Henry VII Governemnt Flashcards
The council:
The king ruled with a ‘council’ of advisers who supported him in making key decisions, with around 227 recorded attendances during his reign.
Henry VII’s actual working Council was a much smaller affair with around six or seven members, its functions were:
• to advise the king
• to administer the realm on the king’s behalf
• to make legal judgements.
What were the three main types of councillor:
- Nobles, such as Lord Daubeney, though the working Council only rarely included the great magnates.
- Churchmen such as John Morton and Richard Fox, who often had legal training and were excellent administrators.
- Laymen, either gentry or lawyers, who were skilled administrators, such as Sir Reginald Bray and Edmund Dudley.
The council key facts:
- Under Henry VII the Council was a permanent body with a core membership, though with no established procedures.
- Members also met separately to deal with administrative concerns when the king was not present.
- Professional councillors such as Bray and Dudley, who did not see themselves as courtiers, often met to deal with legal and administrative matters.
- Non-councillors could also advise the king - for example, Henry’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was arguably Henry’s most influential advisor, despite not being an official adviser.
The council learned in law:
- An offshoot of the Council, this body developed during the second half of Henry’s reign, initially under Bray.
- It was not a recognised court of law and there was no right of appeal against it.
The modern historian Thomas Penn has argued that the Council Learned caused fear, frustration and anger, as it bypassed the normal legal system.
Functions of the Council Learned in Law:
- Its function was to maintain the king’s revenue and to exploit his prerogative rights.
- It was the Council Learned which made the system of bonds and recognizances work so effectively and thus able to entrap many of the king’s subjects.
- The workings of the Council Learned have often been seen as a rather ‘shady’ operation by historians. It was not a recognised court of law and there was no right of appeal against it. This council
Key figures for the Council learned in law:
The council was important in maintaining Henry’s authority as well in raising finance.
- Bray’s associate in the Council Learned was Sir Richard Empson - a fiercely ambitious lawyer and bureaucrat.
- After Bray’s death in 1503, Empson was joined by Edmund Dudley.
- Empson and Dudley were able and conscientious bureaucrats, whose ruthless extraction of money from the king’s subjects made them feared and unpopular, and created enemies out of some of the king’s other advisers. They were removed and executed after Henry’s death.
The modern historian Thomas Penn has argued that the Council Learned caused fear, frustration and anger, as it bypassed the normal legal system.
What was the royal court ?
The royal court was the centre of government.
- characterised by personal monarchy - a system in which a person’s power was determined by his relationship with the monarch.
- Rewards and status were distributed through the court; courtiers enjoyed paid positions or the right to receive free food, and it was there that the support of the king or other influential persons could be obtained.
What are the different levels to the court ?
In 1485, the court comprised:
- the household proper, responsible for looking after the king, courtiers and guests, supervised by the Lord Steward
- The politically important part of the system was the Chamber, presided over by the Lord Chamberlain. The Lord Chamberlain and other senior household officials were influential courtiers. The position of Lord Chamberlain was both powerful and a matter of considerable trust. It was therefore a considerable blow to Henry VII to discover in 1495 that his Lord Chamberlain, Sir William Stanley, had been involved in a treasonable plot with the pretender Perkin Warbeck.
Henry’s response to this challenge was to remodel the Chamber by creating a new Privy (i.e. private) Chamber, to which the king could retreat, protected by his most intimate servants. This changed the character of the court, thus making it more difficult for those who were out of favour to regain the king’s support. Henry cut himself off from much of the king’s traditional contacts at court.
Henry 7th parliament and its role:
Parliament, comprising of the House of Commons and the House of Lords ( House of Lords was more important ) only met occasionally and was not central to the system of government.
It had two main functions:
- passed laws
- granted taxation to the crown
Henry and his relationship to parliament:
- Only the king could call Parliament, and Henry demonstrated his right to rule by calling his first
parliament in November 1485. - Henry called seven parliaments in his reign. Five of these met in the first ten years and only two in the remaining 14 years; this shows that power centred on the Crown and when Henry felt more secure, Parliament could be dispensed with.
Henry’s early parliaments were largely concerned with the following:
1. National security: For example, his first two parliaments passed numerous Acts of Attainder (by which individuals* could be declared guilty without trial if alive; if dead, their property would be forfeit to the Crown)
*often used against powerful nobles the king saw as a threat, especially under monarchs like Henry VII, who used them to weaken the nobility and centralise royal power.
- Raising revenue:
For example:
• His first parliament granted tonnage and poundage, taxes that provided the monarch with income for life.
