Henry VII

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  Dark History of the Tudors

  Murder, adultery, incest, witchcraft, wars, religious persecution, piracy

  • Judith John(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Amber Books Ltd

    (Publisher)

  This picture shows King Henry VII, lavishly robed and holding a Tudor rose. Note the combination of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster, united under the Tudor King.

  I

  TUDORS

  Henry VII: ORIGINS OF A DYNASTY

  The Tudor era lasted from 1485 to 1603. Compared to the House of Plantagenet (1154 to 1485), this was not long, yet the Tudor period is packed with some of the most famous and infamous British monarchs. Their legacy lives on in many dark and disreputable stories, including murder, execution, treason, false imprisonment, womanizing, illegitimate children, religious turmoil and the burning of heretics.

  The turbulent reign of the first Tudor King, Henry VII, begins.

  H enry VII’s ascent to the throne in 1485 was by no means secure. At the time of his coronation there were more than ten others with a greater claim than him, including his own mother, Margaret Beaufort. A direct descendant of John of Gaunt, Margaret was his great-granddaughter. However, a combination of circumstances, political manipulation and personal belief in himself as the rightful King would mean that Henry of Richmond would become Henry VII, the first Tudor King, who successfully ended the War of the Roses and united the houses of York and Lancaster. But his reign, and that of his ancestors, was by no means peaceful. Henry would live in constant fear of someone coming along to usurp his hard-won crown.

  Edward IV’s portrait shows a healthy, happy man. Yet Edward died suddenly at the age of forty-one of an unconfirmed illness. Many believe his appetites and excesses in life led to his untimely death, which triggered a resurgence in the fight for the crown.

  Growing Up in Exile

  As Henry was a potential rival to the Yorkist monarchy – first to Edward IV, then Richard III – he was sent away from home for his own safety as a child. By the time Henry reached the age of 14 in 1471, his father, the weak-willed Edmund Tudor, had died and the continuing Wars of the Roses made life in Britain too dangerous for a potential claimant to the English throne, so Henry was taken to Brittany by his mother and uncle, Jasper Tudor. Brittany was a separate, independent duchy, governed by Francis II and was at that time not considered part of France (even though the current French King, Louis XI, desperately wanted to claim it as part of his kingdom). This meant that Henry was relatively safe from attempts by both Edward IV, then Richard III, to coax Louis XI into sending Henry back to England, where it was likely that the threat he presented to the King would have resulted in his imprisonment or even execution.

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  Daily Life in Stuart England

  • Jeffrey L. Forgeng(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  1 A History of England in the Seventeenth Century At the opening of the 1600s, Elizabeth I, last monarch of the Tudor line, was 67 years old. She had ruled England for nearly half a century, a lengthy reign that few of her predecessors had ever matched. Her long years on the throne allowed her to build on the efforts of her father, Henry VIII, and her grandfather, Henry VII: over the course of the 1500s, the Tudors had transformed England from a land of feudal civil war into a largely stable and centralized monarchy. Henry VII had come to the throne in 1485 as the first Tudor king, after defeating Richard III at Bosworth Field, the final battle of the Wars of the Roses. These civil wars, which had involved intermittent fighting since 1455, pitted two rival branches of the royal family against one another, each backed by shifting alliances of mighty aristocratic families. Henry VII devoted much of his reign to curtailing the power of his aristocratic subjects, and he found willing allies in England’s Parliament. The House of Commons, the lower of the two parliamentary houses, was a semi- representative body dominated by the interests of the upper tiers of urban and rural society, just below the aristocracy. The classes they represented shared Henry’s interest in limiting the powers of the feudal nobility and were happy to support Henry’s efforts to strengthen the crown at the cost of the great aristocrats. Henry VII’s policy of collaboration with Parliament was continued by his son Henry VIII. In the 1530s, when the Pope refused to grant Henry a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he arranged for Parliament to declare the English church independent of the Catholic hierarchy. The break with Rome was welcomed by those who hoped to see the country embrace the Protestant Reformation that was beginning to take hold in many parts of Europe.

