A tyrant they name him, who by force comes to the Monarchy against the will of the people, breaks laws already made at his pleasure, makes other without the advise and consent of the people, and regards not the wealth of his communes but the advancement of himself, his faction, and kindred.
This is a perfect example of the clear, concise, and goal-directed writing style of the author. Now, this is not to suggest that reading the book is going to be easy everybody; an effort was made here to clear away all the various “makeths” and weird spellings like “alreadie” in order to make it easier. Many versions will not take this step, so if archaic spellings is problematic, it is highly suggested one finds a modernized version. Even in the original, however (and it was written in English, not Latin, despite what the title may seem to indicate) the ideas themselves are presented concisely. The subtitle of the chapter in which this quote occurs, for example, is “The definition of a king and of a tyrant.” And, as is clearly evidenced here, that is exactly what one gets. What is especially notable about this particular definition of a tyrant, perhaps, is how easily it can be applied to certain modern-day “democratically elected” leaders.
The most high and absolute power of the realm of England, consists in the Parliament.
This is almost certainly the most famous quote attached to the text. If there is any one single assertion made about the state of the British commonwealth and assumptions about its proper political structure in a post-Dark Ages, but pre-Enlightenment era, it would be the assertion that the final word on where the seat of power can be found is not on the throne, but in the legislation body. However, it is certainly worth noting that this assertion is made more than three centuries after the signing of the Magna Carta but still a full century before the passage of the Bill of Rights in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. So, while the author may have composing commentary in which the monarch takes a back seat to the Parliamentarians, England still had ahead of it some true-blue believers in absolute power and the divine right of kings. It would take some heads being chopped, some kings being deposed, a bloody Civil War and various assorted other less than fun times for the UK before this simple one line summing up of the power structure to become a reality existing anywhere outside the theoretical constructs of certain progressive minds.
The wives in England be as I said in potestate maritorum, not that the husband has vita ac necis potestatem, as the Romans had in the old time of their children, for that is only in the power of the Prince, and his laws, as I have said before, but that whatsoever they have before marriage, as soon as marriage is solemnized is their husbands, I mean of money, plate, jewels, cattaile, and generally all moveables.
Important to understand is that this is not merely a volume that examines the nature of the monarchy and parliamentary procedure relative to the balance of power. This is a comprehensive view of society in England in the mid-1500’s. It should come as little surprise, then, that the chapter subtitled “Of Wives and Marriages” is not one particularly progressive in its view toward women’s rights. This quote is also notable for the use of Latin phrases. This not should not pose much of a hardship on the average reader as the Latinate is not frequently and fairly easy enough to figure out from context. What is essentially being said here is that women give up everything when they marry. This is a legal framework that is almost certainly not going to come as shocking news to anyone with the slightest familiarity of the way things worked. But seeing it in put so starkly in print can be a little disconcerting.