• Other parliaments granted extraordinary revenue (taxation granted as a one-off payment, for example to enable the king to wage war).
The most usual form of extraordinary revenue was fifteenths and tenths, payments to the crown from towns and boroughs.
Parliament appears in general to have operated effectively under Henry VII, with the king accepting its decisions.
Domestic policy:
How did Henry VII control the nobility and maintain authority despite no widespread of magnate power across England?
The number of magnates had been reduced in the last years of the Wars of the Roses and their lands had fallen into the hands of the Crown.
Magnate control was largely confined to the north of England:
- In the northwest of England, control was held by the Stanley family, who were related to King Henry VII (his stepfather was Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby).
- In the northeast and Yorkshire, power was held by the Earl of Northumberland. But in 1489, the Earl of Northumberland was murdered, and that meant Henry no longer had a powerful noble to act on his behalf in that important region (Yorkshire/northeast).
He solved this problem by releasing the Yorkist Earl of Surrey from the Tower, where he had been imprisoned since the Battle of Bosworth, to rule the north on his behalf. Sending a known supporter of Richard III to the area which had been his predecessor’s centre of power was a high-risk strategy, but Surrey proved his loyalty through effective service in the north for ten years.
Rest of the country:
- Henry had to rely on those whom he did trust, such as the Earl of Oxford and Lord Daubeney, but they lacked the resources, power and influence of the great magnates.
- Elsewhere he had to rely on those in whom he had little real faith, such as the Marquis of Dorset.
Henry’s role in ensuring Control:
This lack of trust was demonstrated by Henry’s employment of a spying network whose task was to report on magnate performance as well as with the imposition of bonds and recognizances.
Domestic policy: justices and the maintenance of order.
Who were justices of the peace and how did they maintain law and order?
At a local level, Henry relied increasingly on justices of the peace (JPs) to maintain law and order in the countryside.
Appointment:
JPs were appointed on a countyby-county basis and met four times a year to administer justice through the quarter sessions.
Who were the JP’s:
Though it was quite common for royal officials to be appointed as JPs in counties in which they had an interest, most JPs were local gentry.
Why were most JP’s local gentry:
They fulfilled their unpaid tasks either out of a sense of duty or because they perceived that doing so might open the path to greater advancement or local prestige.
Increased power to maintain law and order:
Various Acts of Parliament were passed to increase the powers and responsibilities of JPs who were responsible for routine administration such as: tax assessments, alehouse regulation, the investigation of complaints against local officials, and the maintenance of law and order. In that role they superseded the traditional authority of the county sheriff.
Therefore:
• Henry VII strengthened JPs through Parliament, giving them more powers.
• These powers included practical, day-to-day governance — keeping law and order, assessing taxes, and checking up on local officials.
• The fact that JPs “superseded the traditional authority of the county sheriff” means they became the main local authority, showing Henry was moving control into the hands of trusted local gentry, not the old feudal nobility.
Henry 7th used JPs to:
- Used JPs to centralise control
- Relied on loyal, lower-ranking gentry rather than powerful nobles
- Helped keep order and reduce noble independence
However, while JPs were useful and increasingly relied upon, they didn’t always have the resources or power to fully control, especially in distant areas like the north.
Domestic policy: justices and the maintenance of order.
What are bonds and recognizances and how did Henry utilise them to maintain law and order?
Using justices of the peace to maintain law and order was only part of the picture:
- Henry VII restored law and order largely through forcing many of his subjects to take out bonds and recognizances.
- bond: a legal document where nobles promised to pay a fine if they broke the king’s rules or misbehaved.
- recognizance: a formal acknowledgement of a debt or other obligation, ensuring enforced loyalty by means of financial penalty
- Some of the bonds and recognizances were the result of genuine debts owed to the Crown.
- However, many of them were purely political:
In the words of Edmund Dudley, the king wished ‘to have many persons in danger at his pleasure’.
This means that the king used bonds to enforce order and obedience, and defeat the law, a system which can be regarded as morally dubious.
Using bonds and recognizances to maintain order was effective for Henry VII, but the way he used them — keeping people under threat of financial ruin for political reasons — was ethically questionable
Domestic policy: improving royal finances.
What were the number of ways in which Henry 7 accumulated money ?
There were a number of sources of royal income:
• Crown lands
• profits from feudal dues and the exercise of the royal prerogative
• customs revenue
• pensions from other powers
• profits of justice
• extraordinary revenue.
ordinary revenue: regular income
extraordinary revenue: irregular income
Note: Over £400,000 was raised from extraordinary revenue. But this helped provoke rebellions in 1489 and 1497. In 1504, Henry had to promise not to raise any more money by this method
Domestic policy: improving royal finances.