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  Kings & Queens of Great Britain

  Every Question Answered

  • David Soud(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Thunder Bay Press

    (Publisher)

  The House of Tudor

  After the Wars of the Roses had effectively culled the nobility of England, Henry Tudor was there to pick up the pieces, and he founded the dynasty that brought England into the modern era. Though it only lasted a little over a century, the Tudor dynasty transformed England completely. Henry VIII, brilliant as he was brash, made England a Protestant nation; his daughter Elizabeth I would keep it so, however ruthlessly, and in the process guide the nation through several dangerous decades to secure its place as a major European power. Under the Tudors, British culture blossomed spectacularly. It was the age of William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. Here was Britain’s Renaissance.

   

  Henry VII Remaker of the Monarchy

  H enry VII was an unlikely founder of England’s most storied dynasty, but he proved a capable and forward-thinking monarch. In the wake of the Wars of the Roses, he fended off multiple challenges to his rule and left his heirs a legacy of shrewd diplomacy, tight-fisted control of the nobility, and enormous royal wealth.

  House Tudor

  Born January 28, 1457

  Died April 21, 1509

  Reigned 1485–1509

  Consort Elizabeth of York (died 1503);

  Children Eight, including Henry VIII

  Successor Henry VIII

  Margaret of York, known after marriage as Margaret of Burgundy. The sister of Edward IV and Richard III, she was an implacable enemy of Henry VII, supporting the bids of both Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck to usurp the English throne.

  IN GOVERNMENT HE WAS SHREWD AND PRUDENT, SO THAT NO ONE DARED TO GET THE BETTER OF HIM THROUGH DECEIT OR GUILE

  POLYDORE VERGIL

  When Richard III was unhorsed and slain at Bosworth, his adversary, Henry Tudor, found himself the last man standing in the Wars of the Roses. His unlikely bid for the throne had been engineered by two queens who had once been enemies in that conflict: his mother, Margaret Beaufort, of the Lancastrian faction, and Elizabeth Woodville, widow of Edward IV of the House of York. When, in January 1486, Henry married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, the red and white roses of Lancaster and York merged into the Tudor rose, a symbol of reconciliation and new beginnings.

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  Early Modern England 1485-1714

  A Narrative History

  • Robert Bucholz, Newton Key(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  By 1485, England had experienced civil war for well over three decades, and an uncertain succession for almost a century. The new king's prospects could not have seemed promising. He was only 28 years old. He had no affinity, no important friends, no experience of government. He had not even managed his own estates, having spent his youth on the run, first in Brittany and then, from 1484, in France. Moreover, there remained in play a clutch of Yorkist pretenders to the throne, some with better claims than Henry. There was, for example, John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln (ca. 1460–87), the nephew of both Edward IV and Richard III and the latter's designated heir. There was also Edward, earl of Warwick (1475–99), and his sister Margaret, countess of Salisbury (1473–1541), the children of the duke of Clarence. Later, Henry, marquess of Exeter (ca. 1498–1538), a grandson of Edward IV, would become a factor. Finally, for the romantically inclined, it should not be forgotten that the bodies of Edward V and his brother, Richard, duke of York, had never been found. This would give rise to the fifteenth‐century equivalent of “Tupac sightings” and the possibility that an impostor could play on the nostalgic credulity of the populace. That possibility might be exploited by enemies abroad: Margaret, duchess of Burgundy (1446–1503), sister of Edward IV and Richard III, could provide a continental base of operations and sanctuary well out of Henry's reach. As we will see, the French, the Scots, the Irish, even the Holy Roman emperor might find it in their interests to dislodge Henry or destabilize his regime. After all, the rulers of Brittany and France had done as much for Henry against the Yorkists; just like rebellious barons, they might not find it easy to break the habit.

