English King, Henry VII

HENRY VII
Henry VII (Welsh: Harri Tudur; 28 January 1457 – 21 April 1509) was King of England after seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death, the first monarch of the House of Tudor. He ruled the Principality of Wales until 29 November 1489 and was Lord of Ireland.

Henry VII

Henry won the throne when his forces defeated King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the culmination of the Wars of the Roses. Henry was the last king of England to win his throne on the field of battle.

He cemented his claim by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV and niece of Richard III. Henry was successful in restoring the power and stability of the English monarchy after the civil war, and after a reign of nearly 24 years, he was peacefully succeeded by his son, Henry VIII.

Henry can also be credited with a number of commendable administrative, economic and diplomatic initiatives, though the latter part of his reign was characterised by financial greed stretching the bounds of legality. Perhaps most impactful to posterity was his establishment of the Pound Avoirdupois as a weights and measures standard—with several adjustments this became part of the Imperial System and today's International pound units.

His supportive stance of the islands' wool industry and stand-off with the Low Countries had long lasting benefits to all the British Isles economy. However, the capriciousness and lack of due process that indebted many would tarnish his legacy and fortunately, were soon ended upon Henry VII's death, after a commission revealed widespread abuses. According to the contemporary historian Polydore Vergil, simple "greed" underscored the means by which royal control was over-asserted in Henry's final years.

A medallion struck to commemorate the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York in January 1496

The first concern for Henry was to secure his hold on the throne. He 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 his lands and property of Richard III while restoring his own. However, he spared Richard's nephew and designated heir, the Earl of Lincoln, and he made Margaret Plantagenet, a Yorkist heiress, Countess of Salisbury sui juris.

Henry VII

 He took great care not to address the baronage, or summon Parliament, until after his coronation, which took place in Westminster Abbey on 30 October 1485. Almost immediately afterwards, he issued an edict that any gentleman who swore fealty to him would, notwithstanding any previous attainder, be secure in his property and person.

Henry then honoured his pledge of December 1483 to marry Elizabeth of York. They were third cousins, as both were great-great-grandchildren of John of Gaunt. The marriage took place on 18 January 1486 at Westminster. The marriage unified the warring houses and gave his children a strong claim to the throne.

The unification of the houses of York and Lancaster by this marriage is symbolised by the heraldic emblem of the Tudor rose, a combination of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster. It also ended future discussion as to whether the descendants of the fourth son of Edward III, Edmund, Duke of York, through marriage to Philippa, heiress of the second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, had a superior or inferior claim to those of the third son John of Gaunt, who had held the throne for three generations.

In addition, Henry had Parliament repeal Titulus Regius, the statute that declared Edward IV's marriage invalid and his children illegitimate, thus legitimising his wife.

 Henry VII 

 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, however, points out that the Rennes ceremony, two years earlier, was possible only if Henry and his supporters were certain that the Princes were already dead. In 1502, Henry VII's first son and heir-apparent, Arthur, Prince of Wales, died suddenly at Ludlow Castle, very likely from a viral respiratory illness known, at the time, as the "English sweating sickness". This made Henry, Duke of York (Henry VIII) heir-apparent to the throne. The King, normally a reserved man who rarely showed much emotion in public unless angry, surprised his courtiers by his intense grief and sobbing at his son's death, while his concern for the Queen is evidence that the marriage was a happy one, as is his reaction to the Queen's death the following year, when he shut himself away for several days, refusing to speak to anyone.

Henry VII wanted to maintain the Spanish alliance. He therefore arranged a papal dispensation from Pope Julius II for Prince Henry to marry his brother's widow Catherine, a relationship that would have otherwise precluded marriage in the Roman Catholic Church.

Henry VII 

 In 1503, Queen Elizabeth died in childbirth, so King Henry had the dispensation also permit him to marry Catherine himself. After obtaining the dispensation, Henry had second thoughts about the marriage of his son and Catherine. Catherine's mother Isabella I of Castile had died and Catherine's sister Joanna had succeeded her; Catherine was therefore daughter of only one reigning monarch and so less desirable as a spouse for Henry VII's heir-apparent. The marriage did not take place during his lifetime. Otherwise, at the time of his father's arranging of the marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the future Henry VIII was too young to contract the marriage according to Canon Law, and would be ineligible until age fourteen.

Henry made half-hearted plans to remarry and beget more heirs, but these never came to anything. In 1505 he was sufficiently interested in a potential marriage to Joan, the recently widowed Queen of Naples, that he sent ambassadors to Naples to report on the 27-year-old's physical suitability. The wedding never took place, and curiously the physical description Henry sent with his ambassadors describing what he desired in a new wife matched the description of Elizabeth. After 1503, records show the Tower of London was never again used as a royal residence by Henry Tudor, and all royal births under Henry VIII took place in palaces. Henry VII was shattered by the loss of Elizabeth, and her death broke his heart.

During his lifetime he was often jeered by the nobility for his re-centralising of power in London, and later the 16th-century historian Francis Bacon was ruthlessly critical of the methods by which he enforced tax law, but equally true is the fact that Henry Tudor was hellbent on keeping detailed bookkeeping records of his personal finances, down to the last halfpenny; these and one account book detailing the expenses of his queen survive in the British National Archives. Until the death of his wife Elizabeth, the evidence is clear from these accounting books that Henry Tudor was a more doting father and husband than was widely known. Many of the entries in his account books show a man who loosened his purse strings generously for his wife and children, and not just on necessities: in spring 1491 he spent a great amount of gold on his daughter Mary for a lute; the following year he spent money on a lion for Queen Elizabeth's menagerie.

With the death of Elizabeth, the possibility for such family indulgences greatly diminished. Immediately after Elizabeth's death, Henry became very sick and nearly died himself, and only allowed Margaret Beaufort, his mother, near him: "privily departed to a solitary place, and would that no man should resort unto him." Henry VII died at Richmond Palace on 21 April 1509 of tuberculosis and was buried at Westminster Abbey, next to his wife, Elizabeth, in the chapel he commissioned.[60] He was succeeded by his second son, Henry VIII (reign 1509–47). His mother survived him, dying two months later on 29 June 1509.