Edmund Dudley born in 1462, was trained as a Lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn, the Speaker in the House of Commons in 1504, he became a collector of the King’s taxes, under Henry VIIth. In 1509 Following King Henry VIIIths succession, in a move that was to characterise the whole style of the new reign, the King condemned Dudley and his colleague Empson, the ‘fiscal judges’ on the grounds that they had summoned their men about them when the late King had died. It was indeed unfortunate for Edmund that in 1509 his new benefactor, Henry VIIIth then, in a cynically contrived ploy, appearing eager to please invited any who had suffered under his fathers Reign to come forward, whereupon ‘almost as one man the English people rose and shouted for the blood of Empson and Dudley’ who were dispatched as assuredly as were to be Strafford and Laud at the hand of Charles I just over a hundred and thirty years later.

 Awaiting sentencing for ‘Constructive Treason’ in the Tower, Dudley came to expose some of the Crown’s methods of interfering in due legal process, occupying himself as author of the ‘Tree of Commonwealth’, wherein he asserted that ‘the principal route of the State is in the love of God’. Perhaps an ominously repentant text, advocating Absolute Monarchy, his work has been associated with More’s ‘Ideal State’ and the new thinking of the ‘Renaissance’. In this regard his undertaking differed from the standard text of the day in that his assertions were not muddled in vague or abstract references to injustice but quite specific about malpractice’s in Government and hypocrisy in the Church.

 As far as I am aware the ‘Tree of Commonwealth’ has yet to be rendered into a contemporary publication, but has been reviewed briefly by J.D.Mackie in his book ‘The Early Tudors’ wherein he continues : “the book in its main outline is an allegory conceived and executed in the medieval manner, and its argument is a direct antithesis to the view that the science of politics lay outside the field of morality.” Given that, as Mackie points out, the list of books produced by the first printers shows that the old standards of English culture were initially little affected by such revolutionary thinking, Dudley’s efforts must place him ahead of his time. Sir Richard Empson and Dudley both undertook to escape their confinement, Dudley during his sixteen months incarceration having failed in his attempt, began his book, described by Derek Wilson in his 1000 years history of ‘The Tower of London’ as an allegorical exposition of the role of King’s and estates contained a dedication to Henry VIIIth and text urging him to shun avarice and rule with firmness tempered by mercy.

 Edmund had been a Privy Councillor from 1485 and perhaps his position as Henry VIIths Tax Collector, and Minister along with Cardinal Morton and Empson, did little amongst his peers to secure his popularity. His position however proved to be one of worth to himself and the former King, who was, like all Royals in need of money. Regular ‘taxation’ being a thing of the future Dudley found his genius was in putting this “hateful business into good language”. Perfecting his technique with the assistance of another Lawyer, Sir Richard Empson they “exhumed obsolete crimes and antique flaws in land titles, packed juries and bribed or browbeat judges, and so by the end of the reign contrived to transfer an impressive quantity of private property into the coffers of the Crown.” Milton Waldman’s ‘Elizabeth and Leicester’ explains that by way of reward for his outstanding service to the crown Dudley was presented with the wardship of Elizabeth Grey, the daughter of the late Edward Grey Viscount deLisle. Edmund and Elizabeth Grey’s later marriage brought into Dudley’s control a sizeable estate. The catch being the title he was given, potentially for the eldest of his three sons, entitled him by right of his wife to display in their arms, the historic quartering of the Beauchamp’s and the Neville’s,~ Earl’s of Warwick, as well as that of the Talbots, Earl’s of Shrewsbury. This fact alone may have condemned him to his fate, as certainly was the case with Edmund de la Pole.

 The Trial’s of Dudley and Empson proceeded with the usual mix of expediency and injustice that for too long had passed for judicial procedure at the Tudor State hearings. Dudley at the Guild Hall that July (1509) and Empson at Northampton, three months later! Both were sent to the Tower. Despite Empson’s specific insistence that the court being used to condemn him, had itself been party to enforcing the very laws that he was now being condemned for implementing. He was said to have stated : “In what well governed Country do the infractors of national laws escape punishment, and they only suffer who have laboured to sustain them ?” and ‘ . .only, if I must die, let me desire that my indictment be entered on no record, nor divulged to foreign nations; lest from my fate, it be concluded that in England all law and government are dissolved’. A fairly conclusive indication that the judges knew Empson was right followed, in that because it was evident that the original charges would have implicated these judges and others in the late King’s administration, a trumped up charge of conspiracy to treason was laid against the two Lawyers. A further indication of Sir Richard and Edmund’s right to a full vindication was that, and it was no doubt a statement in itself of that councils lack of conviction in the justice of there actions, that the ‘traitors’ severed heads were not exposed to public view, but rather unusually given the privilege of a decent burial with the rest of the dead men’s mortal remains.

 It is perhaps not without good cause that John Dudley had reason to consider Henry VIII brutal, selfish and ungenerous, for even in ‘the splendour of his Kingly youth’ He had let Empson and Dudley’s father, Edmund, perish, in 1510, no doubt a motive as regards Sir John’s later contriving to overthrow the Tudor Throne. It was also chiefly for this reason that it was said “the people of England loathed the whole tribe of Dudley as greedy tyrannical upstarts.”