England was the most centralised state in medieval Europe. The circumstances of the Norman Conquest and the development of the Common Law had conferred a unique degree of jurisdictional uniformity. The Tudors built on this situation, reducing all the remaining franchises, including that of the Church. Without a jurisdictional foundation, the power of the nobility came increasingly to rely upon the Court, and office under the Crown. However, sixteenth-century England was not monolithic. The Achilles heel of the Tudor monarchy was finance, and without a discretionary revenue system there could be no professional bureaucracy. Consequently the secret of Tudor success was to work in partnership with the local elites rather than to emasculate them.