Gwynne's Kings and Queens by N.M. Gwynne

Author:N.M. Gwynne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The House of Tudor Takes Control

King Henry VII. Deserving even of such modest praise as is sometimes accorded to him?

Born 1457 and reigned 1485–1509. He was the son of Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort, neither of whom was royal. Margaret Beaufort did in fact have royal blood, but it was royal blood that was tainted. King Henry VI’s great-grandfather, John of Gaunt, had had an illegitimate offspring by his mistress Katherine Swynford, before they were married. When they subsequently did marry, her family, the Beauforts, were legally declared legitimate, but even so they were barred from the throne. It was the son of the not genuinely royal Margaret Beaufort, Henry Tudor, who defeated King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and became king.

Henry Tudor had been born in Wales in 1457, but forced to flee to Brittany in France when fourteen years old. In 1486 he married Princess Elizabeth of York, daughter of King Edward IV and niece of King Richard III, and also King Henry’s third cousin in that both were great-great-grandchildren of John of Gaunt. They had eight children. Perhaps uniquely in all history of all countries, Queen Elizabeth, as she then became, and in due course also became the mother of King Henry VIII, was the daughter, the sister, the niece, the wife, the mother and the grandmother of successive kings and queens of England.

(i) The main events of the reign in summary

1485. On 22 August, Henry Tudor came to the throne as King Henry VII after defeating King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth.

1486. King Henry married Elizabeth of York, uniting the Royal Houses of York and Lancaster, which had been constantly at war until then.

1487. King Henry restored the Star Chamber, an institution of the past that had fallen into abeyance, and increased the number of its functions.

Lambert Simnel, of humble origin and an undoubted impostor, claimed to be the Earl of Warwick, nephew to King Edward IV, and thus the true king. He was supported in his claim by the Earl of Lincoln, and was actually crowned, as King Edward VI, in Dublin. The rebellion was eventually defeated.

1491. King Henry invaded France, but, shortly afterwards, entered into the Treaty of Étaples, in accordance with which he withdrew his forces from France in exchange for the promise of payment of £149,000, a large sum of money.

1492 and 1499. Another claimant to the throne, Perkin Warbeck, asserting that he was Richard, Duke of York, was expelled from France in 1492 under the terms of the Treaty of Étaples. In his attempt to overthrow King Henry, Warbeck reached as far as Taunton in Somerset with a large force before being defeated and becoming King Henry’s prisoner, kept in the Tower of London. At first he was treated well by King Henry, and indeed, after admitting that he was an impostor, he was released from the Tower of London but kept under guard at court. After twice trying to escape from there, however, he was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1499.

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