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Portrait of Henry VII

Monarchs · Tudor

Henry VII

1457–1509

House of Tudor — the founder of the dynasty

In office: 1485–1509

A Welsh exile with a thin Lancastrian claim through his mother, he landed at Milford Haven in 1485, won at Bosworth and married Elizabeth of York to unite the rival roses. He saw off two pretenders, crushed the nobility with bonds and recognisances, and turned the crown from a bankrupt into a creditor. Suspicious, methodical and increasingly rapacious, he died in 1509 leaving a full treasury, a secure succession and a chapel at Westminster that bears his name.

How to spot them

  • ▸Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond: fourteen years in exile in Brittany and France before he was king
  • ▸Clue words: 'Milford Haven', 'Lambert Simnel', 'Perkin Warbeck', 'Star Chamber', 'Morton's Fork'
  • ▸Claim through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, and the Beaufort line of John of Gaunt
  • ▸Married Elizabeth of York; their children were Arthur, Margaret, Henry and Mary
  • ▸Buried under a fan vault at Westminster in a tomb by a Florentine sculptor

In the reign

An exile landing at Milford Haven in August 1485 with about 2,000 men, most of them French (1485)

He marched through Wales gathering support and fought two weeks later in Leicestershire.

A marriage in January 1486 to the eldest daughter of Edward IV, deliberately delayed until after the coronation (1486)

Elizabeth of York; he wanted the crown held by conquest and his own right, not by his wife's.

A royal bodyguard created at the coronation of 1485, still in scarlet and gold and still called by its original name (1485)

The Yeomen of the Guard, the oldest British military corps in continuous existence.

A Flemish boatman's son who spent eight years claiming to be a prince escaped from the Tower, and was hanged in 1499 (1491–1499)

Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury and was recognised by several European courts.

A council sitting in a Westminster chamber with stars painted on its ceiling, used to discipline over-mighty subjects (1487)

The Court of Star Chamber, given statutory footing by the 1487 act 'Pro Camera Stellata'.

A 1496 patent to a Venetian navigator sailing from Bristol, who made landfall in North America the next year (1496–1497)

John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), who was paid £10 for discovering 'the new founde lande'.

A treaty of perpetual peace with Scotland in 1502 and a daughter married to James IV, which a century later united the crowns (1502–1503)

Margaret Tudor's marriage produced the line that brought James VI to the English throne in 1603.

A fan-vaulted Lady Chapel at the east end of Westminster Abbey, with a gilt-bronze tomb by a Florentine (1503–1519)

The tomb is by Pietro Torrigiano, who had broken Michelangelo's nose in a quarrel in Florence.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Pembroke Castle on 28 January 1457, son of Edmund Tudor and the thirteen-year-old Margaret Beaufort; his father had died three months earlier.
  • •He won at Bosworth on 22 August 1485 and dated his reign from the day before, so that those who had fought for Richard III could be attainted as traitors.
  • •Lambert Simnel, impersonating the Earl of Warwick, was crowned in Dublin and defeated at Stoke Field in 1487, the last battle of the Wars of the Roses; he was put to work in the royal kitchens.
  • •'Morton's Fork', attributed to his minister Archbishop John Morton, argued that the thrifty must have savings and the lavish must have income — either way they could pay.
  • •His chief financial agents, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, were executed by his son in 1510 to popular applause.
  • •Royal income rose from about £52,000 a year to about £142,000 by the end of the reign, and only seven parliaments met in twenty-four years.
  • •His eldest son Arthur married Catherine of Aragon in 1501 and died at Ludlow in April 1502, aged fifteen.
  • •Elizabeth of York died on her thirty-seventh birthday in February 1503, days after childbirth.
  • •He died at Richmond Palace on 21 April 1509 and was buried in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey.
  • •He commissioned the first English royal ships to carry guns and founded the dry dock at Portsmouth in 1495.

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Sources