Henry VII

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Henry VII has long been the ‘odd man out of the Tudor Monarchs. Popular imagination has been easily fired by the martial exploits of Henry VIII, by the pathetic, short life of Edward VI, by the infamies of Bloody Mary, and by the dazzling pageant of the reign of Elizabeth I. But Henry VII, the founder of the royal house of Tudor, has been dismissed as a dour, sober man preoccupied with the business of government to the preclusion of the more flamboyant foibles of his descendants.

This view of Henry approaches the truth, but it is not the whole picture. In his youth, he had many colourful adventures, and in maturity, as King, he revealed an immense strength of purpose and diverse talents in his most ingenious settlement of a turbulent kingdom.

Perhaps Henry Tudor bears little resemblance to the popular idea of a monarch because, unlike most kings, he was not brought up in the certainty of his destiny. Indeed, he was already in his early teens before the deaths of his royal cousins gave his claims to the throne any substance, and it was not until Henry was 27 that he won his crown in battle. He was not trained, as most English kings have been since childhood, in statesmanship, warfare, and diplomacy, but came to the throne a complete novice in those arts. This makes his achievement the more remarkable.

Henry was the son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, himself the son of a plain Welsh gentleman who, by chance of fortune, married a French princess, the widow of King Henry V. But it was through Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, that the future King derived his somewhat tenuous blood relationship to the Lancastrian Kings of England. The Beauforts were the descendants of John of Gaunt, third son of King Edward III, by John’s mistress Catherine Swynford. When John took Catherine as his third wife, several years after the birth of their children, King Richard II granted John a charter giving the Beauforts status as John’s legitimate offspring. At the time their was no thought of their ever claiming a place in the royal succession, but Henry IV, John of Gaunt’s son by his first marriage, had an inkling or a fear of what the future might bring, and he decreed that the Beauforts should have no legal claim to the throne. At the time, this appeared to be the last word on the subject.

Henry IV’s descendants, the house of Lancaster, had been on the throne some half century before the weakness and bad government of his grandson Henry VI gave rise to a rival claim to the throne from another branch of the royal family, the House of York. In 1455 the first battle of the Wars of the Roses was fought, opening a conflict between the royal dynasties which was to continue intermittently for 30 years.

Henry Tudor was born on 28th January 1457, almost two years after the outbreak of war. His father had died only shortly before his birth, and his mother was only 13 years old at the time, so a formal guardianship devolved on his paternal uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. Jasper was a commander in the Lancastrian army, and when Henry was only four years old, a Yorkist force was sent to take the Tudor fortress at Pembroke where the child was living. Jasper escaped to fight another day, but it seems likely that Henry himself was taken into his enemies’ custody.

The events of Henry Tudor’s life for the next few years are uncertain. According to some accounts, he was spirited away by his uncle to years of hiding in the Welsh wilderness; other sources maintain he was put into the household of the Yorkist Lord Herbert after his capture. It is certain, however, that he was in the Herberts’ care by 1468 only to be released the following year when the Lancastrians seized power.

The restoration of the boy’s half-uncle Henry VI was short-lived. In May 1471 the King was captured after his defeat at the Battle of Barnet, and not long afterwards he was murdered.

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