, were in no position to rise up against him. It is also significant that most of the great servants of the French state in the seventeenth century, hailed from the gentry or bourgeoisie.^[383]

In Spain the great nobles, after having had their way in Castile during the first two thirds of the fifteenth century (during the reigns of John II and Henry IV), were subdued by the Catholic Kings (1474-1504), who systematically relied upon jurists from the gentry and bourgeoisie to construct a modern state, at least in Castile, part of a trend that would be continued by Charles I and Phillip II in the sixteenth century.

In England, after the anarchy sown by the War of the Roses (1455-1485), a struggle between rival nobles to determine who would control the throne of England, the people readily accepted the authoritarian rule of the Tudors as the best way to restore law and order (Bernard 1992). The result was that the old military nobility never again recovered the leverage it once held with the Crown, while the bourgeoisie was not yet strong enough to limit royal prerogative through Parliament, unlike what would ultimately happen in the second half of the seven­teenth century under the Stuarts, as a consequence of two English revolutions.^[384]

9.2.3 The Decline of the Assemblies of the Estates

Among the institutions which had decisively limited the power of the late medieval monarchs were, as we know, the assemblies of the estates, which reached agree­ments with the monarch regarding everything, from the fundamental laws of the kingdom to the finances needed by the monarchy. During the absolutist era, the general trend was for these types of bodies to be brought under royal authority— with the notable exception of England, which we shall examine separately, where Parliamentary power surged dramatically in the second half of the seventeenth century.

9.2.3.1 The English Parliament

The English Parliament, which at the close of the Middle Ages had managed to impose significant restrictions on royal prerogative, during the era of the Tudors almost completely abandoned its judicial functions, and became essentially a legislative body. This political acquiescence was a result of the overwhelming charisma of Henry VIII and his daughter Elisabeth I. Henry VIII openly supported the creation of a mercantile and financial class, which soon ended up joining the gentry, and which became a firm defender of royal authority.

This new situation resulted in a strengthening of the monarchy over Parliament during the Tudor Era, to such an extent that, as van Caenegem (1995, 105) points out, Elisabeth I managed to impose upon Parliament the distinction (of dubious constitutionality) between affairs of common interest (commonwealth matters), which could be freely debated in the House of Commons, and matters of state, which could only be addressed by Parliament with the monarch’s consent.^[385]

It is true that the most important laws still took the form of Acts of Parliament because, in principle, they represented legislation that had been agreed upon by the king and Parliament, even though the latter was constantly being pressured and even coerced by the king, and not only in religious matters, such as divorce and the king’s subsequent marriage, but also concerning strictly civil affairs. In fact, during the reign of Henry VIII, Parliament passed significant reform legislation on impor­tant aspects of private law: wills, debts, limitation of prescription, the protection of lessees, wrongful dispossession, joint tenancies’ and marriage (Elton 1979,17). The vast majority of these laws, however, were conceived and advanced by the mon­arch. As Baker (1990, 237) explains, this was largely because of the fact that legislation during the Tudor era was no longer the government’s vague reply to vaguely worded complaints, but rather the deliberate adoption of specific proposals embodied in specific texts, in part because Parliament was extending its sphere of activity, but also because, in addition to the laws agreed to with Parliament, Henry VIII did not hesitate to enact a whole series of ordinances without consulting Parliament.

Parliament’s relative weakness under the Tudor regime was due in part to the monarchy’s financial solvency. Henry VII was so thrifty that his regime was almost able to rely solely upon the revenues it drew from the Crown’s lands, which spared him from having to convene Parliament to petition it for funds. By confiscating the assets of the regular clergy when he broke up with Rome, his sales of large expanses of royal property, and the initiating of lucrative colonial ventures,^[387] Henry VIII and Elisabeth I assured that the Crown held enough assets to avoid appealing to Parliament for money. Most important of all was that during their reigns there came about what Crossman (1969, 54) very aptly describes as a middle class revolution, a phenomenon which reached England two centuries earlier than France, and made possible the consolidation of a wealthy class of entrepreneurs that would end up controlling Parliament in the following century.^[388]

Notwithstanding the foregoing, it is indisputable that the Westminster Parlia­ment continued to exist, and did play an important role during the Tudor period. The kings never intended to dispense with the Parliament, and formally respected the traditional legal procedures, even though the monarch was able to impose his will without difficulty. It should be noted, however, that there were cases in Parliament of groups which organized in opposition to royal policy. Under the reign of Mary Tudor, when the rejection of the Edwardian Reformation was debated, 80 of the 359 members of the House of Commons voted against the Crown. And when it came to debating the issue of returning the decima tax to the Papacy,^[389] the royal proposition was approved by a vote of only 193 to 126 (van Caenegem 1995, 107). Also worth mentioning were the legislative initiatives being advanced by cities, companies and even some individuals. Even though only a small number of these proposals actually resulted in the passing of legislation, the very existence of these practices demonstrates the vitality of the institution.^[390]

9.2.3.2 The French Estates General

The Estates General in France was less effectual than the English Parliament, as the king convened it very sporadically in the Modern Age, only when he found himself in a critical situation (van Caenegem 1995, 100).

