Ashlyn Willis
Mrs. Lee & Mrs. Bishop
History/English
14 December 2018
Henry VII
Henry Tudor was famous for multiple things, but he was most famous for defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in August of 1485. Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke, Whales on January 28, 1457. His father passed away two months before his birth. Margaret Beaufort, Henry’s mother, was just thirteen when she gave birth to him. For the first thirteen years of his life, Henry lived in Brittany, in Northern France. “In 1471, during the Wars of the Roses, Henry Tudor left Wales, his homeland, after the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury”(Giottos). Henry returns to his homeland. Later he receives a chance to seize the thrown.
Fourteen years later, Henry returned to Whales. Henry later met King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. It was during this battle that Richard III was killed as he fought bravely. His crown was later found inside a thorn bush and was passed down to Henry VII immediately. It was a few months later in October 1485 when Henry was officially crowned King at Westminster Abbey. It was in 1486 that Henry took Elizabeth of York, the daughter of the former King Edward IV to be his wife. The goal of this marriage was to erase the bad feelings between the Houses of York and Lancaster. These battles were actually more about the fight for power between two families. During the War of the Roses, Henry made it illegal for the powerful barons to hire private armies. These barons had been powerful prior to this time. “The term War of the Roses talks about the white rose for the House of York and the red rose for the House of Lancaster”(White). Later, at the Battle of Stoke, in 1487, he was able to further ensure the barons could no longer hire the armies by raising their taxes. This ended the last revolt against his kingship.
Henry knew that he needed to defeat Richard quickly in order to secure the throne. This meant he needed to avoid being killed since Richard had reinforcements that waited in Nottingham and Leicester and thus had only to avoid being killed in order to keep the throne. Though outnumbered, Henry's Lancastrian forces defeated the Yorkist army under Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485 when several of Richard's key allies switched sides or deserted the field of battle (Kassian). “The death of Richard III on Bosworth Field effectively ended the long-running Wars of the Roses between the two houses, although it was not the final battle Henry had to fight” (Kassian). The first of Henry's concerns on attaining the throne was the question of establishing the strength and supremacy of his rule. His own claim to the throne being weak as it was, he was fortunate that the majority of claimants to the throne had died in the dynastic wars or were simply executed by his predecessors. Despite easily seeing off the Stafford and Lovell Rebellion of 1486, his main worry was "pretenders" including Perkin Warbeck, who, pretending to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes in the Tower and son of Edward IV, made attempts at the throne with the backing of disaffected nobles and foreign enemies. Henry managed to secure his crown principally by dividing and undermining the power of the nobility, especially through the aggressive use of bonds and recognizances to secure loyalty, as well as by a legislative assault on retaining, the practice of maintaining private armies. He also honored his pledge of December 1483 to marry Elizabeth of York, daughter and heir of King Edward IV. The marriage took place on January 18, 1486 at Westminster. The marriage unified the warring houses and gave his children a stronger claim to the throne. The joining of the houses of York and Lancaster by Henry VII's marriage to Elizabeth of York is represented in the heraldic symbol of the Tudor rose, a combination of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster (White).
Henry VII recognized the importance of the Spanish kingdom and encouraged his son, Author, to marry Catherine of Aragon. He also knew that the treaty confirming the union of his daughter Margaret to King James IV of Scotland would mean that the English and Scottish crowns would be united. By further forming an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, he persuaded Pope Innocent VIII to issue a Bull of Excommunication against all of the pretenders against his throne (Kassian).
Works Cited
(Kassian, Bradley. “https://gw.geneanet.org/comrade28?lang=en&n=england&oc=0&p=king +henry+vii+of).”
(Mr. Giottos. https://www.penfield.edu/webpages/jgiotto/onlinetextbook.cfm?subpage=1866259.)
(White, Cameron. The war of Roses.)