  But the Wars of the Roses did end. Henry VII did establish his authority, and his dynasty as well: the Tudors would rule England for well over a century, effectively and, compared to the dynasties of the previous century, unchallenged. How did he – and they – do it? Before we can answer that question, it is necessary to understand what sort of man he was. His image (see Plate 1.1 ) provides some clues. Henry Tudor was shrewd, tight lipped, suspicious, and intensely practical. Like many late medieval rulers, he anticipated the sort of prince described in Machiavelli's book of that name: ruthless, capable of sharp practice and even cruelty if necessary. The result would have pleased the author of The Prince (written 1513, pub. 1532), for in the words of one contemporary: “The King is feared rather than loved.”5 But where cruelty was not necessary, Henry VII was content to let sleeping dogs lie. That is, although he forgot nothing, he tended not to hold grudges or engage in personal vendettas.

  Plate 1.1

  Henry VII, painted terracotta bust, by Pietro Torrigiano.

  Source: © The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  This practical side of Henry's character led earlier historians to identify him as a more or less “modern” personality and, indeed, his behavior can sometimes remind one of a twenty‐first‐century CEO. But Henry was born in the fifteenth century and many of his habits were purely medieval. He was a loyal son of the Church who burned heretics, heard multiple daily Masses, and spent £20 000 building the glorious chapel in Westminster Abbey that bears his name and enshrines his body, along with those of many of his descendants. A firm believer in Purgatory

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  The Tudors

  The Kings and Queens of England's Golden Age

  • Jane Bingham(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Arcturus

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2

  A Dynasty is Born – the Reign of Henry VII

  For the young Henry VII, the Battle of Bosworth Field was just the beginning. At the age of 28, he faced the daunting task of hanging on to the throne and passing it on to his heirs – something that every English king since Henry V had failed to do. In a land of which he knew little, surrounded by enemies, he was expected to bring peace and stability. Thirty years of civil war had delivered a dangerous degree of power into the hands of the English barons. The royal coffers were empty, and England’s reputation among its foreign rivals stood perilously low. The kingdom was in desperate need of healing and the English people looked to their new king to perform the miracle.

  Securing the Throne

  At first sight, there was little in Henry’s background to prepare him for his role as king. Separated from his mother at the age of four, he had been brought up in exile in Wales and France without a father to guide him. When he was just 12 years old, he had lost a trusted guardian (in the person of Lord Herbert) and he had been compelled to spend his early manhood in enforced idleness in the Breton court. While all the English nobles were accustomed to ruling great estates, Henry Tudor had never even run a small manor. Of his 28 years, less than two had been spent on English soil and he had no real power base in his new kingdom.

  Yet despite all his evident disadvantages, Henry’s troubled youth had furnished him with several useful qualities. From an early age, he had observed the power games played by others, acquiring an intimate understanding of the dangerous world of politics. Outside his small circle of trusted friends and advisers, Henry had learned not to rely on the judgements of others. Instead, he had grown accustomed to judging characters and situations for himself, only taking action after careful consideration. Above all, Henry’s years of insecurity had left him with an overwhelming desire for stability – a longing that would lead to his establishment of a secure and well-funded monarchy.

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  The Making of the Modern English State, 1460-1660

  • Philip Edwards(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Henry VIII's large frame and terrifying gaze in the portraits suggest that he was completely in charge of policy and dominant at Court. But was he dominant, or instead largely passive? Was he the master puppeteer fully in command, or merely the puppet of factions who really controlled the direction of policy? There is simply no agreement on this among modern historians. The reign of Henry VIII seems to fall into three distinct periods: the first from 1509 to 1529 is characterised by an initial 97 reaction against the policies of Henry VII `the aristocratic reac-tion'), preparation for war with France, and the rise and con-sequent dominance of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey. The second period, 1530±40, was a decade of enormous change and reform, encompassing the Anglican Reformation and engineered by that skilled bureaucrat, Thomas Cromwell. The last period from Cromwell's execution in July 1540 to the king's own death in January 1547 was notable for the absence of a clear first minister and for a return to war and consequent economic hardship: a dismal period of decline that has been condemned as `puerile and fatuous compared to the giant strides and historic achieve-ments of the middle years of his reign'. 1 The reign of Henry VIII ended as it had begun ± in warfare against the medieval enemy, France. The `aristocratic reaction' and the rise of Thomas Wolsey The start of the new reign witnessed what is termed `an aristo-cratic reaction' to the policies of Henry VII. The new king turned his back on his father's regime and the latter's attempt to brow-beat the nobility into subjection. One of Henry VIII's first acts was to allow the execution of Empson and Dudley as a sop to the nobles . Henry VIII was clearly making a bid for popularity as well as, be it noted, demonstrating a very cruel, ruthless streak right at the start despite his youth.

