ABSTRACT
The assembly boasted a particularly significant unifying principle, for it was parliament's ability to reflect the consent of the "entire society' that was accepted as the authority for the making of sovereign law. The collective context of sovereign representative law was given expression in the authoritative definition provided in 1564 by the leading expert in the principles and practice of Tudor government, Sir Thomas Smith. The whole kingdom gathered together to consult on the nature of its aims and problems and on how they could be dealt with by the provision of national sovereign law. Divine Right theory held that although the king might, as a concession of the royal grace, admit parliament to a place in the lawmaking process, this was not an inherited right, and the king could still make sovereign law by his own authority. John Cowell in his book The Interpreter, declared that 'the prince of his absolute power might make laws of himself".
