Henry VII of England
Henry VII, also known as Henry Tudor, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death in 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
Henry was the son of Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, and Lady Margaret Beaufort. His mother was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, an English prince who founded the Lancastrian cadet branch of the House of Plantagenet. Henry's father was the half-brother of the Lancastrian king Henry VI. Edmund Tudor died three months before his son was born, and Henry was raised by his uncle Jasper Tudor, a Lancastrian, and William Herbert, a supporter of the Yorkist branch of the House of Plantagenet. During Henry's early years, his uncles and the Lancastrians fought a series of civil wars against the Yorkist claimant, Edward IV. After Edward retook the throne in 1471, Henry spent 14 years in exile in Brittany. He attained the throne when his forces, supported by France and Scotland, defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of England to win his throne on the field of battle, defending it two years later at the Battle of Stoke Field to decisively end the Wars of the Roses. He strengthened his claim by marrying Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughter.
Henry restored power and stability to the English monarchy following the civil war. He is credited with many administrative, economic and diplomatic initiatives. His [|supportive policy] toward England's wool industry and his standoff with the Low Countries had long-lasting benefits to the English economy. He paid very close attention to detail, and instead of spending lavishly, he concentrated on raising new revenues. He stabilised the government's finances by introducing several new taxes. After his death, a commission found widespread abuses in the tax collection process. Henry reigned for nearly 24 years and was peacefully succeeded by his son, Henry VIII.
Ancestry and early life
Henry VII was born on 28 January 1457 at Pembroke Castle, in the English-speaking portion of Pembrokeshire known as Little England beyond Wales. He was the only child of Lady Margaret Beaufort, who was 13 years old at the time, and Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond, who, at 26, died three months before his birth. He was probably baptised at St Mary's Church, Pembroke, though no documentation of the event exists. Henry's paternal grandfather, Owen Tudor, originally from the Tudors of Penmynydd, Isle of Anglesey in Wales, had been a page in the court of King Henry V. He rose to become one of the "Squires to the Body to the King" after military service at the Battle of Agincourt. Owen is said to have secretly married the widow of Henry V, Catherine of Valois. One of their sons was Edmund, Henry's father. Edmund was created Earl of Richmond in 1452 and "formally declared legitimate by Parliament".The descent of Henry's mother, Margaret, through the legitimised House of Beaufort bolstered Henry's claim to the English throne. She was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, and his third wife Katherine Swynford. Swynford was Gaunt's mistress for about 25 years. When they married in 1396, they already had four children, including Henry's great-grandfather John Beaufort. Gaunt's nephew Richard II legitimised Gaunt's children by Swynford by letters patent in 1397. In 1407, Henry IV, Gaunt's son by his first wife, issued new letters patent confirming the legitimacy of his half-siblings but also declaring them ineligible for the throne. Henry IV's action was of doubtful legality, as the Beauforts were previously legitimised by an royal proclamation read in Parliament, but it weakened Henry's claim. Nonetheless, by 1483 Henry was the senior male claimant heir to the House of Lancaster remaining after the deaths in battle, by murder or execution of Henry VI, his son Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, and the other Beaufort line of descent through Lady Margaret's uncle, Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset.
Henry also made some political capital out of his Welsh ancestry in attracting military support and safeguarding his army's passage through Wales on its way to the Battle of Bosworth. He came from an old, established Anglesey family that claimed descent from Cadwaladr, in legend, the last ancient British king.
On occasion, Henry displayed the red dragon. He took it, as well as the standard of St. George, on his procession through London after the victory at Bosworth. A contemporary writer and Henry's biographer, Bernard André, also made much of Henry's Welsh descent.
In 1456, Henry's father, Edmund Tudor, was captured while fighting for Henry VI in South Wales against the Yorkists. He died shortly afterwards in Carmarthen Castle. His younger brother, Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke, undertook to protect Edmund's widow Margaret. When Edward IV became King in 1461, Jasper Tudor went into exile abroad. Pembroke Castle, and later the Earldom of Pembroke, were granted to the Yorkist William Herbert, who also assumed the guardianship of Margaret Beaufort and the young Henry.
Henry lived in the Herbert household until 1469, when Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, went over to the Lancastrians. Herbert was captured fighting for the Yorkists and executed by Warwick. When Warwick restored Henry VI in 1470, Jasper Tudor returned from exile and brought Henry to court. When the Yorkist Edward IV regained the throne in 1471, Henry fled with other Lancastrians to Brittany. He spent most of the next 14 years under the protection of Francis II, Duke of Brittany. In November 1476, Francis fell ill and his principal advisers were more amenable to negotiating with King Edward. Henry was thus handed over to English envoys and escorted to the Breton port of Saint-Malo. While there, he feigned stomach cramps and delayed his departure long enough to miss the tides. An ally of Henry's, Viscount, soon arrived, bringing news that Francis had recovered, and in the confusion, Henry was able to flee to a monastery. There, he claimed sanctuary until the envoys were forced to depart.
Rise to the throne
By 1483, Henry's mother was actively promoting him as an alternative to Richard III, despite her being married to Lord Stanley, a Yorkist. At Rennes Cathedral on Christmas Day 1483, Henry pledged to marry Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. She was Edward's heir since the presumed death of her brothers, the Princes in the Tower, King Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. With money and supplies borrowed from his host, Francis II of Brittany, Henry tried to land in England, but his conspiracy unravelled resulting in the execution of his primary co-conspirator, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Now supported by Francis II's prime minister, Pierre Landais, Richard III attempted to extradite Henry from Brittany, but Henry escaped to France. He was welcomed by the French, who readily supplied him with troops and equipment for a second invasion.Henry gained the support of the Woodvilles, in-laws of the late Edward IV, and sailed with a small French and Scottish force, landing at Mill Bay near Dale, Pembrokeshire. He marched toward England accompanied by his uncle Jasper and John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford. Wales was historically a Lancastrian stronghold, and Henry owed the support he gathered to his Welsh birth and ancestry, being agnatically descended from Rhys ap Gruffydd. He amassed an army of about 5,000–6,000 soldiers.
Henry devised a plan to seize the throne by engaging Richard quickly because Richard had reinforcements in Nottingham and Leicester. Though outnumbered, Henry's Lancastrian forces decisively defeated Richard's Yorkist army at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485. Several of Richard's key allies, such as Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, and also Lord Stanley and his brother William, crucially switched sides or left the battlefield. Richard III's death at Bosworth Field effectively ended the Wars of the Roses.
Reign
To secure his hold on the throne, Henry declared himself king by right of conquest retroactively from 21 August 1485, the day before Bosworth Field. Thus, anyone who had fought for Richard against him would be guilty of treason and Henry could legally confiscate the lands and property of Richard III, while restoring his own. Henry spared Richard's nephew and designated heir, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, and made the Yorkist heiress Margaret Plantagenet Countess of Salisbury suo jure. He took care not to address the baronage or summon Parliament until after his coronation, which took place in Westminster Abbey on 30 October 1485. After his coronation Henry issued an edict that any gentleman who swore fealty to him would, notwithstanding any previous attainder, be secure in his property and person.Henry honoured his pledge of December 1483 to marry Elizabeth of York and the wedding took place in 1486 at Westminster Abbey. He was 29 years old, she was 20. They were third cousins, as both were great-great-grandchildren of John of Gaunt. Henry married Elizabeth of York with the hope of uniting the Yorkist and Lancastrian sides of the Plantagenet dynastic disputes, and he was largely successful. However, such a level of paranoia persisted that anyone with blood ties to the Plantagenets was suspected of coveting the throne.
Henry had Parliament repeal Titulus Regius, the statute that declared Edward IV's marriage invalid and his children illegitimate, thus legitimising his wife. Amateur historians Bertram Fields and Sir Clements Markham have claimed that he may have been involved in the murder of the Princes in the Tower, as the repeal of Titulus Regius gave the Princes a stronger claim to the throne than his own. Alison Weir points out that the Rennes ceremony, two years earlier, was plausible only if Henry and his supporters were certain that the Princes were already dead. Henry secured his crown principally by dividing and undermining the power of the nobility, especially through the aggressive use of bonds and recognisances to secure loyalty. He also enacted laws against livery and maintenance, the great lords' practice of having large numbers of "retainers" who wore their lord's badge or uniform and formed a potential private army.
Henry began taking precautions against rebellion while still in Leicester after Bosworth Field. Edward, Earl of Warwick, the ten-year-old son of Edward IV's brother George, Duke of Clarence, was the senior surviving male of the House of York. Before departing for London, Henry sent Robert Willoughby to Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, to arrest Warwick and take him to the Tower of London. Despite such precautions, Henry faced several rebellions over the next twelve years. The first was the 1486 rebellion of the Stafford brothers, abetted by Viscount Lovell, which collapsed without fighting.
Next, in 1487, Yorkists led by Lincoln rebelled in support of Lambert Simnel, a boy they claimed to be Edward of Warwick. The rebellion began in Ireland, where the historically Yorkist nobility, headed by the powerful Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, proclaimed Simnel king and provided troops for his invasion of England. The rebellion was defeated and Lincoln killed at the Battle of Stoke. Henry showed remarkable clemency to the surviving rebels: he pardoned Kildare and the other Irish nobles, and he made the boy, Simnel, a servant in the royal kitchen where he was in charge of roasting meats on a spit.
In 1490, a young Fleming, Perkin Warbeck, appeared and claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury, the younger of the "Princes in the Tower". Warbeck won the support of Edward IV's sister Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. He led attempted invasions of Ireland in 1491 and England in 1495, and persuaded James IV of Scotland to invade England in 1496. In 1497, Warbeck landed in Cornwall with a few thousand troops, but was soon captured and executed.
When the King's agents searched the property of William Stanley, they found a bag of coins amounting to around £10,000 and a collar of livery with Yorkist garnishings. Stanley was accused of supporting Warbeck's cause, arrested and later executed. In response to this threat within his own household, the King instituted more rigid security for access to his person. In 1499, Henry had the Earl of Warwick executed. However, he spared Warwick's elder sister Margaret, who survived until 1541 when she was executed by Henry VIII.