The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black Legend of the Dudleys Read online

  One [councillor] advises crying up the value of money when he has to pay any and crying down its value below the just rate when he has to receive any . . . Another councillor reminds him of certain old and moth-eaten laws, annulled by long non-enforcement, which no one remembers being made and therefore everyone has transgressed. The king should exact fines for their transgression, there being no richer source of profit nor any more honourable than such as has an outward mark of justice!5

  Even Polydore Vergil, commissioned by Henry to write a history of the reign, could not avoid criticism. He praised the king’s piety, his generosity, his political shrewdness, the splendour of his court and his love of peace. But there was a quality the Italian singled out for special note. Henry, he said, ‘cherished justice above all things.’ However, as the writer enlarged on this statement he made it clear that this did not imply the impartial application of the law. The king, Vergil explained, ‘vigorously punished violence, manslaughter and every other kind of wickedness’. Having listed all his patron’s good points, he concluded,

  But all these virtues were obscured latterly by avarice, from which he suffered. This avarice is surely a bad enough vice in a private individual, whom it forever torments. In a monarch, indeed, it may be considered the worst vice since it is harmful to everyone and distorts those qualities of trustfulness, justice and integrity by which the state must be governed.6

  The word which served as something of an escape hatch for Vergil was ‘latterly’. It suggested that Henry’s less admirable characteristics could be put down to advancing years and the strains of kingship. Edmund Hall claimed that towards the end of his life Henry realized that he had been seduced into harsh policies by his henchmen and resolved to make restitution to all those who had suffered injustice at the hands of his over-zealous agents, a resolution sadly frustrated by his death. This attempt to whitewash the king’s memory carries no credence.

  More was absolutely right in identifying Henry Tudor as a dictator obsessed with drawing all power into his own hands and keeping it there. Nor can we believe that his harsh policies were the result of failing powers and unscrupulous underlings. Throughout his entire reign Henry had turned the screws ever tighter upon his subjects. Any suggestion that he only became autocratic in his last, fear-haunted years does not bear scrutiny.

  Henry had no choice but to be ruthless. The mainstay of government revenue was not direct taxation. This was regarded as ‘extraordinary’ income and, to the chagrin of successive monarchs, could only be obtained by parliamentary consent, theoretically for such emergencies as war. The king was expected to meet all normal personal and national expenses from the profits derived from Crown lands, customs duties, feudal revenue and the law. Henry applied himself to maximizing all these sources and it was with the last two that the Council Learned was specifically concerned. Its activities were based to a very great extent on information gathered by anonymous accusers, known as ‘promoters’, whose victims were then proceeded against by the authority of the Council, without reference to any other court.

  At Westminster a bevy of clerks was set to scan law books for precedents that might be turned to advantage. Other agents were despatched into the shires to study locally held muniments, to interrogate suspects, to encourage malcontents to air their suspicions and to turn a ready ear to gossip. The end result was that hundreds of wealthy and not-so-wealthy subjects found themselves designated tenants-in-chief of the king and therefore liable for arrears on a whole range of feudal dues. A man had to pay for the privilege of entering an inheritance. If he was unfortunate enough to die before his son was of age the boy became a royal ward and thus a commodity to be sold to a favoured courtier or magnate. When a landowner was succeeded only by a daughter, she was at the disposal of the king and her marriage rights also were sold. When there were no heirs all property reverted to the Crown. Moreover, when the royal snoopers could discern irregularities in property transactions they levied fines in addition to the relevant feudal payments. But beyond these imposts arising from the transfer of land there were other occasions when the king could demand contributions from all his tenants-in-chief. Such were the knighting of his eldest son and the marriage of his eldest daughter.

