Strengthening Royal Government (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes
Strengthening Royal Government
Henry VII faced the challenge of establishing a new dynasty after seizing the throne at Bosworth in 1485. To secure his position and prevent future challenges, he needed to build effective royal authority across England. This required defeating rivals, controlling the nobility, and creating administrative systems that would support his rule. However, these were not simple tasks, and Henry approached them pragmatically, responding to problems as they arose rather than following a master plan.
Problems facing Henry VII
By 1485, English government was well organised but had come close to collapse several times during the fifteenth century. The Wars of the Roses had demonstrated the fragility of royal authority. Henry inherited three interconnected problems that threatened his ability to govern effectively.
The first problem concerned the nobility. England's great nobles possessed wealth and territorial power that made them potential rivals to the Crown. They had grown increasingly powerful during the fifteenth century, acquiring more lands at the Crown's expense. Their large estates generated income from rents and leases, which some used to build impressive strongholds and to recruit and retain private armies. These magnates were essential for maintaining law and order in the regions where they held land and estates, yet their power made them dangerous.
The nobility's dual role created a fundamental tension in medieval governance. While magnates were necessary to maintain order in their regions, their wealth and private armies made them capable of challenging the Crown itself. This paradox would shape much of Henry's policy toward the nobility.
The second problem was the uneven control the Crown exercised over different parts of the kingdom. Royal authority was stronger in the more populated southern and eastern counties but much looser in the borderlands. The lack of a developed system of local administration in remote areas made it harder to enforce royal will consistently across the realm.
The third problem was financial. The Crown's finances had been severely depleted by wars at home and abroad. Without adequate funds, Henry could not afford to maintain an effective government or defend the realm against threats.
Henry's approach to these interconnected challenges was determined by his personality and circumstances. Francis Bacon, writing in 1622, characterised Henry as a king who "loved his own way" and kept his distance from others, "not admitting any near or full approach, neither to his power nor to his secrets". This cautious, suspicious nature shaped Henry's governing style.
Contemporary Observations of Henry VII
A visitor from Florence observed that Henry was "more feared than loved", suggesting his methods prioritised control over popularity. Henry's natural suspicion and anxieties about rivals forced him to act firmly, and on occasion, to take harsh measures. These character traits would define his approach to governance throughout his reign.
Controlling the nobility
Henry's relationship with the nobility was critical to his survival as King. He depended on them to maintain law and order in the regions where they held land and estates. However, the nobility had grown powerful during the fifteenth century, gaining more lands at the expense of the Crown. Their large estates generated income which some had used to build impressive strongholds and to recruit and retain private armies.
Henry was fortunate that his decisive victory at Bosworth and a series of deaths in the 1480s meant that several families, such as the houses of Warwick, Northumberland and Buckingham, were now headed by children rather than experienced magnates. This gave him breathing space at the start of his reign.
Henry's Strategy for Noble Control
Henry employed several different policies to reduce his reliance on the nobility and to limit their power. The nobility depended upon three factors to maintain their independence from the King: land, wealth and support. Henry worked to reduce all three during his reign, while being careful not to push them into open rebellion.
Attainders
Attainders were special laws passed by Parliament which allowed someone to be declared guilty of treason without going through the process of a trial. From the start of his reign, Henry used attainders to seize the titles and possessions of nobles he suspected of disloyalty.
Henry asked his first Parliament to issue attainders against men who had opposed him at the Battle of Bosworth, and he resorted to using them periodically during his reign. The threat of an attainder could be reversed if Henry thought that would secure the gratitude and future loyalty of the victim. During his reign 138 attainders were passed, of which 46 were reversed. This suggests Henry used attainders flexibly as a political tool rather than simply as punishment.
However, a more detailed breakdown shows an increasing severity as the reign progressed, suggesting insecurity and paranoia right to the end of his reign. In the years 1504–09, 51 of the attainders were passed. Severity was also a feature on many occasions when an attainder was reversed, especially from those below noble rank, with payment demanded as the price.
Worked Example: The Cost of Reversal
Sir Thomas Tyrell had to pay £1,738 for the reversal of his and his father's attainders. This substantial sum demonstrates how Henry used the reversal of attainders not just as a political tool, but also as a significant source of revenue. The financial burden ensured continued loyalty while enriching the Crown's coffers.
Patronage
Patronage referred to the monarch granting special favours, such as land or positions at court, to groups of people in order to retain their support. The term can also be used for the actions of local nobles who showed favours to people in their locality.
Henry largely abandoned Edward IV's policy of distributing lands to loyal followers. There were some grants at the beginning of the reign, but Henry was concerned not to create a new group of nobles who could rise to become a potential threat. The result was that the number of people who could be described as nobles fell by about one-quarter during his reign through deaths and attainders.
Vacant lands were absorbed into Henry's personal domains, making him by far the largest landowner in the country. When Henry needed royal agents in local communities, he looked to men lower down the social scale who did not have extensive lands in the area. These men were therefore dependent on him for the position and status they held and were not distracted by competing loyalties.
Attacks on retaining
Retaining was the practice by which a nobleman kept a large number of men as his personal staff, in theory to be used as household servants, but in practice as gangs of enforcers. Retainers could be used to put pressure on tenants who were slow in paying their rent, or on juries to return the verdict their master wanted. Henry, like Edward IV before him, rightly regarded them as a lawless element.
New laws were passed in 1485 and 1504 against illegal retaining. In the 1485 Parliament, Lords and Commons had to swear that they would not retain illegally. The 1504 Act required nobles to obtain a special licence from the King before they could retain large numbers of men, and imposed severe fines if they did not. The penalty was £5 per month per illegal retainer.
The Challenge of Enforcement
The ideas behind the law were sound, but the problem had gone on for too long to be settled so easily. Nobles found ways to avoid getting a licence, for example by covering up records of the wages they paid to servants, so that no one knew exactly how many men were being retained. This demonstrates the limits of Henry's power – even strong legislation could be circumvented by determined nobles.
Financial controls
Another of Henry's devices was to demand a financial bond from individual nobles or their families. This would place the noble in debt to the Crown, so that he would remain loyal in future. In effect, Henry forced nobles to behave themselves or face a ruinous fine. It was a widely used policy – in Henry's last decade as King about two-thirds of the nobility were held under bonds.
Worked Example: Lord Burgavenny's Case
The most extreme example was Lord Burgavenny. He was convicted in 1507 of illegally retaining 471 men and fined £70,000. Henry knew that paying this amount would bankrupt the lord, so he generously agreed to place him under a bond to repay £5,000 over ten years.
The conditions attached to this included an instruction that Burgavenny should not set foot on his family lands in the south-east until the debt was settled. In this way, Henry both raised money from someone he did not trust and obliged him to keep in the King's favour or risk ruin.
To enforce these rights, Henry established the Council Learned in Law to act as a royal debt collector.
Local and regional government
Effective government depended on having a reliable network of officials throughout the country to carry out the King's laws. Particular parts of the country, especially those most distant from London, were notoriously difficult to control except by relying on the presence of the local nobility.
Elsewhere, in the more settled regions, earlier kings had built up the numbers and powers of Justices of the Peace (JPs). These JPs were appointed annually from among the local landowners, several per county. They were responsible for public order, making sure that laws were implemented and dispensing justice to criminals brought before them. Four times a year they met at the Quarter Sessions so that they could try those accused of more serious crimes – all except treason, which was left to the Crown.
Since royal control over the kingdom was so uneven from place to place, Henry did not attempt to create one system of local government but relied instead on the most appropriate solution for each region. This pragmatic approach reflected both the geographical challenges of governing England and the political reality of dealing with powerful regional interests.
Regional variations
Ireland: Henry was Lord of Ireland, but real power lay with the clan chieftains. The Earl of Kildare was his deputy, but his sympathy with the royal pretenders forced Henry to remove him and install Sir Edward Poynings in 1494. However, Poynings' attempts to reduce the independence of the Irish Parliament failed and Kildare was restored in 1496.
Scotland: Scotland was a separate kingdom over which Henry had no control. A difficulty he faced was that Scotland was traditionally friendly with France, England's potential enemy.
Wales: Henry restored the Council of Wales and staffed it with Welsh nobles under the leadership of his uncle Jasper Tudor and the honorary control of his young son Prince Arthur. Lands along the English-Welsh border were known as the "marches". There, local nobles had special privileges.
Northern England: Northern England was far from the centre of political power and had been loyal to the House of York. After the murder of the Earl of Northumberland in 1489, Henry allowed the Earl of Suffolk to represent him, because Suffolk had no lands or strong base of support there from which to rival Henry.
County of Durham: The County of Durham was another area where the King's authority was limited. In this area, known as the Palatinate of Durham, the Prince-Bishop governed as a semi-independent ruler.
England (JPs): In England, local government was conducted through Justices of the Peace. During Henry's reign their powers and responsibilities grew substantially:
Expansion of JP Powers During Henry VII's Reign
- 1485: Powers of arrest extended to cover poachers and printers
- 1491: Powers to grant bail
- 1495: Powers to vet juries
This gradual expansion of JP authority strengthened royal control in settled regions without relying on potentially dangerous magnates.
National government
Fifteenth-century government was, in effect, personal government by the King and his advisers at court. Parliament existed but had a minor role in political life – mainly to pass laws that the King wanted and to vote him additional taxes.
