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How an English King’s Ruthless Tax Policy Helps Us Understand Modern Conspiracy Theories
Henry VII was King of England from 1485 to 1509, following his usurpation of the Crown from Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. The battle and its aftermath act as a microcosm of Henry VII’s reign. He crushed his opposition, stripping those who had fought against him of their land and titles, began a severe process of disempowering the ‘overmighty subjects’, and manipulated the legal system to serve his purposes.
The young King’s reign was to be defined by this manipulation. He acted as a spider, spinning a tight web around the country to secure his position as a monarch with little legitimacy (his link to the throne being established through a marriage by his mother’s great-grandmother’s to John of Gaunt). A network of spies was established throughout the country to prematurely suppress rebellion, royal finances were increasingly dealt with in the chamber rather than the exchequer (allowing the King greater oversight), and in 1495 the Council Learned in the Law was established — an extralegal group of lawyers headed by Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley which extorted the gentry and nobility to such an extent that both men were later executed under Henry VIII. Although Henry’s economic success is often attributed to miserly behaviour, the reality is likely quite the opposite. For one…
