How Did The Tudor Influence The Economy And Society

Index

Index 1
Introduction 2
Biography 3
The Tudors dynasty. 3
Economy and society 4
Financial policy 5
The administration of justice 5
Bibliography 6

Introduction.

The Tudors: the birth of the nation state. The new monarchy.

The Century of Tudor rule (1485-1603) is often thought of as a most glorious period in English history. Henry VII built the foundations of a wealthy nation state and a powerful monarchy. His son, Henry VIII, kept a magnificent court, and made the Church in England truly English by breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, his daughter Elizabeth brought glory to the new state by defeating the powerful navy of Spain, the greatest European power of the time.
Feudal kings had traditionally lived off four sources of nonparliamentary income: rents from the royal estates, revenues from import and export taxes, fees from the administration of justice, and moneys extracted on the basis of a vassal 's duty to his overlord. The first Tudor was no different from his Yorkist or medieval predecessors; he was simply more ruthless and successful in demanding every penny that was owed him. Henry 's first move was to confiscate all the estates of Yorkist adherents and to restore all property over which the crown had lost control since. To these essentially statutory steps he added efficiency of rent collection. At the same time, the Tudors profited from the growing economic prosperity of the realm, and custom receipts rose by the time Henry died. The increase in custom and land revenues was applauded, for it meant fewer parliamentary subsidies and fitted the medieval formula that kings should live on their own, not parliamentary, income. But the collection of revenues from feudal sources and from the administration of justice caused great discontent and earned Henry his reputation as a miser and extortionist. Generally Henry demanded no more than his due as the highest feudal overlord, and a year after he became sovereign, he established a commission to look into land tenure to discover
He had to tame but not destroy the nobility, develop organs of administration directly under his control, and wipe out provincialism and privilege wherever they appeared. In the task of curbing the old nobility, the king was immeasurably helped by the high aristocratic death rate during the Wars of the Roses; but where war left off, policy took over. Commissions of Array composed of local notables were appointed by the crown for each county in order to make use of the power of the aristocracy in raising troops but to prevent them from maintaining private armies (livery) with which to intimidate justice or threaten the throne. Previous monarchs had sought to enforce the laws against livery and maintenance, but Tudor, though he never totally abolished such evils, built up a reasonably efficient machine for enforcing the law, based on the historic premise that the king in the midst of his council was the fountain of justice. Traditionally the royal council had heard all sorts of cases, and its members rapidly began to specialize. The Court of Chancery had for years dealt with civil offenses, and the Court of Star Chamber evolved to handle criminal cases, the Court of Requests poor men 's suits, and the Court of Admiralty piracy. The process by which the conciliar courts developed was largely