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  British Kings (Volume-2)

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • White Word Publications

    (Publisher)

  Henry oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542. Henry was an attractive and charismatic man in his prime, educated and accomplished. He was an author and a composer. He ruled with absolute power. His desire to provide England with a male heir—which stemmed partly from personal vanity and partly because he believed a daughter would be unable to consolidate the Tudor Dynasty and the fragile peace that existed following the Wars of the Roses—led to the two things that Henry is remembered for today: his wives, and the English Reformation that made England a mostly Protestant nation. In later life he became morbidly obese and his health suffered; his public image is frequently depicted as one of a lustful, egotistical, harsh and insecure king. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Early years: 1491–1509 Born at Greenwich Palace, Henry VIII was the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Of the young Henry's six siblings, only three — Arthur, Prince of Wales; Margaret; and Mary — survived infancy. In 1493, at the age of two, Henry was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. In 1494, he was created Duke of York. He was subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Henry was given a first-rate education from leading tutors, becoming fluent in Latin, French, and Spanish. As it was expected that the throne would pass to Prince Arthur, Henry's older brother, Henry was prepared for a life in the church. Elizabeth of York, his mother, died when Henry was aged 11. Death of Arthur Arthur around the time of his marriage c.1501 ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Catherine as a young widow, by Henry VII's court painter, Michael Sittow, in c.1502. In 1502, Arthur died at the age of 15, after only 20 weeks of marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

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  English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable

  • Lacey Baldwin Smith(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Academy Chicago Publishers

    (Publisher)

  Chapter IV

  MORE MEMORABLE HISTORY, 1485 TO 1964

  H istory used to be simpler, tidier, and far more optimistic than it is today. Nineteenth-century historians liked to credit Henry VII as the first of the so-called “New Monarchs.” His triumph over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field was heralded as a good thing, for it inaugurated modern times and the end of the Middle Ages, those dreary centuries which came between the glories of Greece and Rome and the even greater glories of the modern age of capitalism, constitutionalism, professionalism, democracy and technology. Today’s historians dislike demarcating history in terms of battles and dynasties, or chopping up chronology into neat segments. They tend to see the first of the Tudors as just another medieval monarch, albeit a somewhat more efficient one, who profited from the memory of the civil wars of the roses and their political and human exhaustion, and they explain his success in reigning 24 years in terms of subterranean demographic, economic and social change which leave the reader depressed and confused.

  Put in its simplest terms, somewhere around 1485, the English started to have more and better sex, and though there is no firm evidence that the poor became poorer, certainly the rich became richer. The population which had been reduced by a third, possibly even by a half, during the, second half of the 14th century, finally began to respond to the new economic impulses of the 1480s and ’90s, and began an unprecedented rate of growth, rising from two to four million by 1600. Those fortunate enough to survive the bubonic plague were economically better off than ever before: more food and land to go around, fatter and healthier babies, and higher wages for all. Landowners confronted with a labor shortage turned from labor-intensive agriculture to sheep farming, where a single hired hand could watch over an entire flock. Sheep runs and a European-wide demand for English wool and broadcloth produced unprecedented prosperity—“I thank God and ever shall; it is the sheep has paid for all.” Prosperity in turn began to undermine the old medieval regulation of trade and production that had sought to protect the consumer and establish, not a market or competitive price, but a just price for all. Finally, economic competition, inflation, and social mobility generated what society feared the most: change. New names, new blood, new methods were destroying the fabric of the medieval past. In the village of Apsley Guise, each peasant in 1275 had held equal holdings of 15 acres. By 1542, four lucky and hard-working families had increased their acreage to 60 acres or more; only three still possessed their original 15 acres; and all the rest had been forced to sell out, many of them migrating to London, the boom town of the Kingdom, where the population was quadrupling, rising from 50,000 in 1500 to 200,000 a century later.

