The purpose of this website is to: THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN
ENGLISH GOVERNMENT * * * [page 18] ... But it seems clear that
the Tudors inherited and perpetuated a Council emancipated from
aristocratic predominance. Its members were, in the main, men of
the middle class, professional government servants of a type
which was to become increasingly familiar i the sixteenth
century. Henry VII's chief advisrs--Morton, Fox, Warden, Bray,
Lovell, Poynings, Empson, Dudley -- were ecclesiastics, knights,
and lawyers. The Crown had won the contest over the composition
of the central organ of government. The victory was not wholly
due to its own action. It was the natural result of the decline
of the baronage in a world undergoing profound social and
economic change. Members of the older aristocracy were seldom
found at the Council board, and such peers as for the future the
King chose to summon were mostly of new creation. Great
ecclesiastics were still important members, but the
ecclesiastical element in governmental s