Henry VII made sure that he had eyes and ears wherever they were needed to put an end to thirty years of political conspiracy.
King Henry VII, so Sir Francis Bacon tells us, aspired to be held in awe by his subjects, rather than in love. To this end he employed spies not only in the courts of his European neighbours but also in England, and kept abreast of all that was going in his own court by compiling private notebooks in which the words and deeds of every courtier were carefully recorded.