Henry’s use of crown lands and there significance.
Henry VII was the country’s largest landowner and the rental income from his property was a very important part of the Crown’s ordinary revenue.
Key points:
1. Income from Crown lands had significantly increased during the reign of Edward IV.
- At the beginning of Henry’s reign income had dropped to about £12,000 per year.
- This was because the income from lands was collected and administered through the inefficient Court of Exchequer, which exemplifies Henry’s inexperience in such financial matters.
- It was around 1492 that Henry decided to revert to Edward’s system of administration through the Chamber (through the royal household rather than through an administrative department), where policies were formulated and decisions were made.
- Finances improved markedly and the income from land had increased by the end of the reign to around £42,000 per year.
- This was partly achieved by effective treasurers of the Chamber, such as Sir Thomas Lovell and Sir John Heron.
Christine Carpenter, who is very critical of many aspects of Henry’s kingship, regards this growth of income from Crown lands as impressive.
Domestic policy: improving royal finances.
Explain Henry’s use of profits from feudal dues and the exercise of the royal prerogative.
What’s their significance ?
The enforcement and control over the king’s feudal rights became stricter and more rigorous.
There were increased
profits from wardship and Parliament granted a feudal aid in 1504.
1. Wardship meaning:
- part of the feudal system: Crown would take control of the land owned by a minor, during this time the Crown would collect the profits from the land.
2. Feudal aid meaning:
- A revived form of raising revenue. Tax that the king could impose on his tenants (landowners who held land from the Crown). It was used for certain important royal needs, such as:
• Knighting the king’s eldest son
• Marriage of the king’s eldest daughter
• Ransoming a lord (if they were captured in battle, for example)
Lawyers found legal precedents in ‘Prerogativa Regis’ that allowed Henry to charge fees for the king’s prerogative rights (his royal powers).
• Obligations upon the death of a tenant-in-chief (landowner) also became a source of revenue. When these landowners died, their heirs had to pay fees to the Crown.
Why Did Landowners Find This Irritating?
1. Landowners were unhappy because Henry was using these old feudal dues and powers to raise money from them. The Statute of Uses made it harder to avoid paying these taxes after someone died.
2. The combination of feudal dues, wardship, and feudal aid meant that landowners faced more financial pressure from the Crown.
Henry VII used old feudal systems like feudal aid, wardship, and feudal dues to raise money for the Crown, but these methods were unpopular with landowners because they had to pay more to the king. He also passed the Statute of Uses** to stop people from using legal tricks to avoid taxes on land after someone’s death.
Statute of uses meaning:
This was a law passed in 1489 to stop people from using legal loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Specifically, it stopped people from creating “trusts” — legal arrangements where land could be passed on without being taxed after someone’s death. Essentially, it was a way to close a loophole that wealthy landowners were using to avoid paying death taxes.
Domestic policy: improving royal finances.
What were Henry’s other sources of revenue?
• Customs revenue: tonnage and poundage had been granted for life by Henry’s first parliament. Over the course of the reign there was a small increase in the annual revenue from this source from £34,000 to £38,000.
• Pensions from other powers: at the Treaty of Etaples in 1492 the French agreed to pay Henry a pension of £5000 per annum.
• Profits of justice: this included fines and income from bonds. Bonds represented a potential rather than an actual asset. For example, between 1504 and 1507 a total of at least £200,000 was promised to the king, though not all was collected.
• Extraordinary revenue: Henry received over £400,000 from extraordinary taxation. However, raising all this revenue came at a price and helped to provoke rebellions in 1489 and 1497. Henry had to promise the Parliament of 1504 not to raise any more money by this method. In 1489, when Parliament had granted Henry a subsidy of £75,000, the Convocation of Canterbury in addition offered £25,000 on behalf of the clergy.
In total, Henry left plate and jewels worth around £300,000 and £10,000 in cash. Although a substantial sum, this is a far cry from Bacon’s estimate of £1,800,000.
Domestic policy: improving royal finances.
What were the consequences of Henry’s sources of income:
Much energy was spent on improving Henry’s revenues, but there was a political price to be paid.
The main victims of Henry’s policies were the nation’s landowners, precisely the people whose support Henry would need if his throne was threatened.
- Yet Henry treated them in a way which might have made them threaten the Crown.
- Whenever earlier medieval monarchs had adopted this strategy, the outcome for the Crown’s authority had been disastrous.
- Henry’s policies were therefore quite dangerous ones.
