The Cardinal’s agents made it their business to learn every man’s income, and visit him accordingly.  If a person lived handomely, the Cardinal would insist on a correspondingly liberal gift; if, however, a citizen lived very plainly, the King’s minister insisted none the less, telling the unfortunate man that by his economy he must surely have accumulated enough to bestow the required “benevolence."[3] Thus on one prong or the other of his terrible “fork” the shrewd Cardinal impaled his writhing victims, and speedily filled the royal treasury as it had never been filled before.[4]

[3] Richard Reed, a London alderman, refused to contribute a “benevolence.”  He was sent to serve as a soldier in the Scotch wars at his own expense, and the general was ordered to “use him in all things according to sharp military discipline.”  The effect was such that few after that ventured to deny the King what he asked. [4] Henry is said to have accumulated a fortune of nearly two millions sterling, an amount which would perhaps represent upwards of $90,000,000 now.

But Henry VII had other methods for raising money.  He sold offices in Church and State, and took bribes for pardoning rebels.  When he summoned a Parliament he obtained grants for putting down some real or pretended insurrection, or to defray the expenses of a threatened attack from abroad, and then quietly pocketed the appropriation,—­a device not altogether unknown to modern government officials.

A third and last method for getting funds was invented in Henry’s behalf by two lawyers, Empson and Dudley, who were so rapacious and cut so close that they were commonly known as “the King’s skin shearers.”  They went about the country enforcing old and forgotten laws, by which they reaped a rich harvest.

Their chief instrument for gain, however, was a revival of the Statute of Liveries.  This law imposed enormous fines on those noblemen who dared to equip their followers in military garb, or designate them by a badge equivalent to it, as had been the custom during the late civil wars (S296).

In order to thoroughly enforce the Statute of Liveries, Henry organized the Court of Star Chamber, so called from the starred ceiling where the tribunal met.  This court had for its object the punishment of such crimes committed by the great families, or their adherents, as the ordinary law courts could not, or through intimidation dared not, deal with.  It had no power to inflict death, but might impose long terms of imprisonment and ruinous fines.  It, too, first made use of torture in England to extort confessions of guilt.

Henry seemed to have enforced the Law of Livery against friend and foe alike.  Said the King to the Earl of Oxford, as he left his castle, where a large number of retainers in uniform were drawn up to do him honor, “My lord, I thank you for your entertainment, but my attorney must speak to you.”  The attorney, who was the notorious Empson, brought suit in the Star Chamber against the Earl, who was fined fifteen thousand marks, or something like $750,000, for the incautious display he had made.