by Derek Wilson
By contrast, his son was soon mingling his genes with those of the ancient families of Beauchamp, Talbot and Grey. The death of Anne freed Edmund to aim very much higher, and he bought his way into one of the great noble dynasties. The wars of the fifteenth century had played havoc with the uninterrupted workings of the laws of inheritance. Husbands had been killed before they could sire sons. Sons had fallen in battle before they could be married. The hopes of leading dynasties had come to rest upon widows and children. Such was the fate of the Talbot Viscounts Lisle.
John Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, was one of the most dashing military commanders of his age, another Hotspur, and was almost continuously on campaign in France from 1419 until his death in 1453. Very much a general of the old school, he finally perished because he failed to embrace revolutionary changes in the art of warfare, cut down before the walls of Castillon trying to storm the town in the face of murderous artillery fire. The earldom went to a son by his first wife but his younger son, John, had already been ennobled as Viscount Lisle in right of his mother, Margaret Beauchamp, Shrewsbury’s second wife. Unfortunately, Lisle fell by his father’s side at Castillon. It was thus his son Thomas who inherited the title and lands of the viscountcy. But then Thomas was killed in a skirmish during the Wars of the Roses in 1470 and, since he had no issue, everything reverted to his sister, Elizabeth and, on her marriage, to her husband, Edward Grey. This couple were delivered of two children who were still minors at the time of Edward’s death in 1492. That meant that they became wards of the Crown.
Wardship was a very valuable royal perk, a means of controlling the accumulation of lands and fortunes by acquisitive and power-hungry subjects and a source of revenue. The king did a brisk trade in wardships and there was never a lack of eager bidders. The man who obtained the wardship of little Elizabeth Grey was Edmund Dudley. This was a sign of his social standing and of his influence at court. It indicated that the king trusted the up-and-coming lawyer as a safe recipient of this valuable inheritance. As Elizabeth’s guardian Edmund enjoyed the administration of her dower lands until she came of age but he could also lay permanent claim to her fortune by marrying her himself. This he did around 1503.
The importance of Edmund’s forging this connection with the great medieval families of Beauchamp and Talbot cannot be exaggerated. It was something of which his children were extremely proud. It was particularly important to Edmund because the senior Dudley line had fallen on hard times. His cousin, Baron Edward, totally lacked the drive and charisma of his grandfather. He tried to make up for his lack of talent by living in spectacular style in London where he squandered his patrimony in a vain attempt to cut a dash in society and draw attention to himself at court.
Edmund, by contrast, had begun to receive marks of favour from a cautious King Henry. In 1501 he was nominated as justice of the peace for Hampshire and commissioner for concealed lands in Sussex. Both appointments were significant in terms of the direction of royal policy. Henry made increasing use of the county gentry in his campaign against those whose authority in their regions rivalled his own. One way to counter the local power of the great landowners was to widen the juridical competence of magistrates. By giving Crown appointees extended authority to examine breaches of the law and impose heavier fines Henry not only restricted the autonomy of the barons, he enhanced the prestige of the gentry and bound them as a class more firmly to the Crown.
Seeking out ‘concealed lands’ was another way of curbing the magnates and bringing money into the royal coffers. It involved the commissioners in investigation of a labyrinth of property deals, feudal dues, inheritance rights, customary law and local traditions. Theoretically all land belonged to the king and was held from him in return for feudal obligations in fee simple (outright possession) or fee tail (with restricted inheritance rights). Over the four centuries that had passed since the Conquest some feudal dues had been commuted, some had lapsed; property had passed from family to family by marriage or sale; boundaries had been surreptitiously extended; estates had been granted away, not always in accordance with proper legal procedures; tenants had been given grazing or other rights which had been legitimized by custom; royal demesne lands had been encroached upon. According to ancient statutes which had never been repealed, payments were due to the Crown when certain properties were passed from father to son or alienated. Very little had been done to untangle what had, by 1500, become an impossibly complex multitude of rights and relationships, and Henry VII was convinced, not without reason, that he was being cheated of an enormous amount of revenue. Hence the sending of commissioners to enquire into concealed lands which might be proved to belong to the king as a result of non-existent or faulty transfers of ownership.
Of course, the landowners in question regarded Dudley and his colleagues as royal ‘snoopers’ and resented the way they toured the country, attended by armed escorts, demanding access to family muniments and questioning tenants and servants. Edward IV had tried, in a very limited way, to rationalize the confused state of affairs but Richard III had abandoned the experiment because he was dependent on the support of the very men who were angered by enquiries into their affairs. Henry bowed to no such restraint. As he strengthened his position he could afford the calculated risk of displeasing his leading subjects. It was left to his agents in the field to suffer the abuse of the powerful men they were sent to investigate. There were, to be sure, some landowners who did not browbeat the commissioners, preferring, instead, to offer bribes. Years later, Dudley would be accused of using his position for personal profit, and we cannot know how much justification there was in such suspicions. He was meticulous in his habits and kept his account books in excellent order but, of course, they do not prove that unrecorded sums never passed through his hands. For royal servants to profit unofficially was the rule rather than the exception. They might pocket money in return for turning a blind eye to irregularities. They might earn the gratitude of some great lord in a position to do them return favours. They might help out their own friends by making a good report on them to the king. The role of middle man was beset by many temptations.
