ABSTRACT
A king strong and independent enough to re-assert the inherent powers of the English crown would find the means all ready to hand, only waiting to be used. The decay of good government owed little to any fundamental troubles in the body politic: it sprang from no deep-seated social disruption, but only from the weakness of the crown. Henry VII's real difficulty was not to find new sources of revenue but to make sure that he got his due. He had to see that the revenues of his lands did not stick to the fingers of the various receivers, that customs were paid and handed over, that the law with its profitable by-products was enforced, and that the feudal rights of the crown were discovered and exacted. This problem of administration forms one of the most complicated and recondite, but also one of the fundamental, aspects of Tudor government.