  The regime soon discovered that putting financial pressure on rich and powerful Englishmen had other advantages beyond filling the royal coffers. It could be used as a means of political coercion. Henry applied himself vigorously to the problem of ‘maintenance’, the mainstay of nobles and others whose power in the provinces depended on retaining large bodies of servants whose first loyalty was to them rather than to the king. We have seen an example in old John Dudley’s bullying of the vicar of Kingswinford, but that was a storm in a teacup compared with the way others employed mini-armies to enforce their will in their localities. Apart from the disruption this caused in the shires there was always the threat that such bands could be diverted from mere banditry to rebellion against the Crown. Armed retainers were not the only menace. Major landowners took onto their payrolls lawyers to pervert the cause of justice, clergymen to support them by means of the spiritual authority they wielded and farmers and merchants through whom they could exert economic pressure on any who dared oppose them. This was a serious evil and Henry was not the first king to address it but he did tighten the laws against maintenance, encouraged informers to report offenders and proceeded against suspects by direct action as well as through the common law courts. Edmund Dudley helped to steer through parliament the Act Against Illegal Retaining (commonly known as the Statute of Liveries 1504) which tidied up and stiffened previous legislation. With certain domestic exceptions it decreed that ‘no person, of what estate or degree or condition he be . . . privily or openly give any livery or sign . . . or . . . by any writing, oath, promise, livery, sign, badge, token, or in any other manner wise unlawfully retain'. Not only was any convicted retainer liable for a 100 shilling fine every month for every servant thus hired, but every retainee would suffer a similar penalty.7

  By this time the king’s more substantial subjects had become painfully familiar with the threat of severe financial consequences which might follow any action which incurred Henry’s displeasure – even if they were completely unaware that they had given offence. As royal agents unearthed ancient statutes and informers produced evidence that those statutes had been transgressed hundreds of people found themselves hauled into court. What frequently happened after the guilty verdict had been delivered was that the offender was offered a pardon that would clear his name – in return for payment. This procedure was even stretched to cover serious crimes. Thus a murderer might go free – if his purse was deep enough.

  An extension of this was the exacting of bonds of recognizance. Actual or potential offenders were bound in a specified sum of money for their future good behaviour. Lord Bergavenny was fined a swingeing £70,000 for retaining. This figure, doubtless intended to encourager les autres, was well beyond the baron’s means and was commuted to a bond of £5,000 attached to the condition that he never again went anywhere near his power base in south-east England, where his considerable family estates lay. A variant of the recognizance was the bond of obligation. The victim was obliged to enter an agreement to lend the king money or perform some other service, failure to comply with which would make him liable for payment of his bond. In such varied ways did Henry VII keep numerous people ‘in his danger, at his pleasure', as Dudley later explained. It has been calculated that of the sixty-two leading families in the realm the king had forty-seven at his mercy by means of fine or bond at one time or another. From the beginning of the reign to 1504 royal income from all prerogative sources rose from around £3,000 to approximately £40,000 per annum. This was at a time when a skilled craftsman would consider himself fortunate to earn £2.10s. a year.

  Edmund Dudley was in no way responsible for such policies. The programme was well established by the time he was brought onto the Council Learned in the Law. He joined a body whose remit an
d procedures were already clearly established. Its activities did not change after 1504 at the behest of a king grown more grasping with age. Any intensification of its activities was simply the result of its becoming more efficient. Morton and Bray were no longer alive to oversee it but the policies they had helped Henry to devise continued in the hands of a dedicated band of royal servants. The more senior members of the council were established lawyers and courtiers, high in the confidence of the king. The Council Learned was thus a formidable body of about a dozen men who served the king with an eager and ruthless efficiency and who marshalled a small army of industrious agents travelling to all corners of the realm. In 1622 Francis Bacon wrote of Henry that he did not ‘care how cunning they were that he did employ, for he thought himself to have master-reach’8 and the king and his specialist council were certainly well matched.

