ABSTRACT
English politics in the late Middle Ages were magnate politics, the activity of those great men whose power rested on their territorial possessions and family connections. There was higher nobility, comprising a small group of earls, but it had much in common with the men who held lands by knight service. Henry V's widow married Owain Tudor, their children entered the higher nobility and, after another good marriage, their grandson became King. The basic values of the nobility were those of a military class, and nothing is more apparent than the way in which military success could justify a king in the eyes of his subjects. Ruthlessness, such as Richard III's, did not pay because it could antagonize the great men of the realm, and the success of the early Tudors rested on the fact that they struck an acceptable balance between firm, even tyrannical rule, and conciliation of the nobility.
