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The Council Learned in the Law was a highly controversial tribunal of Henry VII of England's reign.
The brainchild of Sir Reginald Bray, the Council Learned was introduced in 1495 to defend Henry's position as a feudal landlord, [1] maintain the King's revenue and exploit his prerogative rights. It dealt with the king's fiscal matters and enforced payments of debts. It proved to be much more efficient than the Exchequer. The council was a secondary department to the Star Chamber, but it was the Council Learned in Law that made the system of bonds and recognisances work so effectively. Following Bray's death in 1503, he was replaced with Edmund Dudley. [2] Dudley, along with Empson, formed a feared combination of able bureaucrats who raised the extraction of money from the King's associates into a fine art and created many enemies amongst key advisors of the King.
By the end of Henry VII's reign, the Council Learned had become very unpopular, and after his death in 1509, it was abolished. Its most prominent councilors, Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson, were imprisoned. Though evidence was scarce, both were convicted of treason, attainted and executed in 1510. The downfall of the pair brought rejoicing in the streets. [3]
There is much controversy about the Council Learned in the Law because most existing sources date after 1509 when it had been officially condemned. Bray's associate, Empson, maintained a particularly ruthless approach that seemed to define the behavior of the Council. In the Tower, Dudley confessed to having issued harsher penalties than lawful in several cases, a statement which has given the Council a strongly negative connotation.
It bypassed the normal legal system since it was not a court and those summoned had no chance of appeal. [4] It was an expression of the King's will and as such was as important for maintaining authority as it was for raising finances.
Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death in 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
The House of Tudor was a dynasty of largely Welsh and English origin that held the English throne from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including their ancestral Wales and the Lordship of Ireland for 118 years with five monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII of England, descended through his mother from a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.
Lambert Simnel was a pretender to the throne of England. In 1487, his claim to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, threatened the newly established reign of Henry VII (1485–1509). Simnel became the figurehead of a Yorkist rebellion organised by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. The rebellion was crushed in 1487. Simnel was pardoned because of his tender years, and was thereafter employed by the royal household as a scullion, and, later, as a Groom of the Stool.
Lady Margaret Beaufort was a major figure in the Wars of the Roses of the late fifteenth century, and mother of King Henry VII of England, the first Tudor monarch.
The Kingdom of England was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from 12 July 927, when it emerged from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and England is now part of the United Kingdom. The Kingdom of England was among the most powerful states in Europe during the medieval and early modern colonial periods.
Sir Reginald Bray was an English administrator and statesman. He was the Chancellor of the Duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster under Henry VII, briefly Treasurer of the Exchequer, and one of the most influential men in Henry VII's government and administration. He was an estate officer and senior councillor to both Henry VII and the king's mother, Margaret Beaufort. He was a major benefactor to St George's Chapel, Windsor, where some of the building work for which he provided funds can still be seen and identified.
In England and Wales, the Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1603, and included the Elizabethan period during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603). The Tudor period coincides with the dynasty of the House of Tudor in England, which began with the reign of Henry VII. Historian John Guy (1988) argued that "England was economically healthier, more expansive, and more optimistic under the Tudors" than at any time since the Roman occupation.
Edmund Dudley was an English administrator and a financial agent of King Henry VII. He served as a leading member of the Council Learned in the Law, Speaker of the House of Commons and President of the King's Council. After the accession of Henry VIII, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed the next year on a treason charge. While waiting for his execution he wrote The Tree of Commonwealth. Edmund Dudley was also the grandfather of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, a favourite of Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth I.
Sir Richard Empson, minister of Henry VII, was a son of Peter Empson. Educated as a lawyer, he soon attained considerable success in his profession, and in 1491 was a Knight of the shire for Northamptonshire in Parliament, and Speaker of the House of Commons.
Thomas Savage was a prelate, diplomat and scholar during the Tudor period. Savage served as Chaplain to King Henry VII and was Archbishop of York from 1501 until his death in 1507. Prior to his consecration as a Bishop, Savage served as a diplomat and rector. As a diplomat Savage held the positions of English Ambassador to Castile and Portugal, during which time he helped broker the marriage treaty between Arthur, Prince of Wales and Catherine of Aragon in 1489, and later held the position of English Ambassador to France from 1490, where he took part in the conference at Boulogne.
The Tudor navy was the navy of the Kingdom of England under the ruling Tudor dynasty (1485–1603). The period involved important and critical changes that led to the establishment of a permanent navy and laid the foundations for the future Royal Navy.
Sir Thomas Lovell, KG was an English soldier and administrator, Speaker of the House of Commons, Secretary to the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Events from the 1500s in England.
This article is about the particular significance of the century 1401–1500 to Wales and its people.
The Yorkshire rebellion took place in England in 1489, during the reign of King Henry VII. Relatively little is known about this rebellion; its main account is found in Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia.
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These wars were fought between supporters of two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: Lancaster and York. The wars extinguished the last male line of the House of Lancaster in 1471, leading to the Tudor family inheriting the Lancastrian claim to the throne. Following the war and the extinction of the last male line of the House of York in 1483, a politically arranged marriage united the Houses of Tudor and York, creating a new royal dynasty which inherited the Yorkist claim as well, thereby resolving the conflict.
Buckingham's rebellion was a failed but significant uprising, or collection of uprisings, of October 1483 in England and parts of Wales against Richard III of England.
The Tudors of Penmynydd were a noble and aristocratic family, connected with the village of Penmynydd in Anglesey, North Wales, who were very influential in Welsh politics. From this family arose Owen Tudor and thereby the Welsh Tudor dynasty, that ruled England from 1485 to 1603. The Tudor dynasty ended in the early 17th century with the death of Elizabeth I.
Sir John Savage, KG, KB, PC (1444–1492), was an English knight of the Savage family, who was a noted military commander of the late 15th-century. Savage most notably fought at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where he commanded the left flank of the Tudor (Lancastrian) army to victory and is said to have personally slain the Duke of Norfolk in single combat. Earlier in the Wars of the Roses, Savage had been a supporter and friend of the Yorkist King Edward IV, fighting alongside him and helping him to victories at the Battle of Barnet in 1471 and the Battle of Tewkesbury later that same year, as well as joining the Duke of Gloucester's invasion of Scotland in 1482, where the Duke made him a Knight banneret. However, following the death of Edward and the Duke of Gloucester's ascension to the throne as Richard III the Savage family was viewed with suspicion due to their familial connection to the Stanleys, who were in turn connected to the Tudors. Consequently Savage was one of the prominent figures who invited Henry Tudor to invade England in 1485, a struggle which culminated in the Battle of Bosworth Field. After his victory Henry Tudor received the circlet of Richard from Savage's uncle Lord Stanley and was crowned King of England on the field of battle, taking the throne as Henry VII of England.