in this video i want to look at the role and the different um organization under the central government under henry vii now this is going to be the first in a few videos on the government of henry vii and this is really the top of the list when it comes to governments so at the top of the central government we have the king himself we have henry vii himself i mean this is a very clear view that the the king the power of uh the king comes from god so therefore the king should be above government and parliament at the same time now these views kind of changed after the tudor period but during the tudor period this is definitely the case so in the next on the next level we have the council and the council had a few main aims so if we look at the aims of the council what the council's role was in the administration of government so the council was around to offer advice to the king advice to henry it was also around to administer the law on the king's behalf administer the law and then finally it wanted to control local government so when we look at a like a hierarchy of the uh the central government under henry vii we have the following we have the following um situation we have henry vii right at the top of government with all of his powers stemming from god we then have the council of henry vii and then under the council we have the administration of laws to the local government so we have a local government and we have more than one we have local governments because these would be governments that would um these are these would uh rule over different areas of england now the council administered laws to these local governments and tried to maintain the peace and maintain stability in these local governments so how did the council really work we've worked out the functions and the roles of the council but how did the council work so how did it work well it's very simple the council was made up of a small group of individuals and these are people who would come from mainly the larger the more powerful areas of english society so the council was made up of nobles so the nobility it was also made up of churchmen and then it was made up of laymen layman so these three are despite the fact they're being diverse between themselves they weren't a very diverse group with rel reference to the rest of england considering that these are very high ranking members of society now it was what also made this important was that the council was a permanent it was a permanent body it was a permanent group of individuals um and they had a core membership there was a core membership that was made up of these nobles churchmen and laymen and when the king wasn't present they would meet separately the council would meet separately and now when it comes to council politics the first person we have to look at really is edmund dudley edmund dudley who was born in 1462 and died in 1510 so edmund dudley became a key counselor he became a key counselor after the death of reginald bray so reginald bray was the main counselor the key counselor up to 1503 and then he died so reginald bray dies in 1503 and we get edmund dudley becoming the key head the key member of the council and he along with reginald bray before reginald bray dies the creation of something called the council learned so we have the council learned so we just put that put council here so we have the council learned which became um responsible for a number it was a subgroup of the council and it became responsible for a number of different uh tasks it was um mainly the responsibilities were with regard to war so it would advise the king in terms of war so war against france and other foreign policy issues it would also collect feudal dues because the feudal system in england still existed albeit not very much now this part here this is this specific part of the council learned um was the reason why it was so unpopular because it was responsible for collecting taxes for henry vii now during uh the reign of henry vii we have the the introduction of uh a uh a systematic use of bonds and recognizes so these were ways of collecting money so if we bonds and recognizes recog recognizances it's hard to pronounce now these were a way of collecting money specifically from the nobility now we'll talk a little bit more when it comes to finance about how much money really came from bonds and recognizances and really how important they were but the council became the councilor became more unpopular following the death of reginald bray in 1503 because edmund dudley and a man called richard empson empson who uh was born in 1450 and also died in 1510 uh these two uh men became leaders of the council learned and their main aim was to extract money was to extract money from the nobility which is really took the council learned in the dark down to a dark path now the final part of the government of the central government of henry vii i want to talk about is i want to talk about the great council now this is only a very small piece of information but the great council was a meeting of the house of lords but not the house of commons that just means not so i'll just put that there not so not the house of commons so it was just the house of lords a meeting between the house of lords and it had no regulated functions no real functions and it also has very lit and it they met very little they only met five times between 14 85 and 1509 which is the reign of henry vii so this is a small piece of information that really you should keep in your back pocket about how the great council it had no real functions uh no regulated functions at least anyway and it only met five times and it was all it was was a meeting of the house of lords without the house of commons so in this video what we have done is we have looked at all of the different areas of the central government we've looked at the the top of the central government which was henry himself we then looked to the council and the aims of the council we've then described the hierarchy of government in the england at the this time and we talked about how the council worked how the council learned worked and then finished off by taking a look at the great council