New Men, New Monarch?

• Who were the ‘new men’?

• What evidence do you have so far in favour of and against Henry being a ‘New Monarch?’

The New Men• In contrast to the difficult relationship between the king and nobility, Henry’s reign saw

the rise of a new group of men who played an important role in keeping him secure.

• They enforced royal policy in the capital and the localities.• Many were lawyers, ambitious and loyal to the king who had given them power• What was different about Henry VII was the extent to which he was prepared to use new

men and the way he was prepared to let them bend the law to keep him secure.

• The new men favoured by the King became very rich.• They acted as moneylenders and collected land if debts could not be paid. Sir Henry

Wyatt got lots of land in Kent in this way. Others married wealthy heiresses.• They helped assert royal control in the shires and to stop feuding amongst the gentry.• The regime was essentially lawless and tyrannical however – the kings paranoia allowed

them to do as they wished – all of which tarnishes the stable and law abiding reputation of Henry’s reign.

• Direct control from the king of the shires was greater but the country was not better governed. Aristocratic paternalism was replaced by the greed and ambition of the new men.

• The employment of men who were not noble in government was not new.

• Finance is a key area we will look at today.

• In pairs read through your extract of an historians account of Henry’s domestic finance policies.

Does your extract show Henry’s domestic policy to be effective?

Key Question: How effective was Henry VII’s domestic policy?

Today’s focus: Finance and Administration

Learning Objectives

• Explore Henry’s policies regarding domestic finance and administration

• Further your understanding of Henry’s domestic policy

• Assess the success of Henry’s domestic policy

Royal Finances

• It is generally agreed that Henry VII was very keen to accumulate wealth and land throughout his reign. He has been called greedy and grasping. His sustained interest in making money made him unpopular and did not bring him much political advantage. He did not set up any new sources of revenue but he did exploit existing revenue in a more systematic way than his predecessors.

Sources of Income• Royal lands• Feudal dues• Bonds and recognisances• Trade• Parliamentary grants• Knighting of Arthur• Marriage of Margaret, his eldest daughter• Loans• French pension• Sale of offices• Search for concealed land

Royal Lands• The king gained rents from royal lands.• He held the greatest landed estate of any king since

William the Conqueror• Annual income from land increased from £12,000 in 1485

to around £40,000 by 1509. Henry exploited it effectively• Henry gained large amounts of land from the attainder of

Richard and his supporters after Bosworth – the Yorkists were the second biggest holders of land after the Crown.

• Jasper left Henry sole heir to his land when he died in 1495

• When Arthur, Henry’s son died, the land reverted to the Crown – Henry gave some to his new heir, Henry, but he took some of his lands back to compensate for the gift.

Feudal dues

• Henry and his agents exploited feudal dues with efficiency and zeal. Henry benefited when the great landowners, technically his tenants-in-chief, died and in 1501 he declared that ALL large landowners were now tenants-in-chief. Master of Wards and Surveyor of the King’s Prerogative (see earlier notes) were created to ensure the Kings feudal dues were properly collected.

Bonds and Recognisances

• As discussed earlier the king made large amounts of money from bonds of good behaviour – it was also a useful method of control.

Trade

• Henry, like his predecessors, taxed trade, both imports and exports.

• He was granted “tunnage and poundage for life” by the first Parliament of the reign in 1485. This was the right to collect taxes from trade – Richard III was the first king to be granted this for life.

• First ten years of the reign this tax brought in about £33,000 a year, but it was nearer £40,000 from 1495 onwards.

Parliamentary grants• The traditional grant from Parliament was the “Fifteenth

and Tenth”. This was a fixed sum assessed for each community and brought in about £30,000 for each one granted.

• On top of this were extraordinary grants – usually for war or security at home. Eight were granted to Henry, three in 1491 for the invasion of France, two in 1497 for the Scots.

• An unusual demand in 1489 for an extra tax – based on individual income, not the wealth of the community – sparked off the Northern Rising. The tax failed – the King hoped to raise £100,000 to pay for archers to defend Brittany but only £25,000 was collected.

Knighting and marriage of the Kings children

• In 1504 the king demanded Parliament give him money to knight Arthur, his oldest son, and pay for the marriage of his daughter Margaret to King James of Scotland.

