Henry VII's government

• Henry VII's government


  Councils and the court
• Council members


  • 227 men attended the Council during his reign
  • His actual working council only had 6-7 members
• The Council


  • Advise the king
  • Administer the realm on the king's behalf
  • Make legal judgements
• Types of councillors


  • Members of the nobility e.g. Lord Daubeney, though the working Council rarely included great magnates of the realm
  • Churchmen e.g. John Morton and Richard Fox who had legal training and were excellent administrators
  • Laymen, either gentry or lawyers, who were skilled administrators, such as Sir Reginald Bray and Edmund Dudley
• Lawyers had a significant role in the "second reign" of Edward IV from 1471
• John Morton


  Archbishop of Canterbury- 1486
• Sir Reginald Bray


  Thomas Penn described him as Henry's "chief executive"
• The Council had no established rules and procedures though it was a permanent body with a core membership
• The importance of the Council depended on its key members i.e. Bray and its offshoot the Council Learned
• David Loades argued Henry's most influential adviser was his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort despite the fact she held no office
• The Great Council


  A gathering of the House of Lords that met without the House of Commons
• The Great Council


  • No clearly defined functions
  • Only met 5 times throughout Henry VII's reign
  • Concerned with issues of war or rebellion
  • A means of binding the nobility to key decisions relating to national security
• The Council Learned


  Formed what John Guy describes as a 'specialist board'
• The Council Learned


  • Function to maintain the king's revenue and to exploit his prerogative rights
  • Made the system of bonds and recognisances work so effectively and thus able to entrap many of the king's subjects
  • It was not a recognised court of law and those summoned before it had no chance to appeal
  • Important for the maintenance of Henry's authority as it was for the raising of finances
• Richard Empson


  • Lawyer
  • Bureaucrat
  • Member of the king's Council from 1494
  • Chaired the Council Learned
  • Closely identified with the ruthlessness of HVII's regime
  • Arrested following the death of the king, charged with treason and executed the following year
• Edmund Dudley


  • Came to prominence following the death of Bray
  • Steven Gunn argues his role was to exploit financial opportunities which gave him ample opportunity to make influential enemies
  • He became vulnerable to counter-attack as soon as he lost the king's protection
• Empson and Dudley formed a feared combination of able and conscientious bureaucrats who raised the extraction of money from the king's subjects to a fine art
• In the process they created among the king's other key advisers e.g. Bishop Fox and Sir Thomas Lovell, who removed them after Henry VII's death
• Court and household


  • Personal monarchy
  • Political power and influence of an individual depended on the relationship that person had with the monarch rather than on office they might have held
• The household proper


  • Responsible for looking after the king, the courtiers, and guests
  • Personal and catering requirements were supervised by the Lord Steward
• The Chamber


  • The private areas of the court; also a key department for the efficient collection of royal revenues
  • Presided over by the Lord Chamberlain
• A considerable blow in 1495 when Sir William Stanley was found to have been involved in the Warbeck plot
• In response, Henry remodelled the Chamber by creating a new Privy Chamber, to which the king could retreat, protected by his most intimate servants
• This changed the character of court, thus making it more difficult for those who were out of favour to regain support
• Parliament


  • Only met occasionally so not central to government
  • To pass laws
  • Grant taxation to the Crown
• Henry's parliaments


  • 7 times, 5 of such met in the first 10 years, 2 in the remaining 14
• Henry's parliaments


  • Largely concerned with issues of national security and raising revenue
  • First parliament passed numerous Acts of Attainder
  • First parliament granted tonnage and poundage
  • Other parliaments granted extraordinary revenue
  • Most usual form of extraordinary revenue was fifteenths and tenths
• Henry's final parliament in 1504 managed to limit the demand for extraordinary revenue and received a pledge that Henry would not seek more revenue by this means
• Paul Cavill says that overall parliament operated effectively and there is little evidence that Henry tried to 'manage' Parliament through his ministers
• Domestic policy: justice and the maintenance of order


  Magnate control largely confined to the north of England
• The Stanley's


  In the northwest
• The Earl of Northumberland


  In the northeast and Yorkshire, though murder of Northumberland in 1489 left Henry without such
• Henry released the Yorkist Earl of Surrey from the Tower where he'd been imprisoned since the Battle of Bosworth to rule the north on his behalf
• Those Henry relied on


  • Earl of Oxford
  • Lord Daubeney
• Henry lacked the resources of the great magnates
• Henry's lack of trust was demonstrated by his employment of a spying network whose task was to report on magnate performance as well with the imposition of bonds and recognisances
• Justices of the peace (JPs)


  • Appointed on county-by-county basis and met four times a year to administer justice through the quarter sessions
  • Most were local gentry who 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
• Responsibilities of JPs


  • Tax administration
  • Alehouse regulations
  • The investigation of complaints against local officials
  • The maintenance of law and order
• JPs superseded the traditional authority of the county sheriff
• Bonds and recognisances


  • Restored law and order through forcing subjects to take out B&Rs
  • Some were the result of genuine debts owed to the Crown
  • Many were purely political
  • Edmund Dudley- the king wished "to have many persons in danger at his pleasure"
  • Binds to enforce order and obedience and defeat the law