  Dudley was, and always remained, one of the junior members of this body. A couple of charters refer to him as the ‘president’ but this can only mean that he conventionally acted as chairman/secretary of the council. The more exalted members were busy enough with their other duties and their attendance was sporadic. Routine business was, doubtless, attended to by the council’s clerkly ‘rump’ and Dudley’s gifts ideally suited him to organize their agenda. He was an assiduous keeper of books and taker of notes and his colleagues came to rely on his orderly, methodical approach to their varied tasks. He and his colleagues were zealous in the pursuit of their master’s interests. They had very good reason to be so; their feet were well set on the ladder of advancement in royal service and they naturally wanted to show themselves to be efficient.

  Being of comparatively humble origins they did not suffer the disincentive of other members of the establishment. The lords spiritual and temporal who clustered round the throne had relatives and friends who suffered as a result of Henry’s rapacity and their loyalties were not always wholly undivided. The king knew that Dudley and his assistants were much more his own men, dependent on his favour alone and not on the aristocratic network of the shires. They were men who would not be intimidated. The other side of the coin was that the likes of Dudley were wholly dependent on royal protection. The great families of the realm, who regarded themselves as partners in government as of right, bitterly resented the Tudor monarch’s reliance on commoners in central and local government. Such dissatisfaction remained bottled up while Henry lived but would be released as soon as a new reign dawned. Nor was it only felt by members of the elite. Thomas More was among several commentators who genuinely believed that the well-being of the realm was best safeguarded by king and peers acting in concert. Part of the fury directed against Dudley was on account of what he was rather than what he did. He was not a member of the aristocratic club. He was an upstart. Dudley’s name came to be indissolubly associated with one other member of the Council Learned, Sir Richard Empson.

  ‘Empson and Dudley’ – two names forever linked in infamy, like Burke and Hare or Bonnie and Clyde. Francis Bacon did more than any other historian to blacken their names in an extended passage of unrestrained vitriol:

  . . . as Kings do more easily find instruments for their will and humour than for their service and honour, he had gotten for his purpose, or beyond his purpose, two instruments, Empson and Dudley; whom the people esteemed as his horse-leeches and shearers: bold men and careless of fame, and that took toll of their master’s grist. Dudley was of a good family, eloquent, and one that could put hateful business into good language. But Empson, that was the son of a sievemaker, triumphed always upon the deed done; putting off all other respects whatsoever. These two persons being lawyers in science and privy counsellors in authority, (as the corruption of the best things is the worst) turned law and justice into wormwood and rapine. [Here followed a list of Henry VII’s financial-legal stratagems.] These and many other courses, fitter to be buried than repeated, they had of preying upon the people; both like tame hawks for their master, and like wild hawks for themselves; inasmuch as they grew to great riches and substance.9

  Richard Empson was, another Bray protégé who had risen to the office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and administered these lands on behalf of the Crown. The Council Learned was very closely allied with the administration of the Duchy. There was considerable overlap between the two bodies in both staff and methods. Empson, therefore, was an important directing influence in the activities of the Council Learned but he was not the only industrious member of that body. Nor was Dudley. So how was it that these two men were so completely identified with the harsh policies of the regime and came to bear the entire burden of its sins?

  One reason we have already mentioned; they were arrivistes. As such they were resented both by those into whose ranks they were clambering and those from whose ranks they had ascended. Another reason, which appears on the face of it to be trivial in the extreme, was that they were neighbours. Each occupied a fine house close to the junction of Walbrook and Candlewick Street (modern Cannon Street) in the fashionable heart of the City, which backed onto the extensive garden of the town mansion belonging to the prior of Tortington. Reporting this a century later in his Survey of London, John Stow managed to impart some sinister significance to this topographical fact. There are, he recorded,

  two fair houses in Walbrook. In the reign of Henry VII, Sir Richard Empson, Knight, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, dwelled in the one of them and Edmund Dudley, Esquire in the other. Either of them had a door of intercourse into this garden, wherein they met and consulted of matters at their pleasures.10

  By the time Stow wrote, the legend of the evil, scheming councillors was well established and readers would easily have envisaged clandestine meetings at which the harassing and ruin of the king’s loyal subjects were planned. In reality, the arrangement whereby Empson, Dudley and their families enjoyed use of the adjacent grounds was much more innocent. Dudley’s Sussex lands adjoined those of the priory of Tortington and Edmund had close relations with the community. His first wife was buried in their church and in his will he made provision for two altar cloths to be given to the brothers. What more natural than that the prior should have allowed his friend the use of his town garden? But the very presence of these two royal officials at the centre of the commercial community must have been a constant irritant.