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  The Reign of Elizabeth 1

  • Carole Levin(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  5 1 O VERVIEW OF E LIZABETH ’ S L IFE AND R EIGN In early September 1533 Henry VIII was not the only one to eagerly anticipate the birth of his child by his second wife, Anne Boleyn, nor the only one to hope that this child would be a son. Everyone in England, and, indeed, Western Europe, was waiting. Henry would eventually have a son, Edward, but his short, unhappy reign would be eclipsed by the long and far more successful reign of his sister, Elizabeth. Her success demonstrated that Henry’s belief that he must have a son to secure Eng-land’s safety was misplaced. Nonetheless, Henry’s desire for a male heir was understandable; we may, however, question if his anxiety justified his six marriages and the beheading of two of his wives. Henry had become king in 1509, a few months before his eighteenth birthday, and only the second Tudor to succeed to the throne after the tumultuous Wars of the Roses of the fifteenth century. Though the number of people who actually died in that conflict was relatively small, it was in the popular, public memory a time of terror and lawlessness. Henry’s father, the first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, ruled more by right of con-quest after his victory over Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field, than by the right of primogeniture, though he established an elaborate claim to the throne based both on his Lancastrian claims and his connec-tion to the mythical King Arthur. Henry VII also developed the perspec-tive that Richard III was God’s scourge and he, Henry, was God’s agent sent to remove him. In the early years of his reign Henry VII battled further Yorkist claims and pretenders, and though he and his wife Elizabeth of York, oldest 6 The Reign of Elizabeth I daughter of Edward IV, had had three sons, both Arthur, his eldest son, and Edmund were dead when Henry VIII became King. Henry VIII was all too aware of the chaos that could come were there not a stable succession.

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  The Wars of the Roses

  • Anthony James Pollard(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Between the two lay the long, benighted Middle Ages. In extending this perception to England, humanists identified the accession of Henry VII in 1485 as the turning point. Soon it was taken for granted that England before 1485 was medieval and barbarous. The idea dovetailed neatly with the idea of the Wars of the Roses. Thus the Wars were not only the anarchy from which Henry VII had rescued a suffering kingdom, but also the final death throes of the Dark Ages; an idea caught beautifully in the nineteenth century by Bishop Stubbs: ‘it was “as the morning spread upon the mountain”, darkest before dawn’. 13 The later evolution of the historical interpretation of the fifteenth century is inseparable from the development of history as an THE WARS IN HISTORY 13 academic discipline. Until the late nineteenth century, the received wisdom, a marriage of Tudor propaganda and humanist prejudice, was irresistible. Admittedly, an idiosyncratic unorthodoxy developed which took a provocatively favourable view of Richard III. Sir George Buck in the early seventeenth century, Horace Walpole in the late eight-eenth century and Caroline Halsted in the early nineteenth sought to reverse Henry VII’s and Shakespeare’s image. But this owed more to the personal temperaments of the authors than to a fundamental reappraisal of the subject. 14 The cumulative effect of the quickening antiquarian interest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the development of modern historical research in the nineteenth – the exploration and publication of government archives, legal records and private papers of the era – was to tend to confirm the received wisdom. The Paston Letters, first readily available in Fenn’s edition (1787–1823), later supplemented by the publication of Smyth’s Lives of the Berkeleys (1883–85) provided plenty of evidence of skulduggery in fifteenth-century East Anglia and Gloucestershire.

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