Power in Tudor England

England was the most centralised state in medieval Europe. The circumstances of the Norman Conquest and the development of the Common Law had conferred a unique degree of jurisdictional uniformity. The Tudors built on this situation, reducing all the remaining franchises, including that of the Church. Without a jurisdictional foundation, the power of the nobility came increasingly to rely upon the Court, and office under the Crown. However, sixteenth-century England was not monolithic. The Achilles heel of the Tudor monarchy was finance, and without a discretionary revenue system there could be no professional bureaucracy. Consequently the secret of Tudor success was to work in partnership with the local elites rather than to emasculate them. Nor was the early modern England homogeneous. The state not only embraced entirely distinct cultures in Wales, Ireland and the Channel Islands but also considerable variations of custom and attitude within England itself. Governing such a society required a sensitive awareness of the possible, and the Tudors possessed to an outstanding degree.