Henry VII of England

Henry VII of England

Infobox British Royalty|majesty
name = Henry VII
title = King of England; Lord of Ireland

caption = Portrait of Henry, holding a red Lancastrian rose, attributed to Michel Sittow
reign = 22 August 1485 – 21 April 1509
coronation = 30 October 1485
predecessor = Richard III
successor = Henry VIII
spouse = Elizabeth of York
issue = Arthur, Prince of Wales
Margaret, Queen of Scots
Henry VIII
Mary, Queen of France
issue-link = #Marriage and Issue
issue-pipe = among others
titles = The King
Earl of Richmond
royal house = House of Tudor
father = Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond
mother = Lady Margaret Beaufort
date of birth = birth date|1457|1|28|df=yes
place of birth = Pembroke Castle, Wales
date of death = death date and age|1509|4|21|1457|1|28|df=yes
place of death = Richmond Palace, England
place of burial = Westminster Abbey, London|

Henry VII (28 January 1457 &ndash; 21 April 1509), King of England, Lord of Ireland (22 August 1485 &ndash; 21 April 1509), born Henry Tudor (Welsh Harri Tudur), was the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty.

Early life

Henry was born at Pembroke Castle, Wales in 1457, the only son of Edmund Tudor and Lady Margaret Beaufort. His father died two months before he was born, which meant that the young Henry spent much of his life with his uncle, Jasper Tudor, 2nd Duke of Bedford. When the Yorkist Edward IV returned to the throne in 1476, Henry was forced to flee to Brittany, where he was to spend most of the next fourteen years. By 1491 his mother, despite being the wife of pro-Yorkist Lord Stanley, was actively promoting Henry as an alternative to the unpopular Richard III. With money and supplies borrowed from his host, Francis II, Duke of Brittany, Henry made an unsuccessful attempt to land in England but his conspiracy quickly unraveled, resulting in the execution of primary co-conspirator the Duke of Buckingham. Richard III attempted to extradite Henry through an arrangement with the Breton authorities, but the future King managed to escape to France. He was welcomed by the French court, who readily supplied him with troops and equipment for a second invasion.

Rise to the throne








Henry's first action was to declare himself king retroactive to the day before the battle, thus ensuring that anyone who had fought against him would be guilty of treason. It is interesting to note, therefore, that he spared Richard's designated heir, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. He would have cause to regret his leniency two years later, when Lincoln rebelled and attempted to set a boy pretender of peasant stock, Lambert Simnel, on the throne in Henry's place. Lincoln was killed at the Battle of Stoke, but Henry, seeing Simnel as only a puppet of Lincoln, spared him and took him in as a kitchen servant.



Economic and diplomatic policies



Henry had been under the financial and physical protection of the French throne or its vassals for most of his career prior to his ascending to the throne of England. To strengthen his position, however, he subsidized shipbuilding, so strengthening the navy (he commissioned Europe's first ever &mdash; and the world's oldest surviving &mdash; dry dock at Portsmouth in 1495) and improving trading opportunities. By the time of his death, he had amassed a personal fortune of 1.5 million pounds; it did not take his son as long to fritter it away as it had taken the father to acquire it.




Law enforcement and Justices of the Peace










Later years

In 1502, fate dealt Henry VII a blow from which he never fully recovered: his heir, the recently married Arthur, died in an epidemic at Ludlow Castle which made Henry VIII the new heir to the throne. In 1503 Henry VII's queen, Elizabeth of York, died in childbirth. Not wishing the negotiations that had led to the marriage of his elder son to Catherine of Aragon to go to waste, he arranged a Papal dispensation for his younger son to marry his brother's widow &mdash; normally a degree of relationship that precluded marriage in the Roman Catholic Church. Also included in the dispensation was a proviso that would allow Henry VII himself to marry his widowed daughter-in-law. Henry VII obtained the dispensation from Pope Julius II (1503&ndash;13) but had second thoughts about the value of the marriage and did not allow it to take place during his lifetime. Although he made half-hearted plans to re-marry and beget more heirs, these never came to anything. On his death in 1509, he was succeeded by his second son, Henry VIII (1509&ndash;47). He is buried at Westminster Abbey. Popular lore suggests that Henry died of a broken heart following the deaths of his son and his wife.