The first was convoked in 1302, because Philip IV needed the support of his kingdom to oppose the papacy. Charles VII (1422-1461), had to convene the body to win the Hundred Years War, although he seized the opportunity to establish a set of permanent taxes which, for the most part, would endure until 1789. His son Louis XI also convened the Estates, in 1468, to put down a rebellion among the nobles. However, the entity did not meet again until 1483, in Tours. In the wake of the king’s death, it was called to issue a statement condemning the late monarch’s authoritarian methods and to endorse the principle that the king could not levy taxes without their consent. However, when the monarchical principle and royal power was secured, the kings ceased to convene the Estates General: neither Louis XII (1498-1515), nor Francis I (1515-1547) nor Henry II (1547-1559), ever did so. They were convoked once again, even with some frequency, by the last Valois kings in the second half of the sixteenth century, but this was a direct consequence of the turbulent Wars of Religion (1562-1598), a period during which the French kingdom was immersed in a permanent state of civil war. Beginning with the reign of the first Bourbon, Henry IV, the king’s power was strengthened and the Estates General lost their importance once again. Convoked in 1614 by the widow of the first French Bourbon and the regent of Louis XIII, Marie de Medici, it would not be convened again until 1789.^[391]

The Estates General were “put into dormancy” (Desrayaud 1996, 506) because Richelieu, prime minister from 1630 to 1642, was of the opinion that the Estates General were incompatible with royal sovereignty. Richelieu also acted to abolish the Provincial Estates,^[392] which were convened by the king when he needed subsidies and could not convene the Estates General (Sueur 1989, 273).^[393]

9.2.3.3 The Spanish Monarchy and the Cortes of the Iberian Kingdoms

In the Iberian Peninsula, the Cortes in Castile could not counteract the crown’s burgeoning authority and entered into a clear decline following the reign of Isabella and Ferdinand. The number of towns represented dropped from 49 in 1391, to 17 by 1480 (O’Callaghan 2013, 585). Their political influence virtually disappeared after the defeat at Villalar (1523), ending the rebellion of the Castilian cities (War of the Communities), against Charles V. The fatal blow, nevertheless, came in 1538, when Castilian prelates and nobles who had traditionally attended them, though irregu­larly, ceased to do so at all, which undercut the representativeness of the Castilian assembly of the estates. Clear evidence of this was the consolidation of unilateral royal legislation outside the purview of the Cortes and its dictates, with the issuance of what were known as pragmaticas. The case was that the Cortes was unable to pressure the kings based on the body’s capacity to generate revenue, as the Spanish monarchs were receiving massive quantities of gold and silver from their American colonies. Thus, it is hardly surprising that henceforth the Cortes in Castile and Leon played an increasingly formal, token role, with the kings convening them essen­tially to add greater solemnity to the announcement of certain decisions and acts which they had proposed. Another of their primary functions involved the royal succession; it was the Cortes which heard the oath taken by the crown prince, a necessary step for him to become king.^[394]

The weakness of the Cortes in Castile did not mean, however, that the Castilians did not resist the absolute authority of the king. The lack of a powerful central administration led the monarchy to delegate to local powers essential aspects, such as military recruitment and the collection of taxes. It should also be noted that tax revenues in Castile depended essentially on the peculiar servicio de millones, which charged local authorities with collecting special taxes. The Crown had no organi­zational system capable of obtaining what the king required, its effective financial administration relying upon the assent of a complex network of private individuals and public corporations, each with particular interests and conditions (MacKay 2006, 9).^[395]

In contrast, the Cortes formally preserved their authority and political relevance in the eastern kingdoms of the old Crown of Aragon (Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia), in which the structure of pact-based rule was relatively solid during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and where there were still three separate assemblies. There existed, however, a progressive submission on the part of the Catalonian, Valencian and Aragonian Cortes to the crown, as demonstrated by, for example, the practice of the Aragonian, Valencian and Catalan representatives meeting together in one locality (generally Monzon), because the kings didn’t have time to convene them separately. In addition, the manner of convoking the cortes and the procedure according to which its sessions were conducted were simplified in such a way as to favor royal power over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nevertheless, the cortes still decided important matters. For instance, the Cortes de Catalunya reorganized the Catalonian legal system,^[396] the

Cortes de Aragon tried to adopt measures against the economic crisis,^[397] and the Cortes de Valencia were active defending the Valencian legal system.^[398]

Cortes were also quite active in Portugal between 1580 and 1640, when the kingdom became part of the Catholic Monarchy (Bouza Alvarez 1987). Las Cortes del Reino de Navarra, became extremely active once the kingdom was absorbed into the Catholic Monarchy by military occupation in 1512 (Arvizu y Galarraga 1989), and would go on to become the most powerful and lasting cortes in Spain, continuing to exist until the nineteenth century.

9.2.3.4 The Case of the German Assemblies

In Germany, most of the parliaments maintained their authorities during the six­teenth century, later losing their political influence during the seventeenth, rele­gated to serving as mere administrative bodies that executed the princes’ decisions.^[399]

9.3