• As Arthur had actually been knighted back in 1489 and had died in 1502, and Margaret was married to James the year before, Parliament was not impressed. Henry hoped to raise a lot of money, or perhaps wanted to see how much more he could claim for his prerogative rights. If so he was disappointed – Parliament offered an “aid” of £30,000 instead.

Loans

• Like all his predecessors Henry asked for loans to boost his income. Some were from merchants or moneylenders. He also asked for benevolences – free loans that were rarely repaid. Chancellor Morton was particularly associated with the collection of benevolences

French pension

• Henry’s French pension, gained in the Treaty of Etaples, brought in about £160,000 during the reign.

Sale of Offices• Kings usually got rewards for giving a powerful and

potentially lucrative office to one of his courtiers. Henry seems to have exploited it rather more thoroughly than most, however.

• He twice sold the office of Chief Just of the Common Pleas for £330

• John Yonge paid £1000 to the king to become the Master of the Rolls

• There was a form of auction for the office of Speaker of the House of Commons, where Bray beat Daubeneys bid of £100 to win the post to secure the job for his man Thomas Englefield.

Search for Concealed lands

• As mentioned previously Henry used his new men and commissions to find out which land belonged to the Crown, and which could be claimed for the Crown. He then made money from entry fees, from gaining new land and from wardships.

Chamber Finance• Most medieval kings had some money paid into the Kings

Chamber when it was needed to spend quickly – for example when making preparations for war. Most money was paid into the Exchequer. In the first ten years of his reign Henry did much the same. However, after 1495 he began to put more and more revenue into the Kings Chamber – essentially a personal account. In 1487 £17,000 per year was paid into the Chamber, by 1509 £105,000 per year. This meant that the King personally oversaw all items of income and signed each one. This gave him much more control over his income.

Expenditure• Henry VII has often been seen as a miser – who accumulated money

for its own sake and spent as little as possible. This is not so. Henry VII did ruthlessly accumulate money, but he also spent it.

• The King kept a lavish court and enjoyed gambling• He built Greenwich Palace and rebuilt the palace of Sheen, renaming

it Richmond.• After 1491 he spent about £300,000 on plate and jewels.• The political instability of his reign cost money. He had to pay to

defeat his enemies. • He also spent lavishly to woo his proposed alliances, eg the Spanish

and Philip of Burgundy. It has been estimated that Henry spend £342,000 (3 years income) on diplomacy with Maximilian and Philip in 1505-1509 alone.

Summary• Henry did increase royal income but the scale of

his success should not be exaggerated. Edward IV was equally successful

• At the end of their reigns, Edward had an income of around £70,000 whilst Henry’s was around £100,000. However Edward had to restore royal finances from the desperate state they had been in under Henry VI – he got out of debt and did not have to go to Parliament to maintain his household.

• Also, Henry’s grasping nature had made him unpopular. A contemporary wrote of him in 1496 “The King is very powerful in money but …… if he had to take to the battlefield he would fare badly. His people would abandon him because of his greed”.

• Taxes were the cause of two of the risings against him, the Northern Rising and the Cornish Rising.

Did Henry’s money make him more powerful?

• Probably not. Henry did not use his money in ways that would secure or enhance the Crown’s power.

• He set up the Yeoman of the Guard as bodyguards but he did not create a standing army

• Most of Henry’s officials were unpaid – which lead to corruption and greed. He could have used his money to create a paid bureaucracy which would have meant a real increase in royal authority.

• He did not find any new sources of income for the Crown so it remained underfunded. The increased exploitation of revenues was personal to Henry and did not outlive him

• He failed to introduce new financial institutions• Compared to the French and the Spanish, England remained a third

class state in terms of income.

Government and Administration• The structure of government remained much the

same as it had been under Edward IV. • Henry did work harder than Edward however and

was more “hands on”. • The Crown did become more powerful under

Henry but this was to do with his personal style rather than changing institutions of government.

• The increase in the power of the Crown under Henry VII is now believed to have been previously exaggerated.

Key areas

• The Kings Council• The Star Chamber• Justices of the Peace• Law and Order• Parliaments• Legislation• Great Councils• Local Government

The Kings Council• The Kings Council remained very similar in make up and in function

to Edward IV. The council was not a fixed body but groups of councillors called on by the King when he needed advice.

• Under Henry VII the Kings Council was flexible and informal – he never called all the councillors together. At any one time there may be about 20 councillors and the King would call on 6 or 7 at a time. This again was similar to Edward IV.

• There were 135 known meetings of the Council over 24 years of Henry’s reign.

• 29 of Henry’s councillors had served under Edward.• The type of men called, a mixture of clergy, layers, peers, courtiers

were much the same under Edward as under Henry and the balance was also similar.

The Star Chamber• Henry has been given the credit for setting up a new law

court, the Star Chamber, in order to crack down on the nobility and create new structures of government.

• Now, however, it has been suggested that in fact the Star Chamber was only supposed to be a temporary tribunal during the crisis over Lambert Simnel. The King himself did not send accused to the Star Chamber, but the victims themselves. This suggests no innovation in government, nor does it suggest more administrative control.

• Also the defendants were rarely nobles – in fact the Star Chamber suggests that there was an increasing amount of lawlessness in England under Henry VII.

Justices of the Peace• There were 21 statutes passed by Parliament

during Henry’s reign, urging the JP’s to carry out their duties with zeal. This has been used to show how strict the hold on law and order was in Henry’s reign.

• However it now appears that these statutes reveal royal anxiety about the JPs –whether they were corrupt or doing their jobs properly. The Act of 1488 paints a bleak picture with references to all the crimes going on – it also advises JP’s how to deal with riots.

Law and Order

• It used to be thought that Henry brought law and order to England however it now appears that there was corruption amongst officials and JPs – largely because they were unpaid . There certainly does not seem to be any evidence that lawlessness declined under Henry – and his own “new men” were complicit in breaking the law themselves which makes it hard to see his reign as a time of peace and lawfulness.

Parliaments• Parliaments under Henry VII performed exactly the same functions as

they did under Edward IV and there are no significant developments under Henry.

• Parliament was called and dismissed by the King and he was only obliged to call Parliament once, to confirm his claim to the throne.

• Henry called 7 Parliaments during his reign, five of them in the first 10 years of his reign. The last Parliament was called in 1504

• Mostly Parliaments were called to grant the King money, which all did.

• The most important Parliament was in 1485 which allowed Henry to date his reign to before the Battle of Bosworth, allowing him to prosecute those who fought against him as traitors.

Legislation

• Parliament was necessary for laws to be made. Henry’s laws were mainly to do with attainders.

• The Star Chamber was set up to deal with rioting and illegal retaining in 1487

• A tribunal looking at perjury was set up in 1495• Neither of these heard many cases and did not add

much to the level of justice in England.

Great Councils

• Great Councils were formal meetings of nobles, leading churchmen and councillors to discuss important matters and get assent for new policies.

• Five were summoned between 1487 and 1502 and they were an important point of contact.

• One Great Council was called before the invasion of France, another to end the invasion without fighting.

Local Government – the nobles• Changed little under Henry. Although the King did not

make much use of his nobles in central government they were still vital in their own areas.

• The Earl of Oxford used in East Anglia and Essex• Earls of Shrewsbury and Northumberland had power in the

north of England, as did the Earl of Surrey• The Duke of Bedford controlled Wales and the Stanleys

the north west• Margaret Beaufort was given power by Henry to run the

Midlands.

Local government – the gentry• Below the nobles in the local government hierarchy came

the JPs and Sheriffs – all gentry.• JPs retained their function as judges under Henry but also

had a wider administrative powers – although it is unclear how effectively they carried out royal commands

• Henry chose JP’s who would be loyal and reliable and some of his new men became JPs. All kings did this.

• Because the JPs were unpaid it has been suggested that Henry VII’s power in the localities may have been exaggerated – plus the success of his “new men” depended on personal supervision, which did not last beyond his death.

Summary of finance, government and administration

• It seems that the old idea of Henry VII creating a well controlled, disciplined and law abiding England have been exaggerated.

• It would also appear that although Henry may have changed things during his own reign, he did not lay down the foundations for lasting change in terms of the institutions or administrative functions of government. The argument that he was a “new monarch” is therefore hard to make, particularly given the similarities that exist between his reign and Edward IV.

• What is true is that Henry spent long hours working on his papers and had much closer supervision of the working of government than his predecessors.

