In this post, we give a light to the founder of one of the most important dinasties that European History came to know. Henry Tudor, not his infamous son who shares his name and ruled England as King Henry VIII, was the fruit of a Plantagenet and Welsh lines, heir to the House of Lancaster and the one who, after the Battle of Bosworth, rose to England's throne as King Henry VII, replacing the old Plantagenet dynasty by his Tudor one.
The son of Lady Margaret Beaufort and Sir Edmund Tudor, this latter being the half-younger brother of Henry VI, Henry, probably named after his royal uncle Henry VI, was born in January 28th 1466 at the Pembroke Castle. At the time of his birth, his father was already dead due to an illness caused by his imprisoned during the Civil War that was remarked as the Wars of the Roses (a dispute for the crown of England between two branches of the Plantagenets: the House of York versus the House of Lancaster), so Henry was born as Earl of Richmond already, a title he'd keep until the ascension of his throne.
Having spent 14 years of his life in exile, in between Britanny and France, Henry Tudor finally returned to England in his 28th year of life to claim the throne that was usurped by Richard III. Years before, when he was declared by the dying king Edward IV Lord Protector to young Edward V until he reached majority, Richard, then Duke of Gloucester, seized the throne from his nephew based on terms that declared Edward V and his siblings not legitimated because his brother's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was not valid. All of this the Duke stated according to a rumour about Edward IV's promise of marriage to a woman named Eleanor Talbot.
Without going deep into the discussion of the legitimacy and the supposed bigamacy on the part of Edward IV, Richard III made his claim to the throne valid, but Henry, especially after 1485, stated that he was the heir of Edward V and therefore, Richard's own claim was nothing but invalid itself. The famous battle that culminated into the rise of one dynasty and the fall of another happened at the day of August 22th 1485 at Bosworth. Before Richard's death, Henry was seen as nothing but a "bastard" of both sides and as "another rebel" Richard III had to deal with. Naturally, with Henry's victory, not only these views changed as the course of History, as we can observe below:
"A fracture in the hitherto stable House of York gave Henry an opportunity to be recognised as a viable alternative and in due course his exiled court began to acknowledge him as the Lancastrian heir. Henry swore an oath on Christmas Day 1483 to marry Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV, and combine his Lancastrian claim to the throne with Elizabeth's much-stronger Yorkist claim."
The marriage to the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth happened in January 1486 as promised, but her coronation would be delayed for two years, as it was not Henry's wish to have his claim associated to Elizabeth's as her consort, but rather the other way around. In November of that same year, their first child was born: Arthur, the Tudor rose, was the physical embodiment of the union of the two Houses of the Plantagenet branch. This Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall was born in Westminster, the place where Henry believed to have been Camelot and, as such, where his heir would receive the name of a legendary king. Also, Henry and Elizabeth's marriaged produced six more children: Margaret, Queen of Scots (1489), Henry, Duke of York and later Henry VIII (1491), Elizabeth Tudor (1492), Mary Rose, Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk (1496), Edmund, Duke of Somerset (1499), and Katherine Tudor (1503).
In regards to his personal life, Henry and Elizabeth had a loving relationship: by providing her husband the family he never had, and choosing an image fit to herself as Queen, mother and wife, she soon had her husband's affections. In turn, Elizabeth had a good and supportive husband who she could rely on. In the next paragraph, their relationship can be seen in another perspective:
"The marriage of Elizabeth and Henry VII was, naturally, a political alliance. However, it soon becomes clear that there was a genuine and lasting love between the couple. They had several children (in all, eight were born; only four made it past infancy), and it seems Elizabeth devoted her time to raising them. Eminent Historian, David Starkey, even puts forward the theory that it was Elizabeth herself who taught her children to read and write (their handwriting being identical. She certainly seemed to oversee the running of the nursery in person--and the children formed the backbone of hers, and Henry's, lives."
This was much important to Henry, whose reign was marked for attempts of removing him from the English throne, through many rebellions of pretenders from the House of York, aside few foreign troubles in his diplomacy, despite the two wars he was involved -one with Scotland and the other with France, not to mention the tensions with Spain. His character, in general, is seen as favourably to peace and the Tudor king enrichened the royal treasure, though in that would give him the image of an avarice king.
What it is forgotten, though, is his role towards society in general those days. In other words, Henry's contributions in England. Aristocracy, in his reign, was never so unpopular: the creation of the Star-Chamber judged the wealthy men according to the crimes they committed. The definition of Star-Chamber can be seen according to the fragment below:
"The mandate of the court expanded under the Tudors to include instances of public disorder. Judges would receive petitions involving property rights, public corruption, trade and government administration, and disputes arising from land enclosures."
In matters of inner growth, it was under the first Tudor king's reign that this increase can be understood, or at least what set the start for what the Elizabethan Era continued and followed successfully. After all, by the end of the 15th century, Europe was discovering the 'New World' and Spain and Portugal were the pioners of the maritime commerce, and they heavily leaded and invested in such activity that did not give, at least at first, security in Henry's eyes, despite the discover the Cabots came to make on his behalf.
In the next paragraphs, we can have a better comprehension towards the policy he adopted to English commerce. It must be remembered that, the cause for it, most of times, was influenced by politics: the relationship between Flanders and England deteriorated, for example, because of the aid of Flanders in keeping -and supposedly aiding as well- a pretender to Henry's throne that should have been his prisoner.
"Henry's commercial policy was a sympton as well as a cause of the development of commercial enterprise during his reign. A new spirit was abroad, which was exemplified by those "adventures" of the Bristol merchant.(...)" Among this, though, "the trade between England and Flanders was pratically stopped, to the heavy loss of the English wool-trade for the time being, but to the ruin of the Flemish manufacturers (...). Philip was forced to surrender, and the treaty called the Inter-cursus Magnus for a while established something very like free trade between England and the Netherlands."
Finally, we have "the companies of Merchant Adventures were pushing themselves everywhere, without as well as with the direct countenance of the State, thrusting into new markets by illegitimate methods if legitimate means were wanting; their ships were seen in the Baltic and the Mediterranean, Commercialism was responsible for another change of which the immediate effects were anything but beneficial."
This means, basically, that these were the origins to something further as we may see in the next paragraph:
"So began the great process of enclosing, which was twofold. It meant in the first place the legal or illegal appropriation and enclosing of common lands, and in the second place the enclosure of the open fields. It will be remembered that under the old system the cultivated land of which each village and manor-house was the centre consisted of open fields cut up into strips of an acre or half an acre, separated not by hedges but by balks, ridges which were left unploughed."
Although the main activity of maritime commerce was not so entrusted by Henry, as we said before, it was not, nonetheless, ignored by the King. He contributed, indeed, as we observe here:
"Although Henry did not create a royal navy, he was alive to the increasing importance of fleets when England's political horizon ceased to be practically bounded by France. English shipping had so far developed that the renewed Acts were not, like the old ones, absolutely a dead letter. (...) it increased the amount of English shipping and the number of seafaring men, and thereby gave an impulse to the development of English seamanship."
Finally, we can say that the seeds to Elizabeth's Golden Era were cemented. Three important processes began at the reign of Henry VII: the growth of trade, commercial expansion and enclosurement process as said above. Despite the late years of his reign were renowned for battles fought and the defeat of any Plantagenet rise, passing to his son a secure dynasty-to whose descendants, though from Margaret Tudor, the Queen of Scots, rule until nowadays- to rule, here we could see that, beyond the political unstability, Henry the Seventh contributed to the improvement of England's society as a whole. His commerciants, by the end of his reign, were qualified enough to compete in the market against the others, though he clearly favoured the Italian products.
Unfortunately, there is too much to approach in one post, so here today we leave for the thought the marks this maligned and underestimated king left. It is not the ill deeds every monarch is destined to make or fail in any contempt, but to remember the best and good things they succeed to leave behind.
Sources:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/tudor-england/henry-vii-and-europe/
http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Growth-of-Trade-under-Henry-VII.htm
http://www.britroyals.com/kings.asp?id=henry7
http://henrytudorsociety.com/2014/04/29/henry-tudor-a-short-biography/
https://henrytudorsociety.wordpress.com/
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/medbritishqueens/a/elizabeth_york.htm
http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/elizabethyork.htm
Really great work!
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