Edmund and his colleagues were thick-skinned when it came to enduring the complaints and abuse of the magnates because the one person they could not afford to alienate was their royal master. He had the power to raise them to still greater heights or to destroy them utterly and he was very sensitive to disloyalty. Henry, like many men in positions of power, felt betrayal very personally and was ruthless in avenging himself against those who abused his friendship. Dudley, could not be ignorant of the fact that he was in the service of a demanding monarch suspicious almost to the point of paranoia. Having deliberately set his sights on becoming part of the royal entourage, it is unlikely that the lawyer would risk stepping out of line, whatever temptations came his way. Edmund Dudley dedicated himself to his king’s interests with unalloyed zeal.
This impression is confirmed by the crucial decision Edmund made in 1503. While advancing in royal service he was also being courted by the corporation of London. Impressed by his performance as undersheriff, they offered him appointment as common sergeant or sergeant at law. The sergeant ranked directly below the recorder, the senior judicial officer of the City, and for a lawyer in his early thirties to be advanced to this position was proof that he was on the fast track to the top of his profession. Yet Dudley did not hesitate to decline the honour, even though it cost him £46.13s.4d. to buy himself out. The reason is not difficult to see. At the beginning of the following year Henry VII instructed the newly elected House of Commons to appoint Edmund Dudley as Speaker. As such Dudley was the king’s man in the lower chamber. There was no constitutional conflict between Crown and Commons at this time, but there were occasional differences between the king and the City and by making his choice Edmund Dudley had irrevocably taken sides. He would be Henry’s agent to oversee the workings of the lower house and ensure that his legislative programme passed through smoothly.
Edmund had every reason to congratulate himself on his good fortune. He was still in his early thirties and the king to whose confidential service he was now admitted seemed to have established his throne quite firmly. What matter that influential men grumbled about the harsh and intrusive policies of the government or that, as Dudley well knew from his contacts with nobles and gentlemen throughout the southern shires, the regime was becoming more unpopular by the month? For the time being Edmund could stifle the voice of inner protest, the voice that reminded him that he was sworn to uphold the glories of English law which enshrined the freedoms of English people. What the realm needed was firm rule and Henry Tudor was providing it.
2
Notoriety
. . . the most Christian king and most natural lord, what praise, laud or renown shall he have, as well of all Christian princes as of the subjects, for having this tree of commonwealth within his realm . . . rooted in himself and his subjects and plenteously garnished with their . . . fruits.1
In the last months of his life, which he spent in the Tower of London, Edmund Dudley had plenty of time to reflect on what makes for a fair, just and secure society. The Tree of Commonwealth, in which Dudley set down his ideas, is a work of conventional piety and idealism which exhorts the king and all subjects in their due degrees to fulfil their divinely ordained functions, which alone will produce the ‘fruits’ of dignity, prosperity, tranquillity and good example.
In it Dudley insisted that the sovereign, had to act within the bounds set by law and custom: ‘though the cause touch himself, yet he must put [his agents] in comfort not to spare to minister justice without fear.’2
Trusted royal councillors were especially vulnerable to the temptation to abuse their power. It was one thing for a royal adviser to enunciate such unexceptionable Christian principles for the good ordering of states. It was quite another to stand up for those principles on a daily basis as a member of a regime determined to impose its own brand of peace and security, come what may. It was also difficult to resist the temptation to make full use of his position for his own ends.
When, in the autumn of 1504, Edmund Dudley was called to the Council, he found himself to be a very junior member of a large body numbering up to fifty men, including leading nobles, bishops, senior members of the judiciary, and some of the more substantial country gentlemen, as well as lawyers and clerks whose task it was to keep a record of business. The whole body only met when the court was at Westminster and seems to have been used by Henry, not for making policy, but as a sounding board and as a vehicle for making his own decisions more widely known. When the king was on progress or wished to discuss confidential matters he was attended by a much smaller group of councillors. When there were administrative details to be sorted out such work was assigned to committees of the Council. In the non-official hierarchy of royal attendants Edmund Dudley was not, and never became, a favoured companion or a trusted confidant of the king. In that he was on a par with most of those who were part of the household or government of this most secretive of monarchs.
Henry was at the centre of three interlocking circles, chamber, court and Council. Several men had their places in one or more of these influential fellowships but few enjoyed real intimacy with the sovereign. Henry was too cautious or canny to open himself up readily to anyone. He had few friends or favourites – perhaps none. A man might tend the king’s needs at his bedside, or hold one of the great household offices, or accompany him for a day’s hunting, or play cards with him until late into the night, or advise him on tricky diplomatic negotiations – and never gain access to the locked closet of his mind. By holding something in reserve and being as ready with a sharp rebuke as a warm greeting Henry ensured that no one came so close to the throne that he had any chance of manipulating its occupant. There were, to be sure, those whose company Henry enjoyed, who earned a greater measure of his trust and who were advanced to major honours. Such were selected by Henry’s idiosyncratic will alone.