Parliament met infrequently and usually not for more than a few weeks or months at a time. For most of the time, the King ruled directly through decrees and proclamations. Henry used Parliament sparingly, usually during his first decade as King to support him in controversial policies such as limitations on the traditional privileges of the nobility or new financial demands on his subjects, but he usually ignored it.
| Year(s) | Approximate length of session |
|---|---|
| 1485-86 | 3 months |
| 1487 | 1 month |
| 1489 | 1.5 months |
| 1491 | 0.5 month |
| 1495 | 2 months |
| 1497 | 2 months |
| 1504 | 2.5 months |
Henry's Use of Parliament
Henry had a clear purpose in the way in which he used Parliament once he had been crowned. His assumption – not challenged by Parliament – was that all power derived from the monarch. Parliaments were called to serve the interests of the monarch and keep his subjects under control, often by Acts of Attainder. Therefore there was no chance of Parliaments ceasing to exist, but they met on the monarch's terms.
The Royal Council
More important to Henry were the committees and law courts within his government. Chief among these was the Royal Council. It was the place where Henry gathered together his most trusted supporters to give him advice and to take on some of the tasks of day-to-day management of the kingdom.
Although records from Henry's reign list 227 men as members of the council, in practice regular membership was much smaller and included John Morton and Reginald Bray. The Royal Council met when the King needed it and there were no written rules governing its procedure. During Henry's reign the development was the emergence of committees of the council to deal with specific matters of policy.
Administration of finances
Henry VII has gained a reputation for having a keen financial mind, so historians have tended to look at his policies in this area with special interest. By the end of his reign he had ensured that the Crown had built up enough annual income to meet its commitments, and that money was carefully accounted for. In part, Henry achieved this by taking a more direct personal interest in the state of national finances.
At the beginning of his reign when Henry was inexperienced, he allowed departments of state such as the Treasury and the Exchequer to take control, but they were clumsy and inefficient. From 1487 onwards Henry quickly followed Edward IV's example by dealing with the administration of finance from his private rooms in the palace – the Chamber and Privy Chamber. This Chamber system became, as it had been in Edward IV's reign, the most important institution of financial administration.
Henry also established a new post of Surveyor of the King's Wards to investigate cases of money owed to him from wardships, and a Court of Audit to monitor government spending. As well as these institutional reforms, Henry also improved and developed the sources of his income.
Financial policies
Henry's financial policies were cautious and realistic. He understood that foreign wars had been the single biggest reason for the poverty of earlier kings, so he largely avoided conducting an aggressive foreign policy. He exploited his legal rights to claim special payments from his nobles, both to swell his treasury and to remind them of his control over them, but he was also prepared to overlook or to reverse his claims when it was necessary to win support.
Some writers have characterised Henry as a miser, obsessed with hoarding more and more money from every source he could find. There is some truth in this, especially in the final decade of his reign. However, Henry always spent money extravagantly when it was necessary to enhance the image of his kingship.
Contemporary Views on Henry's Financial Practices
Henry's reputation for being greedy was begun by the contemporary writer, Polydore Vergil, who wrote that people: "considered they were suffering not on account of their own sins but on account of the greed of their monarch". This contemporary criticism suggests that Henry's financial policies, while effective, came at the cost of his popularity among his subjects.
Council Learned in Law
The Council Learned in Law was an offshoot from the main Royal Council which dealt initially with managing and pursuing the King's feudal rights, but soon assumed control of all financial matters relating to royal lands. All the members of the Council had legal training (hence the name) and acted both as investigators and judges in cases where there was suspicion that a nobleman was not paying his proper dues to the King.
An Instrument of Control and Oppression
As a result, the Council and its leading figures – Sir Reginald Bray to 1503, then Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson – were universally hated and feared. The Council operated without juries and there was no right of appeal, making it a particularly oppressive instrument of royal control. This represents one of the most controversial aspects of Henry's governance.
Star Chamber
Historians have debated the importance of this court of law in Henry's methods of controlling his leading subjects. It was created by the Star Chamber Act in 1487 and was responsible for prosecuting anyone who behaved in a rebellious or lawless manner. Members of the Royal Council – the King's most favoured advisers – sat on the court to make these judgements, so it was possible to haul even the greatest nobleman before it.
The Star Chamber also came to be used as a Court of Appeal. Its exact importance in Henry VII's reign is unclear owing to a shortage of relevant records. Some writers argue that Henry made little use of Star Chamber during his reign, preferring instead to control unruly subjects by financial and other means. What is certain is that it became much more developed in its organisation and use under Wolsey in the next reign.
Key Points to Remember:
- Henry VII faced three main problems: powerful nobles with territorial power, uneven royal control across the kingdom, and depleted Crown finances
- Henry controlled the nobility through attainders (138 passed, 46 reversed), restricted patronage, anti-retaining laws (1485, 1504), and financial bonds (two-thirds of nobility held under bonds by the end of his reign)
- Local government relied on regional solutions rather than a unified system, with JPs in settled areas and varied arrangements in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the north
- Parliament met infrequently (only seven times in 24 years) and served mainly to pass laws and vote taxes when Henry required them; real power lay with the King and Royal Council
- Henry revolutionised financial administration by adopting the Chamber system from 1487, establishing the Council Learned in Law as a debt collector, and creating the post of Surveyor of the King's Wards to maximise royal income