A more serious fault found by The Edinburgh reviewer, the ablest of all Froude's critics, was the implication rather than the assertion that Henry VIII.'s Parliaments represented the people.

The House of Commons in the sixteenth century was really chosen through the Sheriffs by the Crown, and the preambles of the Statutes, upon which Froude relied as evidence of contemporary opinion, showed the opinion of the Government rather than the opinion of the people.
They are not of course on that account to be neglected.

Although the House of Commons was no result of popular election, it consisted of representative Englishmen, who would hardly have acquiesced in statements notoriously untrue.

Henry neither obtained nor asked the opinion of the people, as we understand the phrase.

The "dim common populations" had no more to do with the Government of England then than they have to do with the Government of India now.