Henry VII

Henry VII (1457–1509), king of England (1485–1509). Though the belief that Henry VII was a new kind of ruler at the head of a new kind of monarchy has long been abandoned, he was certainly an unusual ruler. Despite the fact that he was a competent soldier and personally brave, he did not hanker after military glory, even against the French, as many of his predecessors had. Secondly, he seemed to take positive pleasure in the detail of government and administration, while many monarchs left the hard work to ministers. Thirdly—and this may have distinguished him from most rulers, then and now—he seems to have wished to amass money rather than spend it. Consequently, he left his successor, if not a fortune, at least a healthy competence, and though Henry VIII reverted to type, disliking business and pining for glory, it took him some time to undo his father's good work.

The weakness of Henry's claim to the throne has been exaggerated: ‘up to June 1483 Henry Tudor was hardly any more plausible as a king of England than Lambert Simnel or Perkin Warbeck were to be later.’ That is absurd. Simnel and Warbeck were commoners pretending to be someone. Henry's father was a half-brother of King Henry VI; his grandmother had been queen to Henry V and a princess of France; his great-great-grandfather was John of Gaunt, son of Edward III. Once Edward IV's sons had been murdered, only Clarence's son Warwick had an obviously better claim to the throne, and across that lay the shadow of Clarence's attainder. Nevertheless, Henry's early life was inauspicious. His father Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, died three months before Henry was born at Pembroke castle. His young mother Lady Margaret Beaufort remarried. His grandfather Owen Tudor was beheaded at Hereford after the Lancastrian defeat at Mortimer's Cross in 1461, and his uncle Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, was forced to flee. Custody of the boy was then given to the new Yorkist earl of Pembroke and he was brought up mainly at Raglan. On the brief restoration of Henry VI in 1470 he was reunited with his uncle, but after the crushing defeat at Tewkesbury, they both fled to Brittany. Not until Richard usurped the throne in 1483 did Henry's prospects brighten, his cause sustained largely by his redoubtable mother. In secret negotiations with Edward IV's widow, it was agreed that Henry should marry her daughter Elizabeth, thus uniting the houses of Lancaster and York. But an attempt on the throne in 1483 proved premature. His ally Buckingham was captured and beheaded, and Henry's own expedition to the south coast was scattered by gales. In 1484 Richard put pressure on Brittany to hand over Henry, who escaped to France in the nick of time. Thence he sailed with 2,000 men to Milford Haven in 1485 on the journey that brought him to Bosworth and the throne.

It is sometimes said that Henry is a ruler of whom we know little. That is not quite true. We have excellent representations of him, a bust by Torrigiano, a portrait by Sittow, a remarkable death mask, coinage likenesses, and a realistic tomb effigy. There are descriptions by foreign diplomats and by Polydore Vergil, who knew him in later years. It is more that people do not always admire what is known about him. He was clearly reserved and rarely affable: he had little of Henry VIII's false heartiness nor of Elizabeth I's adroit condescensions. ‘His appearance’, wrote Vergil, ‘was remarkably attractive and his face cheerful, especially when speaking; his eyes were small and blue, his teeth few, poor and blackish; his hair was thin and white; his complexion sallow.’ His ‘most cheerful countenance’ was noted in 1498 by a Spanish envoy. He was more than commonly dutiful in his religious observance and, while aspiring neither to scholar nor saint, founded many religious houses and left as his main architectural memorial the chapel in Westminster abbey. His relations with his mother and wife were good, perhaps close. His application to business was proverbial, though his attention to accounts is often held against him as unworthy of a monarch. His reputation suffered from Francis Bacon's very readable Life, which exhibited him as close and mean—‘a sad, serious prince, full of thoughts’. But it should be remembered that although Bacon is sometimes quoted as though a contemporary, he wrote 137 years after the battle of Bosworth, and his artistry often led him to caricature. ‘For his pleasures,’ wrote Bacon, ‘there is no news of them.’ In fact there is plenty of news had Bacon wished to find it. Henry enjoyed hunting and hawking, music and dancing, tennis, dice, archery, and cards—often, unlike many kings, losing and, characteristically, recording his debts.

