Henry VII by an unknown artist
More Images / Born: 28 January 1457
Pembroke Castle, Wales
Accession: 22 August 1485
Battle of Bosworth Field
Coronation: 30 October 1485
Westminster Abbey
Died: 21 April 1509
Richmond Palace
Buried: 11 May 1509
Westminster Abbey
Henry Tudor, son of Edmund, Earl of Richmond, and the 13 year old Margaret Beaufort, was not born to be King of England. The baby boy that was born in Pembroke castle on the 28th January 1457 was born into a dangerous world, especially for a Lancastrian. In fact, Yorkists kidnapped him as a young boy when they took Pembroke castle, and he spent some time in the custody of the Duke Of York, who had claimed the throne just before Henry's birth.
In 1471, at the age of 14, he left Britain to live in exile in Brittany. While there, under the guardianship of his uncle Jasper, his preparation for kingship began. (He was one of the few remaining Lancastrian claimants in the 1470s.) Then in 1485, with the backing of the King of France, and still only 27, he began his bid for the English throne. He landed on the Welsh shore and marched through Wales to the midlands, gathering support as he went. He met Richard III and his forces just outside the small market town of Market Bosworth, where, for the last time in English history, an English king (Richard III) was defeated and killed in battle. Henry claimed the crown for himself (once it had been retrieved from a nearby bush - allegedly).
Henry has had a reputation as a boring monarch. He wasn't touched by scandal once, in contrast with his son of the same name. He only married once! He didn't seek glory in warfare, he didn't try to overhaul the way the major institutions of the country were run, he lived beyond his teenage years, he didn't burn hundreds of his citizens, and he didn't have an Armada. His historical reputation has been dwarfed by the exploits of his son and grandchildren. He's the lesser known and yet perhaps the greatest of all the Tudor family
What problems did Henry VII face?
Imagine. You are 27, you have been brought up in Wales and Brittany, you have spent weeks not years in England; you have no experience of government, and you have only ever had a small household of your own. You have hardly any money. But you have won a decisive victory, the old King is dead, and now it's all up to you. It's worth thinking about what your priorities would be if you had been Henry in August 1485
- The nobility?
- Money?
- Stability?
- Securing London?
- The following were Henry's priorities: Securing the throne, controlling nobility and parliament.
How secure was Henry’s claim to the throne?
Claim by Genealogy
We need to get one thing very clear before we go on, and that is that the names of Lancaster and York for the titles of these two families have little bearing on the counties of the same names. In fact, they didn't live in these areas at all. Many Lancastrians came from the Midlands and Cheshire, and when all is said and done Henry VII was a Welshman. His father was the son of Owen Tudor a member of the local gentry, and his mother was a descendant of the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt.
Henry's claim to the throne was two-fold. He had a claim on his mother's side, down the Beaufort line of the House of Lancaster, and on his father's side, because his grandfather had married the widow of Henry V. It was the double birthright that made Henry's claim strong in the absence of any other Lancastrian contenders.
As if you are not boggled enough already, the history of this claim is even more complex as the throne had been usurped by a member of the House of Lancaster, Bolingbroke (who became Henry IV) from Richard II, the last of the Plantagenet kings. By rights Edmund of York, and not Bolingbroke should have been King in 1399.
This illustration may make things clearer:
After the Prince of Wales was killed at Tewkesbury in 1471 Henry was the only Lancastrian champion of the red rose cause. It was soon after this that he went to live with his Uncle Jasper in Brittany.
Claim by Battle
Richard III was King of England when Henry invaded in August 1485.Richard III proclaimed himself King when Edward IV died in mysterious circumstances and the young 'princes in the tower', Edward and Richard, had disappeared. Needless, to say, Richard III was heavily implicated in both the death of his brother and the disappearances of his two nephews.
Disillusioned with Richard's rule, Henry had found himself being courted by Yorkist supporters, many making the journey to Brittany to see him personally. With their support guaranteed by a promise to marry the Yorkist heiress, Elizabeth, should he win the battle, and with the blessing of the King of France behind him, Henry set sail for the Welsh coast. Why Wales? He knew that this was where he could most easily muster support.
Henry landed at Milford Haven on the 7th August. With him were a significant number of French mercenaries, English exiles and Scots. The army made its way to Aberystwyth, and then on to Welshpool. By the 22nd August they reached Ambien Hill, in the small town of Market Bosworth. Richard had anticipated an invasion, and was not too far away with his troops in Nottingham.
The battle did not go well for Henry at first. But John de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, led a fierce attack against Richard, which placed the King's forces in an impossible position. Realising that his forces were in deadlock Richard decided to launch a final assault.
Possibly in an effort to save himself, Sir Stanley, at this very point, decided to switch sides. His men turned on the King himself. He was knocked to the ground and killed, his crown toppling from his head and rolling into a bush. Sir Stanley retrieved the crown and placed it upon Henry's head. Richard's body was disposed of in Leicester; there was no grand funeral.
The victory was considered ordained by God - he was the Lord's chosen ruler in the eyes of his allies on the field in Leicestershire. He was King by birthright and King by God's will.
Those that had supported him in the field at Bosworth, or while in exile in France, were rewarded with positions in government or in the localities. His uncle Jasper became the Duke of Bedford. He did not give gifts - a trait that continued throughout his reign.
Reorganisation of Government and use of Parliament
You may think that one of the first things that this Lancastrian King would do is get rid of all of the Yorkists in government, and replace them with loyal Lancastrian supporters. But Henry did not do this. The Historian, Lotherington maintains that Henry's main concern was to neutralise opponents, in other words, not to alienate them. Consequently, men like the Thomas Howard stayed in government.
Nevertheless, the new council did see a number of new faces, like John de Vere and Richard Fox. The first council was appointed in September.
Henry used parliament a lot at the beginning of his reign and very seldomly at the end of it. He needed parliament to do two things for him in 1485. He needed them to swear an oath of allegiance to him, and he needed to raise taxes. (Taxes could not be raised without parliament's consent.)
Problem: Legitimacy to Rule and attempts to overthrow
Henry knew that he had to act decisively. He knew this before the battle had even started. He made the extraordinary move of having himself proclaimed King of England the day before the Battle of Bosworth. (So for one day there were two Kings of England!) Why would he do such a thing? Because it gave him the opportunity to treat all those who fought against him to be treated as traitors. This meant that they would either flee the country, be executed, be imprisoned, or be fined a considerable amount of money and placed under a kind of Royal bondage.
Union of the Roses
Keeping true to the promise that he made in Rennes cathedral to the Yorkist supporters in the winter of 1483, Henry set about marrying Elizabeth of York. She was in fact the elder sister of the two princes that had disappeared while under the guardianship of Richard III. It was Elizabeth's mother, Elizabeth Woodville, who had really pressed for the match.
But the marriage had to be delayed. As far as the church was concerned, Henry and Elizabeth were too closely related to marry without dispensation (special permission) from the Pope. (Elizabeth's grandmother was a Beaufort.) The Pope granted this dispensation on the grounds that the two were marrying in order to put an end to the conflicts between the two houses. They were married on the 16th January 1486.
Image and propaganda
O now let Richmond and Elizabeth,
The true succeeders of each royall house,
By Gods faire ordinance conioine together,
And let their heires (God if thy will be so)
Enrich the time to come with smooth-faste peace,
Let them not liue to tast this lands increase,
That would with treason wound this faire lands peace,
Now ciuill wounds are stopt, peace liuesagaine,
That she may long liueheare, God saie Amen.
(William Shakespeare, Richard III, London: Andrew Wise, 1597)
The Yorkist threat: the de la Poles
There was a branch of the Yorkist family tree that survived Bosworth and the events that followed. The sons of Elizabeth of York, that is the new Queen's great aunt, survived.
One, John, supported the pretender Lambert Simnel, but came to a sticky end in the Battle of Stoke, 1487. Another, Edmund, challengingly known as 'The White Rose', fled to the Low countries where he was welcomed by the Burgundy court. He was handed over to Henry in the early 1500s as part of an Anglo-Burgundy peace treaty, and promptly banged up in the Tower of London, later to be executed by Henry VIII. Richard, the youngest of the sons, stayed abroad, but was killed at Pavia in 1525.
These three brothers must have been a real worry for the King, especially as they had support from the influential Burgundy court. They must have been like loose cannons to Henry's security.
Lambert Simnel
We now move on to the two pretenders. Both of the attempts by Lambert Simnel and the Perkin Warbeck seem like fanciful tales, rather than historical truth. You couldn't make up more bizarre stories about attempts to usurp the King. But we must be careful not to be too flippant about these two uprisings, as they must have alarmed Henry considerably.
Lambert Simnel was a dead ringer for the Earl of Warwick, and so he claimed to be this grandson of Edward IV. He secured the support of Margaret of Burgundy (always a supporter of Yorkist claimants) and John de la Pole. He made his way with 2000 mercenaries to Ireland, where he was crowned King of England, and then to England. He landed on the Lancashire coast, where the families that had supported Richard III and had suffered hardship under Henry met him. To Henry, the threat was very real, he had no way of assessing the amount of support Simnel had mustered on his route south. These forces met the King's army at Stoke on 24th May 1487, where they suffered a complete defeat. But it wasn't until 1497 that Simnel was handed over to Henry.
There was a rather large flaw in the plans of Lambert Simnel. The real Earl of Warwick had been in Henry's custody since he became King. There was no way that he could have been Edward Warwick. He was in fact the son of a joiner from Oxford! Henry considered him harmless and, instead of being executed, he was allowed to live out his life in the royal kitchens.
Perkin Warbeck
Like Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck claimed to be an heir to the throne of England. He was a Flemish man, and like Simnel had the backing of a foreign country. This time it was France. The French King, Charles VIII was eager to distract Henry away from his designs on Brittany. In addition, Warbeck also secured Scottish aid. James IV welcomed Warbeck in 1495, marrying him to a rich Scottish aristocrat.
However, in 1497, Henry renewed a truce with Scotland and James was forced to abandon his Flemish pretender. Warbeck fled to the south of England, and was arrested while trying to escape from the port of Southampton.
Initially, Henry showed clemency. But he abused this clemency and was executed in November 1499.
This saw the last of the pretenders, and from this point onwards Henry ruled in relative security.
The Cornish Rebellion
John Guy says that this was Henry's major threat, and so it was. This time the threat was not of a dynastic nature, it was a tax riot that turned into full-scale rebellion.
The tax riot began in Cornwall in 1497. The Cornishmen felt that it was unfair that they should be taxed to fund a campaign in Scotland, and that by tradition the northern counties should bear the brunt of this taxation.
The riot quickly grew into a rebellion as 15 000 rebels marched to Exeter, Salisbury, Winchester, and then on to Kent.
The threat to the capital was so severe that London was called to arms. On the 17th June, the rebels faced the King's forces at Blackheath - only a few miles away from London, and dangerously close to the royal arsenal at Greenwich. Thousands were slain and the three ringleaders, Michael Joseph, James Touchet and Lord Audley were captured, taken to the tower, tried and executed. Their heads were raised on poles on London Bridge as a warning to others who considered insurrection as a form of protest.
Analysis
If you are asked a question on the threats to Henry's reign you should consider threats from abroad, and these 4 other threats.
The Cornish rebellion must have been thoroughly alarming for the citizens of London, but we need to remind ourselves of what the motives of these rebels were. They were driven by a sense of unfairness and by economic concerns. They did not intend to usurp the crown, and they did not have the backing of another European monarch. What do you suppose these Cornishmen would have done if they had reached Henry VII, and been able to make demands on him? Henry may have lost face, and been forced to retract the tax, had the rebels had succeeded, but I doubt that it would have led to him losing his crown.
The other threats were direct threats to the throne of England. In the cases of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, they were actual challenges to the throne. In hindsight these attempts seem laughable - that a joiner's son should be crowned King by the Irish Lords, and that a Flemish man should be accepted as the rightful heir to England at the Scottish court. The reason why Henry took these attempts so seriously at the time, and by historians, is due to the level of encouragement and actual support these pretenders got from foreign princes. In fact it is widely accepted that these two were pawns for European powers.
But, the largest potential threat to Henry's security came from the de la Poles in exile. They did not only threaten Henry VII's stability, but Henry VIII's also. Even at Henry VII's death in 1509 there was a Yorkist champion alive and able at any time to act as a figurehead for a Yorkist uprising.
ThreatsGovernment
Dealing with the nobility
Context
We have seen how Henry dealt with threats from pretenders and from abroad. Another threat that he had to contend with was the power of the English nobility. Prior to 1485, England had been tormented by 30 years of disputes involving the nobility (the Wars of the Roses). These wars were not so much about the dynastic destination of the crown of England so much as about faction between two opposing camps of noble families.
Some recent historians stress the point that the chroniclers of the Wars of the Roses writing in the late fifteenth century and the sixteenth century had a political agenda, and the first few accounts of the Wars of the Roses are little more than Tudor propaganda.
Acts of Attainder, Bonds and Recognizance's
Here's what some historians have to say about the policies that Henry used to contain the nobility: