To secure his hold on the throne, Henry declared himself king by
right of conquest retroactively from 21 August 1485, the day before Bosworth Field. Thus, anyone who had fought for Richard against him would be guilty of
treason and Henry could legally confiscate the lands and property of Richard III, while restoring his own. Henry spared Richard's nephew and designated heir,
John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, and made the Yorkist heiress
Margaret Plantagenet Countess of Salisbury
suo jure. He took care not to address the
baronage or summon
Parliament until after his coronation, which took place in
Westminster Abbey on 30 October 1485. After his coronation Henry issued an edict that any gentleman who swore fealty to him would, notwithstanding any previous attainder, be secure in his property and person. Henry honoured his pledge of December 1483 to marry Elizabeth of York and the wedding took place in 1486 at Westminster Abbey. He was 29 years old, she was 20. They were third cousins, as both were great-great-grandchildren of
John of Gaunt. Henry married Elizabeth of York with the hope of uniting the Yorkist and Lancastrian sides of the Plantagenet dynastic disputes, and he was largely successful. However, such a level of paranoia persisted that anyone (John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, for example) with blood ties to the Plantagenets was suspected of coveting the throne. Henry had Parliament repeal
Titulus Regius, the statute that declared Edward IV's marriage invalid and his children illegitimate, thus legitimising his wife. Amateur historians
Bertram Fields and
Sir Clements Markham have claimed that he may have been involved in the murder of the Princes in the Tower, as the repeal of
Titulus Regius gave the Princes a stronger claim to the throne than his own.
Alison Weir points out that the Rennes ceremony, two years earlier, was plausible only if Henry and his supporters were certain that the Princes were already dead. Henry secured his crown principally by dividing and undermining the power of the nobility, especially through the aggressive use of bonds and recognisances to secure loyalty. He also enacted laws against
livery and maintenance, the great lords' practice of having large numbers of "retainers" who wore their lord's badge or uniform and formed a potential private army. Henry began taking precautions against rebellion while still in Leicester after Bosworth Field.
Edward, Earl of Warwick, the ten-year-old son of Edward IV's brother
George, Duke of Clarence, was the senior surviving male of the House of York. Despite such precautions, Henry faced several rebellions over the next twelve years. The first was
the 1486 rebellion of the Stafford brothers, abetted by
Viscount Lovell, which collapsed without fighting. Next, in 1487, Yorkists led by Lincoln rebelled in support of
Lambert Simnel, a boy they claimed to be Edward of Warwick (who was actually a prisoner in the Tower). The rebellion began in Ireland, where the historically Yorkist nobility, headed by the powerful
Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, proclaimed Simnel king and provided troops for his invasion of England. The rebellion was defeated and Lincoln killed at the
Battle of Stoke. Henry showed remarkable clemency to the surviving rebels: he pardoned Kildare and the other Irish nobles, and he made the boy, Simnel, a servant in the royal kitchen where he was in charge of roasting meats on a spit. In 1490, a young
Fleming,
Perkin Warbeck, appeared and claimed to be
Richard of Shrewsbury, the younger of the "Princes in the Tower". Warbeck won the support of Edward IV's sister
Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. He led attempted invasions of Ireland in 1491 and England in 1495, and persuaded
James IV of Scotland to invade England in 1496. In 1497, Warbeck landed in
Cornwall with a few thousand troops, but was soon captured and executed. When the King's agents searched the property of William Stanley (
Chamberlain of the Household, with direct access to Henry VII), they found a bag of coins amounting to around £10,000 and a collar of livery with Yorkist garnishings. Stanley was accused of supporting Warbeck's cause, arrested and later executed. In response to this threat within his own household, the King instituted more rigid security for access to his person. In 1499, Henry had the Earl of Warwick executed. However, he spared Warwick's elder sister Margaret, who survived until 1541 when she was executed by Henry VIII.
Economics of Henry VII For most of Henry VII's reign
Edward Story was
Bishop of Chichester. Story's register still exists and, according to the 19th-century historian W.R.W. Stephens, "affords some illustrations of the avaricious and parsimonious character of the king". It seems that Henry was skilled at extracting money from his subjects on many pretexts, including that of war with France or war with Scotland. The money so extracted added to the King's personal fortune rather than being used for the stated purpose. Unlike his predecessors, Henry VII came to the throne without personal experience in estate management or financial administration. Despite this, during his reign, he became a fiscally prudent monarch who restored the fortunes of an effectively bankrupt
exchequer. Henry VII introduced stability to the financial administration of England by keeping the same financial advisors throughout his reign. For instance, except for the first few months of the reign, the
Baron Dynham and the
Earl of Surrey were the only
Lord High Treasurers throughout his reign. Henry VII improved tax collection in the realm by introducing ruthlessly efficient mechanisms of taxation. He was supported in this effort by his chancellor,
Archbishop John Morton, whose "
Morton's Fork" was a
catch-22 method of ensuring that nobles paid increased taxes: those nobles who spent little must have saved much, and thus could afford the increased taxes; in contrast, those nobles who spent much obviously had the means to pay the increased taxes. Henry also increased wealth by acquiring land through the act of resumption of 1486, which had been delayed as he focused on the defence of the Church, his person and his realm. and
Edmund Dudley The capriciousness and lack of due process that had indebted many would tarnish his legacy and were soon ended upon Henry VII's death, after a commission revealed widespread abuses. According to the contemporary historian
Polydore Vergil, simple "greed" underscored the means by which royal control was over-asserted in Henry's final years. Following Henry VII's death, Henry VIII executed
Richard Empson and
Edmund Dudley, his two most hated tax collectors, on trumped-up charges of treason. Henry VII established the
pound avoirdupois as a standard of weight; it later became part of the
Imperial and
customary systems of units.
Foreign policy Henry VII's policy was to maintain peace and to create economic prosperity. To a degree, he succeeded. The
Treaty of Redon was signed in February 1489 between Henry and representatives of Brittany. Based on the terms of the accord, Henry sent 6,000 troops to fight (at the expense of Brittany) under the command of Lord Daubeney. The purpose of the agreement was to prevent France from annexing Brittany. According to John M. Currin, the treaty redefined Anglo-Breton relations. Henry started a new policy to recover Guyenne and other lost Plantagenet claims in France. The treaty marks a shift from neutrality over the French invasion of Brittany to active intervention against it. Henry later concluded a treaty with France at Etaples, which brought money into the coffers of England and ensured the French would not support pretenders to the English throne, such as Perkin Warbeck. However, this treaty came at a price, as Henry mounted a minor invasion of Brittany in November 1492. Henry decided to keep Brittany out of French hands, signed an alliance with Spain to that end, and sent 6,000 troops to France. The confused, fractious nature of Breton politics undermined his efforts, which finally failed after three sizeable expeditions, costing £24,000. However, as France was becoming more concerned with the
Italian Wars, the French were happy to agree to the
Peace of Étaples. Henry had pressured the French by
laying siege to Boulogne in October 1492. Henry had been under the financial and physical protection of the French throne or its vassals for most of his life before becoming king. To strengthen his position, however, he subsidised shipbuilding, so strengthening the
navy (he commissioned Europe's first ever – and the world's oldest surviving –
dry dock at
Portsmouth in 1495) and improving trading opportunities.
John Cabot, originally from Genoa and Venice, had heard that ships from Bristol had discovered uncharted, newfound territory far west of Ireland. Having secured financial backing from Florentine bankers in London, Cabot was granted carefully phrased
letters patent from Henry in March 1496, permitting him to embark on an exploratory voyage westward. It is unknown precisely where Cabot landed, but he was eventually rewarded with a pension from the king; it is presumed that Cabot perished at sea after a later unsuccessful expedition. Henry VII was one of the first European monarchs to recognise the importance of the newly united Spanish kingdom; he concluded the
Treaty of Medina del Campo, by which his son
Arthur, Prince of Wales, was married to
Catherine of Aragon. He also concluded the
Treaty of Perpetual Peace with Scotland (the first treaty between England and Scotland for almost two centuries), which betrothed his daughter
Margaret Tudor to King James IV of Scotland. By this marriage, Henry VII hoped to break the
Auld Alliance between Scotland and France. Though this was not achieved during his reign, the marriage eventually led to the
union of the English and Scottish crowns under Margaret's great-grandson,
James VI and I, following the death of Henry's granddaughter
Elizabeth I. Henry also formed an alliance with
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1519) and persuaded
Pope Innocent VIII to issue a
papal bull of
excommunication against all pretenders to Henry's throne. In 1506, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller
Emery d'Amboise asked Henry VII to become the protector and patron of the Order, as he had an interest in the
crusade. Later on, Henry had exchanged letters with
Pope Julius II in 1507, in which he encouraged him to establish peace among Christian realms, and to organise an expedition against the Turks of the
Ottoman Empire.
Trade agreements Henry VII was much enriched by trading
alum, which was used in the wool and cloth trades as a
chemical fixative for
dyeing fabrics. Since alum was mined in only one area in Europe (Tolfa, Italy), it was a scarce commodity and therefore especially valuable to its landholder, the Pope. With the English economy heavily invested in wool production, Henry VII became involved in the alum trade in 1486. With the assistance of the Italian merchant banker Lodovico della Fava and the Italian banker
Girolamo Frescobaldi, Henry VII became deeply involved in the trade by licensing ships, obtaining alum from the Ottoman Empire, and selling it to the Low Countries and in England. This trade made an expensive commodity cheaper, which raised opposition from Pope Julius II, since the Tolfa mine was a part of papal territory and had given the Pope monopoly control over alum. Henry's most successful diplomatic achievement as regards the economy was the
Magnus Intercursus ("great agreement") of 1496. In 1494, Henry embargoed trade (mainly in wool) with the
Burgundian Netherlands in retaliation for Margaret of Burgundy's support for Perkin Warbeck. The
Merchant Adventurers, the company which enjoyed the monopoly of the Flemish wool trade, relocated from
Antwerp to
Calais. At the same time, Flemish merchants were ejected from England. The dispute eventually paid off for Henry. Both parties realised they were mutually disadvantaged by the reduction in commerce. Its restoration by the
Magnus Intercursus was very much to England's benefit in removing taxation for English merchants and significantly increasing England's wealth. In turn, Antwerp became an extremely important trade
entrepôt (transhipment port), through which, for example, goods from the Baltic, spices from the east and Italian silks were exchanged for English cloth. In 1506, Henry extorted the Treaty of Windsor from
Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy. Philip had been shipwrecked on the English coast, and while Henry's guest, was bullied into an agreement so favourable to England at the expense of the Netherlands that it was dubbed the
Malus Intercursus ("evil agreement"). France, Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and the
Hanseatic League all rejected the treaty, which was never in force. Philip died shortly after the negotiations.
Law enforcement and justices of the peace Henry's principal problem was to restore royal authority in a realm recovering from the Wars of the Roses. There were too many powerful noblemen and, as a consequence of the system of so-called
bastard feudalism, each had what amounted to private armies of indentured retainers (
mercenaries masquerading as servants). Following the example of Edward IV, Henry VII created a
Council of Wales and the Marches for his son Arthur, which was intended to govern
Wales and the
Marches, Cheshire and
Cornwall. He was content to allow the nobles their regional influence if they were loyal to him. For instance, the Stanley family had control of Lancashire and Cheshire, upholding the peace on the condition that they stayed within the law. In other cases, he brought his over-powerful subjects to heel by decree. He passed laws against "livery" (the upper classes' flaunting of their adherents by giving them badges and emblems) and "maintenance" (the keeping of too many male "servants"). These laws were used shrewdly in levying fines upon those that he perceived as threats. However, his principal weapon was the
Court of Star Chamber. This revived an earlier practice of using a small (and trusted) group of the
Privy Council as a personal or Prerogative Court, able to cut through the cumbersome legal system and act swiftly. Serious disputes involving the use of personal power, or threats to royal authority, were thus dealt with. Henry VII used
justices of the peace on a large, nationwide scale. They were appointed for every shire and served for a year at a time. Their chief task was to see that the laws of the country were obeyed in their area. Their powers and numbers steadily increased during the time of the Tudors, never more so than under Henry's reign. Despite this, Henry was keen to constrain their power and influence, applying the same principles to the justices of the peace as he did to the nobility: a similar system of bonds and recognisances to that which applied to both the gentry and the nobles who tried to exert their elevated influence over these local officials. All Acts of Parliament were overseen by justices of the peace. For example, they could replace suspect jurors in accordance with the 1495 act, preventing the corruption of juries. They were also in charge of various administrative duties, such as the checking of weights and measures. By 1509, justices of the peace were key enforcers of law and order for Henry VII. They were unpaid, which, in comparison with modern standards, meant a smaller tax bill for law enforcement. Local gentry saw the office as one of local influence and prestige and were therefore willing to serve. Overall, this was a successful area of policy for Henry, both in terms of efficiency and as a method of reducing the corruption endemic within the nobility of the
Middle Ages.
Later years and death (1509) drawn contemporaneously from witness accounts by the courtier Sir Thomas Wriothesley (d.1534) who wrote an account of the proceedings.
British Library, Add.MS 45131, f.54 ,
Westminster Abbey made using Henry's
death mask In 1502, Henry VII's life took a difficult and personal turn in which many people he was close to died in quick succession. His first son and heir apparent, Arthur, Prince of Wales, died suddenly at
Ludlow Castle, very likely from a viral respiratory illness known at the time as the "
English sweating sickness". This made Henry VII's second son,
Henry, Duke of York, heir apparent to the throne. The King, normally a reserved man who rarely showed much emotion in public unless angry, surprised his courtiers with his intense grief and sobbing at his son's death. His concern for the Queen is evidence that the marriage was a happy one, as is his reaction to Queen Elizabeth's death the following year, when he shut himself away for several days, refusing to speak to anyone. Henry VII was shattered by the loss of Elizabeth, and her death affected him severely. Henry wanted to maintain the Spanish alliance. Accordingly, he arranged a
papal dispensation from Pope Julius II for Prince Henry to marry his brother's widow Catherine, a relationship that would have otherwise precluded marriage in the Church. After obtaining the dispensation, Henry had second thoughts about the marriage of his son and Catherine. Catherine's mother
Isabella I of Castile had died and Catherine's sister
Joanna had succeeded her; Catherine was, therefore, daughter of only one reigning monarch and so less desirable as a spouse for Henry VII's heir-apparent. The marriage did not take place during his lifetime. Otherwise, at the time of his father's arranging of the marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the future Henry VIII was too young to contract the marriage according to Canon Law and would be ineligible until age fourteen. Henry made half-hearted plans to remarry and beget more heirs, but these never came to anything. He entertained thoughts of remarriage to renew the alliance with Spain;
Joanna, Dowager Queen of Naples (a niece of Queen Isabella of Castile),
Queen Joanna of Castile, and
Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Savoy (sister-in-law of Joanna of Castile) were all considered. In 1505 he was sufficiently interested in a potential marriage to Joanna of Naples that he sent ambassadors to Naples to report on the 27 year-old Joanna's physical suitability. The wedding never took place. Henry VII falls among the minority of British monarchs who never had any known mistresses, and, for the times, it is unusual that he did not remarry. His son Henry was the only male heir left after the death of his wife; the death of Arthur therefore created a precarious political position for the House of Tudor. During Henry VII's lifetime, the nobility often criticised him for re-centralising power in London and, later, the 16th-century historian
Francis Bacon was ruthlessly critical of the methods by which he enforced tax law. It is equally true that Henry VII was diligent about keeping detailed records of his personal finances, down to the last halfpenny; these and one account book detailing the expenses of his queen survive in the British National Archives, as do courtiers' accounts and many of the king's own letters. From these accounting books, the evidence is clear that, until the death of his wife, Henry was a more doting father and husband than was widely known, and there is evidence that his outwardly austere personality belied a devotion to his family. Letters to relatives have an affectionate tone not captured in official state business, as evidenced by many written to his mother, Margaret. Many of the entries show a man who loosened his purse strings generously for his wife and children – and not just for necessities. After Elizabeth's death, the possibilities for such family indulgences greatly diminished. Henry became very sick and nearly died, allowing only his mother Margaret Beaufort near him: "privily departed to a solitary place, and would that no man should resort unto him." Further compounding Henry's distress, within months of her mother's death, his older daughter Margaret, who had previously been betrothed to King James IV of Scotland, had to be escorted to the border by her father: he would never see her again. Margaret wrote letters to her father declaring her homesickness, but Henry could do nothing but mourn the loss of his family and honour the terms of the peace treaty he had agreed to with the King of Scotland. Henry VII died of
tuberculosis at
Richmond Palace on 21 April 1509 and was buried in
the chapel he commissioned in Westminster Abbey next to his wife, Elizabeth. He was succeeded by his second son,
Henry VIII (reigned 1509–1547), who would initiate the
Protestant Reformation in England. His mother died two months later on 29 June. ==Appearance and character==