He needed to learn very quickly since his nomadic existence before Bosworth had left him short of experience in government. He was undoubtedly circumspect, as anyone who hoped to survive at the top of Tudor politics needed to be. He learned early not to be too trusting. Lord Lincoln, who had fought against him at Bosworth, was at once forgiven, taken into employment, and attended the council to decide how to deal with Lambert Simnel—before riding off to join the rebels. But Henry became a good judge of men, and was well served by John Morton, archbishop of Canterbury from 1486, and by Richard Foxe, who finished as bishop of Winchester.

His main political objectives were to secure his own position, to found a dynasty, and to establish a stable government. Of his four predecessors as kings, two had been murdered, one had died in battle, and the fourth ( Edward IV) had been driven ignominiously from the kingdom in the middle of his reign. The foundation of Henry's success was the marriage to Elizabeth of York, and though not all Yorkists were reconciled, his political opponents were divided. Lincoln proved implacable, but Lord Surrey (Norfolk), who had fought alongside Richard at Bosworth and been attained, worked his way back into favour, was increasingly employed by Henry, and had a military career of great renown under Henry VIII. The first challenge from Yorkist irreconcilables came as soon as April 1486, was headed by Lord Lovel and the Hastings brothers, and was put down without difficulty. It was followed by the Simnel plot in 1487. Simnel claimed to be Edward, earl of Warwick, despite the fact that Warwick was in the Tower, and was crowned in Dublin as Edward VI. His supporters, strengthened by German mercenaries, were subdued at Stoke near Newark only after hard fighting. Simnel, a mere boy, was given a place in the royal kitchens and lived out a long life in safe obscurity. Perkin Warbeck, claiming to be Richard, duke of York, was received by James IV of Scotland as Richard IV, captured in 1498, but executed with Warwick the following year. Even then Henry had to face the claims of the de la Pole brothers and only for the last three years of his reign, with Edmund de la Pole in the Tower, was he totally secure. His dynasty by then hung on a single thread, since two of his sons, Arthur and Edmund, had died, leaving Henry as the sole surviving male heir. The marriage of Henry VII's daughter Margaret to James IV of Scotland reaped long-term dividends in 1603 when their great-grandson James VI united the two kingdoms.

Under these circumstances, Henry's foreign policy could hardly be very ambitious and he played a marginal role in the struggle between the French and the imperialists. He was unable to save Brittany from annexation to France but the task was impossible once the duchess of Brittany herself had married the French king, and Henry escaped creditably from his brief 1492 campaign. The short war with Scotland 1496–7 was not of Henry's making but arose from James IV's support for Warbeck. Henry stood on the defensive and used the large parliamentary subsidy to emerge with a handsome profit. By the end of his reign, England's standing in Europe had been greatly enhanced. At home the nobility was kept in check less by legislation against livery and maintenance than by large financial bonds hanging over them. Financial security, which had the advantage of allowing Henry to do without parliaments for much of his reign, was built up by the patient exploitation of the opportunities and dues open to the crown. Crown lands which brought in only £3,000 p.a. between 1487 and 1489 were worth £40,000 p.a. by 1502–5; wardships provided only £343 in 1491 but £1,588 three years later and had doubled again by 1504; bonds, bringing in £3,000 p.a. in 1493–4, had increased to £35,000 p.a. by 1504–5. Their zeal on Henry's behalf made his servants Empson and Dudley the most hated men in the kingdom and they were instant victims of Henry VIII's new reign in 1509.

The historical controversy about Henry's place in government derived in part from a desire to divide the past too categorically into medieval and modern. But both sides shared a somewhat simple misunderstanding—that innovation in government is everything. The first group credited Henry with new policies and new expedients, to which the second group replied by tracing many of them to his predecessors, and particularly to Edward IV—action against maintenance, use of loyalty bonds, and the establishment of councils. But it was of more consequence that Henry pursued his policies, whether new or old, with rigour, system, and tenacity. Many rulers begin with economy drives, but are blown off course. Henry was not and, as Bacon put it, ‘what he minded, he compassed’—though, again, it sounds more grim than appealing.

J. A. Cannon

Bibliography

Chrimes, S. B. , Henry VII (1972);
Grant, A. , Henry VII (1985);
Lockyer, R. , Henry VII (2nd edn. 1983);
Storey, R. L. , The Reign of Henry VII (1968).