Only then did he fulfill a promise which he had made in 1483, that he would marry Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter and (since the presumed death of her brothers in the reign of Richard III) heiress of the Yorkist King Edward IV. By leaving the wedding until after the safe settlement of the crown, Henry was demonstrating that he made no claim to it in the right of his wife. At the same time, he was also eliminating her as one potential Yorkist claimant to the throne.

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This shrewdness in establishing himself so securely from the outset, and his subsequent policies, must surely have been the result of Henry’s forethought in the years of his exile. He had not fought for the throne without planning how he would hold on to it, though he lacked any experience in kingship. All Henry’s work in the years of his reign had the underlying factor of his determination to make his position, and that of his heirs, secure. At home he built up a strong government, based on financial solvency and popular support; abroad, he sought recognition of his position from his fellow-monarchs and a prestige among them which would impress his own subjects.

His use of Parliament is a case in point. The days had not yet come when there would be a national outcry if Parliament did not meet regularly to have its say in government: at the end of the 15th Century the summoning of a Parliament would be more likely to elicit national groans that the King wanted his subjects to grant him taxes. Members’ bills were certainly presented, debated and enacted, but the Commons knew that this was a concession dependent on their first granting the King his demands. Henry did indeed need taxation, but he also made use of Parliament to bring in his own bills, measures which reinforced his position mainly through establishing and extending the powers of his executive.

At the same time he made sure that no charges of over-taxing his people could be brought against him- a sure way to encourage rebellion. In the first twelve years of his reign, he called only six Parliaments: by the end of that period he had laid a solid financial foundation of government and enacted the main body of his legislation. In the second twelve years, he called only one Parliament. So well did the King exploit his sources of revenue, making the most of every asset, that he had no need to trouble the Lords and the Commons.

It was in the financial sphere that Henry’s genius was most apparent. This is not say that he was an innovator: the Yorkist kings had shown themselves adept at financial administration: but Henry VII so refined their procedures of revenue collection and the apportioning of money to government needs that, by his personal supervision, he made the Crown solvent for the first time in many years and, at his death, left an immense reserve to his heir.

Apart from the taxes voted by Parliament, Henry induced the Commons to enact the return to the Crown of most of the royal lands which had been alienated since 1455, by the ingenious device of having Parliament declare that he had been king on the day before Bosworth, he turned into traitors all those who had fought against him – and was thus able to claim their estates as forfeit for treason. By this extension of Crown lands, and by their efficient administration, Henry increased their value, by the end of the reign, to some 35,000 per annum. Added to this, Henry had persuaded his first Parliament to grant him customs revenue for the whole of his life: by encouraging trade through international diplomacy, he increased customs yield: by farming out his dues he ensured maximum efficiency of collection and ensured the highest feasible income; he was receiving almost 40,000 per annum by the end of the reign Through improving the efficiency of his courts, the King could also rely on an income from the profits of justice, i.e. from fines. And of course he had the age-dates feudal dues of medieval kingship, from the nobility, though it was only in the second half of the reign that he came to rely on the unscrupulous ingenuity of Morton, Empson and Dudley, his hatred collectors, for the increased fruits of that traditional revenue. Though the King had recurrently to resort to Parliament to pay for his wars, this was considered a reasonable expense (except by the Cornishmen who revolted at being made to pay for war far away on the Scottish borders). However, he never thought it necessary to reimburse his people with the money which remained to him when he made peace-and he liked to make his price for peace a large sum of money from his former enemies.

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