  It must have seemed that the two ministers were flaunting their affluence in the faces of their neighbours. They had numerous servants and fine horses. Their wives wore the latest court fashions. Their houses, built by an earlier generation of London merchants, were palatial and richly furnished. We have a description of Dudley’s dwelling and we know that it comprised, as well as domestic offices and outbuildings, a great hall, a great parlour, a little parlour, a counting house, a long gallery, three principal bedchambers, an armoury, a ‘little house for the bows’, various galleries for indoor exercise, some open to the courtyard or the garden, two closets (small, private chambers) and a wardrobe (probably another privy chamber, rather than a room for the storage of clothes).11 Such ostentation was quite sufficient to provoke the jealousy and resentment of their neighbours.

  Henry’s agents were rewarded with a percentage of the proceeds when prosecutions brought money into the chamber treasury. Thus, for example, Empson ‘discovered’ that pardons for outlaws could be granted on receipt by the Crown of the equivalent of one year’s income from all the offender’s landed property. For this he received one ninth of the income from the granting of such pardons. Edmund Dudley profited handsomely from the perquisites of office. He extended his Sussex and Hampshire estates and by fresh purchases spread his influence into Wiltshire, Dorset and Surrey. He also acquired extensive estates in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire. His personal fortune at the time of his death was valued at £5,000, a figure which put him on a par with some of the greatest in the land. Empson and Dudley were not unique among the servants of Henry VII who profited dramatically from their closeness to the throne. Dr Steven Gunn has pointed
out that the king gave increasing amounts of money and land to courtiers as the reign wore on. From 1495 to 1501 the amount of royal income thus alienated was only £700, but in the last eight years of Henry’s life this figure rose to £3,700.12 Dudley’s name rankled particularly with the City fathers. The king had for some time been at odds with the City elders over the status and privileges of the Merchant Taylors. The guild had gained (probably bought) Henry’s favour and this had aroused the jealousy of the other guilds. In October 1506 they expressed their displeasure by rejecting the royal nominee for the post of sheriff because he was a Merchant Taylor. Henry was certainly not going to be balked. He sent one of his own advisers to the Guildhall to declare the corporation’s election void and to demand the installation of his own man. The royal agent chosen for this task was Edmund Dudley. This action was a gross violation of the City’s freedoms; an exercise of naked power. The guildsmen were incensed but because it was dangerous to murmur against the king, it was his messenger who took the brunt of their indignation. They complained, ‘whoever had the sword borne before him, Dudley was de facto mayor and what his pleasure was was done.’13 Henry’s policies gave them many other opportunities to feed their resentment of Dudley. The long royal fingers reached over and again into the purses of the merchant community. Informers trawled the Thameside wharfs seeking evidence of customs dues avoided. Whether the victims were guilty or not they were angry at being summoned to answer before Dudley and his colleagues.

  But they also levelled specific charges of arrogance and hostility against him. He supposedly bullied merchants into accepting royal decrees as faits accomplis. When the Mercers’ Company declined to respond appropriately to a demand for an increase in the poundage rates he reputedly dismissed their prevarication with the comment that their answer would not satisfy the king. One of his servants was said to have boasted that his master would take the aldermen down a peg or two, making them ‘wear cloaks of cotton russet instead of cloaks of scarlet’.14 Such behaviour seemed nothing short of gross ingratitude in one who was himself a freeman of the City and was much indebted to it for his early advancement.