Dudley was never admitted to the elite corps of royal companions. He was a functionary, valuable to the regime for his legal expertise. It may be that he was not particularly popular with his royal master, for, although he profited handsomely in terms of cash and land, he never received any of those special honours that were marks of personal royal favour. For example, during the reign seven prominent men of law served as Speakers of the Commons. For all the others the office was a step to higher things. Some already were or became habitués of the court or close attendants on the king. Most were appointed to important positions in government or the household. All were knighted for their endeavours. Not so Edmund Dudley. Perhaps he lacked the fawning accomplishments of a courtier. Perhaps after the death of Sir Reginald Bray he had few friends in the inner circle prepared to advance his career. Whatever the reason, it seems that Dudley was someone useful to the king rather than admired by him.
He was brought into the administration for his detailed knowledge of the law and his success in applying it on various royal commissions. Dudley could devise hitherto unforeseen ways in which Henry might add to his revenues and Reginald Bray saw him as an ideal addition to the company of legal specialists whose expertise could buttress royal power. Dudley was one of the conciliar lawyers who heard cases on behalf of the Crown and of private plaintiffs. For almost two decades Bray had been developing the administration of the king’s chamber, extending its authority and streamlining its procedures. It was an ever-growing task because as the army of royal agents and informers detected more alleged infractions of the law so the officers at the centre became busier and the need to improve the organization grew. For example, in 1503 the lucrative trade in wardships had developed so rapidly that a separate department had to be set up under the control of a Master of the Wards.
But more significant was the development of the Council Learned in the Law. It had been in existence for almost a decade when Dudley joined it. It was a conciliar court whose declared function was the closing of legal loopholes and the detecting of fraudulent evasion of feudal obligations. There is no doubt that the government did have a real problem in this area. We have already seen that Henry had despatched commissions into the shires to enquire into concealed lands but the issue of the treasury being cheated of its dues was very much wider. As well as property transactions the Council Learned’s jurisdiction embraced wardship, marriage of heirs, retaining, maintenance and, in effect, anything that the king’s lawyers chose to bring under their microscope.
Such was the official justification for the setting up of the Council Learned. Others put a somewhat different gloss on the royal initiative. The sixteenth-century chronicler, Edmund Hall, pictured the king reflecting that ‘men through abundance of riches wax more insolent, headstrong and rumbustious’ but yet being unwilling ‘to repress and wrongfully poll and exact money of his subjects.’ According to this interpretation Henry came up with a scheme for hitting potentially troublesome subjects in their pockets and reducing all wealthy men to dependence on the government for the peaceful enjoyment of their goods.
. . . it came into his head that Englishmen did little pass upon the observation and keeping of penal laws or [financial] statutes, made and enacted for the preservation of the common utility and wealth and, therefore, if inquisition were had of such penal statutes, there should be few noblemen, merchants, farmers, husbandmen, graziers, nor occupiers but the
y should be found transgressors and violators of the same statutes . . .3
Sixteenth-century commentators had a problem depicting the character of the first Tudor. His government was unpopular with the large number of his subjects who suffered from his legal/financial policies. However, Henry VII was a Tudor, the founder of the dynasty, and it was risky to impugn his memory. The convention such writers usually fell back on was to praise the dead king’s virtues and to blame his vices on corrupt advisers. One of the first to grapple with the problem was Thomas More, a fellow law student (at Lincoln’s Inn) with Edmund, though a few years younger. As soon as Henry VII was dead he expressed his feelings about the recent government in a Latin coronation ode addressed to Henry VIII. Although he did not accuse the late king directly, he was certainly far from circumspect in his comments. His praise for the new sovereign contained criticism of the previous regime which was far from veiled.
. . . the nobility, whose title has too long been without meaning, now lifts its head, now rejoices in such a king and has proper reason for rejoicing. The merchant, heretofore deterred by numerous taxes, now once again ploughs seas grown unfamiliar. Laws, heretofore powerless – yes, even laws put to unjust ends – now happily have regained their proper authority . . . Now each man happily does not hesitate to show the possessions which in the past his fear kept hidden in dark seclusion. Now there is enjoyment in any profit which managed to escape the many, sly clutching hands of the many thieves. No longer is it a criminal offence to own property which was honestly acquired . . . No longer does fear hiss whispered secrets in one’s ear . . . Only ex-informers fear informers now.4
More’s indignation at the injustices perpetrated by arbitrary rule and his fear that it could easily reappear never left him. He brooded on tyranny and treated the subject more fully in his most famous work, Utopia, published in 1516. He may still have been thinking about Henry VII and his councillors when he portrayed a ‘hypothetical’ king devising means of enriching himself at the expense of his subjects:
