One of my favorite entertainments of English history came from the tv series " Horrible Histories " and the Tudor families were memed as nasty and cut off many heads of their (former) allies and enemies.
How did it became so? From what I read before, the reason why Elizabeth is known as the great queen is because of the development of literatures of Spenser and Shakespeare. Why don' t we hear about as much beheadings during the middle-ages or the Stuart era?
The Tudors beheaded so many people because they were a new ruling dynasty and a sizeable number of members of the last ruling dynasty were still around as members of the aristocracy, which meant that they were capable of plotting to dethrone the current monarchs and substitute themselves instead. Now, they were not necessarily actually doing this, but they were capable.
I discuss this at length in my previous answer to How many people were executed in the reign of Queen Mary I of England?