Henry VII

6 Key excerpts on "Henry VII"

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  The Kings & Queens of England

  • W M Ormrod(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • The History Press

    (Publisher)

  T he argument that the Tudors brought peace, stability and prosperity to England after a century of infighting and disorder is a myth very largely of their own making: Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were all expert in the arts of what today is called propaganda, and much of the popular modern image of those rulers still derives from the messages they chose to impart to their subjects. To an extent, the Tudors were simply the beneficiaries of an economic and cultural dispensation that gave England new wealth, new ideas, and a new sense of its own identity during the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the greatest of the Tudors, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, clearly helped to shape the government, religion and culture of their realm in a forceful, dynamic and expansive manner that demonstrated not only the long stretch of the arm of State but the real and considerable impact of personal monarchy. Most remarkably – and something often taken too much for granted today – the Tudor dynasty was the first successfully to establish both the principle and the practice of female monarchy: and if the experiment manifestly failed in the case of Jane Grey, and was at best of arguable success in the case of Mary I, it was spectacularly vindicated by the exceptionally durable and stable reign of Elizabeth I. Without the right of female succession, the Tudor dynasty would have failed in 1553, and might have gone down in history more in terms of the Lancastrian regime which, to a degree, it had earlier claimed to reinstate. The triumph of pragmatism represented in the failure of the male succession and the acceptance of regnant queens in itself articulated something of the new political culture that the Tudors had embraced and imposed upon the kingdom of England.

  Henry VII (1485-1509)

  Henry VII was born at some distance from the English throne. His mother, Margaret Beaufort, was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his mistress, Katherine Swynford, and it was from her that Henry derived the dregs of Plantagenet blood that were his claim to the succession in 1485. His father, Edmund Tudor, was connected less directly but more respectably with royalty. He was the son of a Welsh gentleman, Owen Tudor, a minor officeholder in the Lancastrian court who won the hand in marriage of none other than Catherine of Valois, the young widow of Henry V. Henry VII made more of this connection than he did of his dubious descent from John of Gaunt: Henry V was still a charismatic enough figure to be worth invoking, even if only as a relative by marriage. The irony is that, were it not for the French Salic Law (which, though not recognized by the English, forbade female succession), Henry VII had a better claim to the French crown than to the English.

  Henry was born on 28 January 1457, a few months after his father’s death and a little before his mother’s fourteenth birthday. His early years were overshadowed by the Wars of the Roses, and once Prince Edward of Lancaster (the only son of Henry VI) fell in the Battle of Tewkesbury (1471), Henry was packed off abroad for safety. As Edward IV consolidated his position in the 1470s, Henry’s prospects seemed bleak. Edward had two sons and two brothers, and the nobility of England rallied behind him. Had it not been for Richard III, Henry could never have become king. It was Richard who cleared his path, splitting the Yorkist interest by calling the legitimacy of his two nephews into question, seizing the throne from them, and having them murdered.

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  Early Modern England 1485-1714

  A Narrative History

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

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Establishing the Henrician Regime, 1485–1525

  On 22 August 1485 rebel forces led by Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond (1457–1509), defeated a royal army under King Richard III (1452–85; reigned 1483–5) at the battle of Bosworth Field, Leicestershire (see Map 1.1 ). As all students of Shakespeare know, Richard was killed. His crown, said to have rolled under a hawthorn bush, was retrieved and offered to his opponent, who wasted no time in proclaiming himself King Henry VII. According to tradition, these dramatic events ended decades of political instability and established the Tudor dynasty, which would rule England effectively for over a century.

  As told in Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Richard III, Henry's victory and the rise of the Tudors has an air of inevitability. But Shakespeare wrote a century after these events, during the reign of Henry's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth (1533–1603; reigned 1558–1603). Naturally, his hindsight was 20/20 and calculated to flatter the ruling house under which he lived. No one alive in 1485, not even Henry, could have felt so certain about his family's prospects. During the previous hundred years three different royal houses had ruled England. Each had claimed a disputed succession and each had fallen with the murder of its king and head. Each line had numerous descendants still living in 1485, some of whom had better claims to the throne than Henry did. Recent history suggested that each of these rival claimants would find support among the nobility, so why should anyone bet on the Tudors to last? There was little reason to think that the bloodshed and turbulence were over.

  And yet, Henry VII would not be overthrown. Despite many challenges he would rule England for nearly 25 years and die in his bed, safe in the knowledge that his son, the eighth Henry, would succeed to a more or less united, loyal, and peaceful realm supported by a full treasury. The story of how Henry VII met these challenges and established his dynasty will be told in this chapter. But first, in order to understand the magnitude of the task and its accomplishment, it is necessary to review briefly the dynastic crisis known, romantically but inaccurately, as the Wars of the Roses.1

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  The Mid Tudors

  Edward VI and Mary, 1547–1558

  • Stephen J. Lee(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Henry VIII’s legacy was therefore a mixed one. On the one hand, England seemed to be pointed firmly in the direction of enmity with France and, where possible, alliance with Spain and the Emperor. On the other, there were possibilities for reconciliation with France, involving England changing sides in the Habsburg–Valois conflict. This absence of any irrevocable commitment was to continue through the middle decades of the sixteenth century. The reign of Edward VI (1547–53) was to see the continuation of both trends (pages 81–2). Somerset sided with the Emperor against France which, of course, reacted by stirring up the Scottish threat. Then, after his rise to power in 1549, Northumberland reversed the process by signing the Treaty of Boulogne with France in 1550, before attempting – unsuccessfully – to make England the broker between France and the Habsburgs. Mary (1553–58) made it her priority to develop Spanish amity and her marriage with Philip II of Spain seemed to secure this (page 82); certainly her reign saw renewed and intensified conflict with France, culminating in England’s loss of Calais in 1558 (page 83). France continued to be seen as the main threat in the opening years of Elizabeth’s reign, only for a complete reversal to occur in the 1570s. The main reason for this was the sudden descent of France into civil war and the emergence of Spain as the major power of western Europe. Elizabeth’s England, unlike that of Henry VIII, was to re-emerge as that power’s main challenger. By no stretch of the imagination, however, could this be accredited to Henry VIII’s policies.

  Questions

  1. What was Henry VIII’s achievement?
  2. How much of this achievement survived his death in 1547?

  ANALYSIS 2: HOW HAVE HISTORIANS INTERPRETED THE HENRICIAN ‘REVOLUTIONS’ AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT IMPACT?

  Ever since the early 1950s some historians have argued that Henry VIII’s reign was nothing less than ‘revolutionary’ in its impact, both at the time and in the future. Some, like G.R. Elton, saw the establishment of ‘the sovereignty of the king in parliament’ as a ‘revolution in government’,2 while others, like A.G. Dickens, focused on the religious transformation, or the Reformation as a revolution.

  A ‘revolution in government’?

  According to Elton, Henry VIII’s reign played a crucial role in the country’s political development: indeed, the 1530s brought one of the ‘three administrative revolutions’ in English history.3 The first had been ‘The Anglo-Norman creation of a centralised feudal state governed by the king in his household’,4 which had remained essentially unchanged throughout the Middle Ages and was merely refined by the Yorkists, Henry VII and Wolsey. The second was the reforms of the 1530s which involved an altogether new principle of ‘an administration relying on the household’ being replaced by ‘one based exclusively on bureaucratic departments and officers of state’.5 The result was the introduction of a more formal system for the control of finances in a number of ‘parallel revenue courts’,6 including the Court of First Fruits and Tenths and the Court of Augmentations, established to handle the revenue coming in from the church as a direct result of the Reformation. This was accompanied by the emergence of a smaller and more cohesive central structure, ‘a formal government board, the privy council’,7 and the greatly enhanced status of the office of principal secretary. This situation continued, with further modifications, until the nineteenth century, when a third administrative revolution ended the remnants of the ‘medieval system’ and ‘created an administration based on departments responsible to parliament’.8

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  Kings, Queens, Bones & Bastards

  Who's Who in the English Monarchy From Egbert to Elizabeth II

  • David Hilliam(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • The History Press

    (Publisher)

  Perhaps Henry’s master-stroke was his marriage to Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth of York. As far back as 1483, even before Bosworth and while he was still in exile, Henry had taken a solemn oath, on Christmas Day, in Rennes Cathedral that when he became King of England he would marry the Princess Elizabeth, heiress of the House of York. On the face of it, this union looks like a cool premeditated marriage of convenience, and certainly it did serve, very successfully, to unite the warring factions of York and Lancaster. The red and white ‘Tudor Rose’ was a logo which everybody could understand: unity at last.

  However, Henry and Elizabeth became a devoted couple. Almost uniquely among English kings, Henry was totally faithful to his young wife, ten years his junior. Together they took immense pride in their growing family. Henry made special arrangements for Elizabeth to give birth to her first child at Winchester. It was a boy, and the nation rejoiced as they christened him Arthur, a name which recaptured the past legendary glory of Britain.

  But alas, Arthur died aged fifteen, and his parents were distracted with grief. It was left for the younger boy, the future Henry VIII, to become heir and marry Arthur’s young widow, Catherine of Aragon.

  And then, a year later, Elizabeth herself died in childbirth. Henry was again distraught. For the rest of his life he withdrew more and more into his own private busy world of keeping England solvent.

  We owe much to Henry VII. He gave England peace and prosperity, which it desperately needed; he founded the remarkable Tudor dynasty; he started England off on its course of exploration and foreign trade in the newly discovered world, encouraging the Cabots in their voyages to North America.

  Finally, we must thank him for one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in the world – his chapel in Westminster Abbey. Originally, he had wanted to rehabilitate his ancestor Henry VI, pressing the Pope to declare his predecessor a saint. The arrangements were never completed, but the chapel now contains his own tomb, a magnificent memorial with a life-like effigy by the Italian sculptor Torrigiano.

  It is a great pity that Henry VII’s other architectural masterpiece, Richmond Palace, has not survived. This was another extraordinarily beautiful building; it had fourteen turrets and a great tower. It was his favourite place of residence, and was also greatly enjoyed by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, who eventually died there. It was built on the site of Sheen Palace, which had been destroyed by fire. Henry renamed it Richmond in reference to his own former earldom. Although the palace has gone, the name remains.

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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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  Henry VIII

  • Lucy Wooding(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The crowns used at the coronation were believed to have belonged to Edward the Confessor and his wife, and were kept in the saint’s shrine itself. Henry was anointed and clothed in vestments like those of a bishop, indicating that as king his authority was as much sacred as temporal. The city of London was again honoured at the coronation banquet, since the king made the lord mayor a knight before he sat down, and at the end of the meal accepted hippocras – sweet spiced wine – from him in a gold cup, which cup the lord mayor was allowed to keep. This too was fully in accordance with tradition. But at the jousts which followed the coronation banquet, king and queen sat in a pavilion surmounted by ‘a great Crown Imperial’, a departure from usual practice. 18 Imperial power exceeded royal power, in particular because it claimed sovereignty over church as well as state. At this first entrance onto the political stage, then, Henry was hinting at an authority which exceeded that of his predecessors. The mental world of Tudor kingship Henry had inherited the throne, married, and been crowned, all within two months: throughout his life, he moved swiftly to secure what he wanted. In many of his actions, he was guided by the customs and precepts of established tradition, and in particular by the need to obtain and demonstrate religious sanction. Henry seems to have been a genuinely religious man, although on first sight, this seems a deeply implausible statement. After all, this was the man notorious for having six wives, and for cruelly rejecting the first, and beheading the second, both on highly specious grounds. This was the man who high-handedly reorganised the church in England, rewrote Christian doctrine, and could not even be said to have done so in the service of Protestantism, since he persecuted Catholics and Protestants alike. His religious policies were at different times a vehicle for his greed, his paranoia and his egotism

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