Individual Details

Death

Dudley was elected MP for Lewes in 1491 and knight of the shire for Sussex in 1495. In 1504, he was chosen as Speaker of the House of Commons. While collecting the King's money, Dudley amassed a great amount of wealth for himself, which resulted in estates in Sussex, Dorset and Lincolnshire. When Henry VII died in April 1509, Dudley was imprisoned and charged with the crime of constructive treason. Dudley's nominal crime was that during the last illness of Henry VII he had ordered his friends to assemble in arms in case the King died, but the real reason for his charge was his unpopularity stemming from his financial transactions. He was arrained and made preparations to escape from the Tower of London. He gave up his plan, though, when parliament did not confirm his attainder, which led him to believe that he would be pardoned. Dudley and his colleague Empson were executed on 17 August 1510 on Tower Hill.
During his imprisonment Dudley sought to gain the favour of King Henry VIII by writing a treatise in support of absolute monarchy called The Tree of Commonwealth. It may never have reached the King, however. Several manuscript editions survive, the earliest was possibly commissioned by Dudley's son John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, while the second oldest was made by John Stow in 1563 for Dudley's grandson, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.