One of the most notable parts of the king's policy was his long-continued and successful assault on the abuse of "livery and maintenance," which had been at its height during the Wars of the Roses. We have seen the part which it had taken in strengthening the influence of those who were already too powerful, and weakening the ordinary operation of the law. Henry put it down with a strong hand, forbidding all liveries entirely, save for the mere domestic retainers of each magnate. His determination to end the system was well shown by the fact that he heavily fined even the earl of Oxford, the companion of his exile, the victor of Bosworth, and the most notoriously loyal peer in the realm, for an ostentatious violation of the statute. Where Oxford was punished, no less favoured person could hope to escape. By the end of the reign the little hosts of badged adherents which had formed the nucleus for the armies of the Wars of the Roses had ceased to exist.
Edward IV., as has been already remarked, had many of the opportunities of the autocrat, if only he had cared to use them; but his sloth and self-indulgence stood in the way. Henry VII., the most laborious and systematic of men, turned them to account. He formed his personal opinion on every problem of administration and intervened himself in every detail. In many respects he was his own prime minister, and nothing was done without his knowledge and consent. A consistent policy may be detected in all his acts--that of gathering all the machinery of government into his own hands. Under the later Plantagenets and the Lancastrian kings the great check on the power of the crown had been that financial difficulties were continually compelling the sovereign to summon parliaments. The estates had interfered perpetually in all the details of governance, by means of the power of the purse. Edward IV., first among English sovereigns, had been able to dispense with parliaments for periods of many years, because he did not need their grants save at long intervals. Henry was in the same position; by strict economy, by the use of foreign subsidies, by the automatic growth of his revenues during a time of peace and returning prosperity, by confiscation and forfeitures, he built himself up a financial position which rendered it unnecessary for him to make frequent appeals to parliament. Not the least fertile of his expedients was that regular exploitation of the law as a source of revenue, which had already been seen in the time of his father-in-law. This part of Henry's policy is connected with the name of his two extortionate "fiscal judges" Empson and Dudley, who "turned law and justice into rapine" by their minute inquisition into all technical breaches of legality, and the nice fashion in which they adapted the fine to the wealth of the misdemeanant, without any reference to his moral guilt or any regard for extenuating circumstances. The king must take the responsibility for their unjust doings; it was his coffers which mainly profited by their chicane. In his later years he fell into the vice of hoarding money for its own sake; so necessary was it to his policy that he should be free, as far as possible, from the need for applying to parliament for money, that he became morbidly anxious to have great hoards in readiness for any possible day of financial stress. At his death he is said to have had £1,800,000 in hard cash laid by. Hence it is not strange to find that he was able to dispense with parliaments in a fashion that would have seemed incredible to a 14th-century king. In his whole reign he only asked them five times for grants of taxation, and three of the five requests were made during the first seven years of his reign. In the eyes of many men parliament lost the main reason for its existence when it ceased to be the habitual provider of funds for the ordinary expenses of the realm. Those who had a better conception of its proper functions could see that it had at any rate been stripped of its chief power when the king no longer required its subsidies. There are traces of a want of public interest in its proceedings, very different from the anxiety with which they used to be followed in Plantagenet and Lancastrian times. Legislation, which only incidentally affects him, is very much less exciting to the ordinary citizen than taxation, which aims directly at his pocket. It is at any rate clear that during the latter years of his reign, when the time of impostures and rebellions had ended, Henry was able to dispense with parliaments to a great extent, and incurred no unpopularity by doing so.