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1= 1. Henry VII of England
2= 2. Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond
3= 3. Lady Margaret Beaufort
4= 4. Owen Tudor
5= 5. Catherine of Valois
6= 6. John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset
7= 7. Margaret Beauchamp of Bletso
8= 8. Maredudd ap Tudur
9= 9. Margaret ferch Dafydd
10= 10. Charles VI of France
11= 11. Isabeau of Bavaria
12= 12. John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset
13= 13. Margaret Holland
14= 14. John de Beauchamp, 3rd Baron Beauchamp
15= 15. Edith Stourton
16= 16. Tudor ap Gronw
17= 17. Margred ferch Thomas
18= 18. Dafydd Fychan ap Dafydd Llwyd
19= 19. Nest ferch Ieuan ap Gruffudd
20= 20. Charles V of France
21= 21. Joanna of Bourbon
22= 22. Stephen III, Duke of Bavaria
23= 23. Taddea Visconti
24= 24. John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster
25= 25. Katherine Swynford
26= 26. Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent
27= 27. Alice Fitzalan
28= 28. Roger de Beauchamp, 2nd Lord Beauchamp
29= 29. Joan Clopton
30= 30. John Stourton
31= 31. Joan Basset


Henry and Elizabeth's children were:



Henry VII's elder daughter Margaret was married first to James IV of Scotland (1488&ndash;1513), and their son became James V of Scotland (1513&ndash;42), whose daughter became Mary, Queen of Scots. By means of this marriage, Henry VII hoped to break the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France. Margaret Tudor's second marriage was to Archibald Douglas; their grandson, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley married Mary, Queen of Scots. Their son, James VI of Scotland (1567&ndash;1625), inherited the throne of England as James I (1603&ndash;25) after the death of Elizabeth I. Henry VII's other surviving daughter, Mary, first married King Louis XII of France (1498&ndash;1515) and then, when he died after only about 3 months of marriage, she married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk without her brother's (now King Henry VIII) permission. Their daughter Frances married Henry Grey, and her children included Lady Jane Grey, in whose name her parents and in-laws tried to seize the throne after Edward VI of England (1537&ndash;53) died.

ee also

*Cultural depictions of Henry VII of England
* Cestui que



* "Henry VII" by S. B. Chrimes & George Bernard (1972)
* "Henry VII" by Jocelyn Hunt & Carolyn Towle (1998)
* "Henry VII" by Roger Turvey & Caroline Steinsberg (2000)
* "The Son of Prophecy: Henry Tudor's Road to Bosworth" (1985) by David Rees (ISBN 0-85159-005-5) is a discussion of how Henry's return to Wales was regarded by some as the fulfilment of a Messianic prophecy.

External links

* [http://www.badley.info/history/Henry-VII-England.biog.html Henry VII Chronology World History Database]
* [http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/tudor.htm Illustrated history of Henry VII]
* [http://www.wars-of-the-roses.com Wars of the Roses] Information on Henry and Bosworth
* [http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/aboutHenryVII.htm Tudor Place page on Henry VII]
* [http://www.thepeerage.com/e65.htm Dictionary of National Biography excerpt]


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  • Cultural depictions of Henry VII of England — Henry VII of England has been depicted a number of times in popular culture. Literature As a youthful Earl of Richmond, Henry is a character in the play Henry VI, Part 3 by William Shakespeare. He is also a character in Shakespeare s play Richard …   Wikipedia


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  • Henry VIII of England — Heinrich VIII. von Hans Holbein d. J. 1536–1537 Heinrich VIII. Tudor ([ˈtuːdə], [ˈtʲuːdə]), wal. Harri Tewdwr oder Tudur (* 28. Juni 1491 in Greenwich; † 28. Januar …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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  • Henry VII — may refer to:* Henry VII, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1042) * Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor (c. 1275–1313) * Henry VII of England (1457–1509) * Henri, comte de Paris, duc de France (Orléanist pretender to the French throne as Henry VII of France, born… …   Wikipedia

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