Short answers, pulled from the story.
Edmund Dudley was an English administrator who served as a leading member of the Council Learned in the Law, a special tribunal that collected debts owed to Henry VII, demanded bonds from wealthy subjects, and employed financial instruments against the nobility. He also served as Speaker of the House of Commons in 1504 and helped negotiate the Peace of Etaples with France in 1492.
Dudley was executed on the 17th of August 1510 on Tower Hill on a charge of constructive treason. The nominal grounds were that he had ordered friends to arm themselves during Henry VII's final illness, but his real vulnerability was the widespread unpopularity he had earned through his financial enforcement work for the crown.
Dudley wrote The Tree of Commonwealth, a treatise in support of absolute monarchy, while awaiting execution in the Tower of London. It may never have reached its intended audience, King Henry VIII, but several manuscript copies survived, including one made by John Stow in 1563.
Dudley's eldest son John Dudley became the 1st Duke of Northumberland and served as Edward VI's second Regent. His grandson Robert Dudley became the 1st Earl of Leicester and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. A daughter, Elizabeth Dudley, married William Stourton, 7th Baron Stourton.
The Council Learned in the Law was a special tribunal of Henry VII's reign that collected debts owed to the king, required financial bonds as surety, and used further instruments against wealthy and high-born subjects. Dudley and his colleague Sir Richard Empson led it, while Henry VII closely supervised their accounts.
A 1509 inventory of Dudley's house in Candelwykstrete, London, contains the earliest known reference to window curtains.