The Church• Relations between the King and the Church remained fairly similar in Henry’s

reign to those who had gone before him.• England was a Roman Catholic country and Henry always had good relations

with the Pope• Pope Innocent VIII recognised Henry as rightful king of England and granted

dispensation for Henry to marry Elizabeth of York (they were cousins)• Innocent also proclaimed the excommunication of rebels against Henry• Pope Julius II granted a dispensation for Catherine of Aragon to marry her

brother in law, Prince Henry, afgter the death of Arthur• Henry received a papal sword and a Golden Rose from the Pope• The papacy was rewarded by being allowed to preach Jubilee Indulgence

throughout England in 1501 – raising £4000 for the Pope.• Christopher Bainbridge, the Archbishop of York was sent in 1509 to be

ambassador to the Pope• Henry founded three religious houses and built a new chapel at Westminster

Abbey. He paid for 10,000 masses to be said for his soul

Henry and the bishops• Given Henry’s generosity to the church the Pope made no

objection to Henry’s choice of new bishops• John Morton became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1486,

followed by Henry Deane and William Warham. Henry often appointed civil lawyers, such as Warham, to theologians for bishops.

• Henry moved bishops around to make more money for the Crown

• He fined churchmen as he did everyone else – James Hobart pursued churchmen for their money

• Bishop Fox, very loyal to Henry, was fined £2000 in order to obtain a royal pardon

Benefit of Clergy and Sanctuary laws

• In these two areas Henry increased his power over the Church

• Benefit of clergy was a privelege whereby a clergyman could have cases heard in church courts, which tended to leniency, rather than civil court. Henry passed a statute to tighten up the definition of who could claim this privelege.

• Sanctuary laws – Henry ruled that in cases of treason no one could claim the right to sanctuary. (the right to avoid arrest by remaining inside a church). In 1486 the Stafford brothers had tried this during Lovells rebellion.

Summary• Good relations between King and Church

benefited both.• The Church was an important department of state

and the clergy were used as state officials.• The Church appreciated a strong monarchy• There was no hint of the upheaval to come• Henry exploited the church more systematically

but in the same way as others had done before him.

How successful was Henry VII’s domestic policy?

Conclusion

• Henry’s government was not new in the sense it was based on new institutions or new methods of government. Where it was different it was because of Henry’s personality – it was a difference in style, not substance.

• Henry’s regime became increasingly harsh and unpopular as the reign went on and he alienated many of his natural allies in the country amongst the nobility and gentry

• He did however have some very loyal supporters who formed a core group he could depend on

• Henry’s reign was unstable because he had no real claim to the throne and he over reacted to threats. After 1495, the apparent betrayal by Stanley, and 1497, the Cornish rising, Henry became increasingly paranoid and harsh and there was a real danger of an aristocratic backlash against the new men. The backlash did not occur until after Henry died.

• On the other hand, all threats to the throne were dealt with and Henry could, on occasion, be merciful, eg Lambert Simnel

• After 1487 none of the great men gave overt support for regime change and Henry should have been able to establish a sound and more even handed government along the lines of Edward IV in his second reign. Instead he became more harsh and repressive because, as a usurper he was always undermined by his lack of title.

• Henry’s inherent weakness in 1485 and his long exile dictated the nature of his government.

• In some ways the Crown was stronger in 1509 than it was in 1485. But compared to Edward’s second reign the government seemed weaker because it ruled over a country beset with rebellion and full of tensions which threatened to spill over. The Crown was also weaker because it was threatened so often by political instability – not a feature of previous regimes.

Key Questions for Henry VII’s domestic policy

• How successful was Henry’s domestic policy?

• Henry VII was most successful in his financial policy. How far do you agree? (any area of policy can be substituted here)

• How far was Henry VII a “new monarch”?

How successful was Henry VII’s domestic policy?

- Henry’s domestic policy wasn’t a success because his paranoia made him unpopular

- Henry’s domestic policy was a success, but only accidentally, he was driven by paranoia, not reforming ideas

- Henry’s domestic policy was a success and he deserves at least some of the credit – he was to some degree a

reforming “New Monarch”

You have 10 minutes to fill out your sheet with, reasons evidence and counter arguments for your answer to this

question.

• Swap your answer sheet with someone, and see if you can add to it, correct it or comment.