hadd, the destruccyon of the prynce was ymagyned therby,”authorized
a jury of the household to determine whether any of its lesser members
had conspired to murder the king or one of several prominent officials,
and made any such offence a felony even in the absence of “actuell
dedis.”Intended to nip in the bud any such“confyderses compassynges
Consperaces [and] ymagynacyons,”the act illustrates, as J. R. Lander points
out,“how terrified Henry VII had become of the very centre of power, the
royal household itself.”^18
This response to the long-standingproblem of household security had
implications for patronage, which earlier curial satire had often grasped as
a personal relation (the lord’s or sovereign’s neglect breeds injured merit
and righteous outrage). The reign’s deployment of money as an instru-
ment of control was unprecedented, and while this is most familiar from
the elaborate system of bonds and recognizances that were imposed on the
nobility and many others as pledges of good behavior, especially after
1502 ,^19 the king’s manipulation offinance also intervened in the body
politic in ways which, while less draconian, were no less far-reaching.
Edward IV had replaced the complicated system by which the Exchequer
formerly managed the crown lands with the mechanics of chamber
finance, by which revenues were sent directly, via so-called“receivers,”
to thefinancial office of the court and household, the royal Chamber. In
Henry VII’s reign this continued: the yieldof the crown lands, indeed, was
higher, since Henry held many of the relevant territories in his possession,
making few grants either to the relatively scarce surviving members of his
family or to the nobility.^20 This rechanneling of revenue also sustained
royal independence, and Henry’s personal involvement in the examina-
tion of the Chamber accounts was consistent.^21 Margaret Condon points
out that
Henry’sgreatextensionofchamberfinance [was] important because of the disturb-
ing influence which it enabled the King to exert upon all ruling groups...Chamber
finance, in conjunction with conciliar control, radically changed the channels of
patronage for certain matters of grace, as the whole transaction was reduced to a
financial one...The need to pay and outbid became a pressing necessity.^22
The emergence of the Privy Chamber itself was in part the result of the
Chamber’s transformation from household department to national treas-
ury: the Privy Chamber took over the more intimate, less public and formal
elements of the king’s life, and by the end of the reign other officials looked
after the elements of householdfinance that now fell outside the Treasurer
of the Chamber’s purview.^23
46 Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland