4 - The first earl of Cumberland (1493–1542) and the decline of northern feudalism

Summary

However much Henry VIII might insist that “we woll not be bound of a necessitie to be served with lordes. But we woll be served with such men what degree soever as we shall appointe to the same”, the crown during his reign, as before it, could not dispense with the services of the nobility if the realm were to be maintained in ordered governance. Out of “the unstable and waverynge rennynge water” of the people “the noble persons of the worlde” were the indispensable islands of “ferme grounde” without which there could be no good rule. In this respect the advent of the Tudors had changed little in the essentials of the situation, and Thomas Starkey in the 1530s saw it in much the same way as Bishop Russell at the end of the reign of Edward IV. The “office and duty” of the “nobylytie and gentylmen of every schyre”, he wrote, “ys chefely to see justyce among theyr servanntys and subiectys and to kepe them in unytie and concorde”. From this point of view those great lords in the upper levels of the peerage, whose possessions and following were wide enough to enable them to lead and rule whole “countries”, had a special importance. Henry VIII and his father might be wary of the type as potential “over-mighty subjects”; nevertheless these were the first to be sent the royal commands and missives if a riot was to be checked, a rebellion suppressed, or an army raised and led to war.