It was not content with legislative authority; it interfered with an executive which it could hamper but could not control.

It was possessed by the inveterate fallacy that freedom and strong government are things incompatible; that the executive is the natural enemy of the Legislature; that if one is strong, the other must be weak; and of the two alternatives it vastly preferred a weak executive.

So, to limit the king's power, it sought to make him "live of his own," when "his own" was absolutely inadequate to meet the barest necessities of government.
Parliament was in fact irresponsible; the connecting link between it and the executive had yet to be found.

Hence the Lancastrian "lack of governance"; it ended in a generation of civil war, and the memory of that anarchy explains much in Tudor history.
[Footnote 68: Fortescue, _Governance of England_, ed.

Plummer, 1885.] The problems of Henry VIII.'s reign can indeed only be solved by realising the misrule of the preceding century, the failure of parliamentary government, and the strength of the popular demand for a firm and masterful hand.