 Henry VII King of England, son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond and Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond.Born Jan 28, 1456/57 at Pembroke Castle, England, died Apr 5, 1509, approximately 53 years Henry, son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and Margaret Beaufort, was born nearly three months after his father's death. His father was the son of Owen Tudor, a Welsh squire, and Catherine of France, the widow of King Henry V. His mother was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, whose children by Catherine Swynford were born before he married her. Henry IV had confirmed Richard II's legitimation ( 1397) of the children of this union but had specifically excluded the Beauforts from any claim to the throne (1407). Henry Tudor's claim to the throne was, th erefore, weak and of no importance until the deaths in 1471 of Henry VI's only son, Edward, of his own two remaining kinsmen of the Beaufort line, and of Henr y VI himself, which suddenly made Henry Tudor the sole surviving male with any ancestral claim to the House of Lancaster. As his mother was only 14 when he w as born and soon married again, Henry was brought up by his uncle Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke. When the Lancastrian cause crashed to disaster at the Battle of Tewkesbury (May 1471), Jasper took the boy out of the country and sought re fuge in the duchy of Brittany. The House of York then appeared so firmly establ ished that Henry seemed likely to remain in exile for the rest of his life. The usurpation of Richard III (1483), however, split the Yorkist party and gave He nry his opportunity. His first chance came in 1483 when his aid was sought to r ally Lancastrians in support of the rebellion of Henry Stafford, duke of Buckin gham, but that revolt was defeated before Henry could land in England. To unite the opponents of Richard III, Henry had promised to marry Elizabeth of York, e ldest daughter of Edward IV; and the coalition of Yorkists and Lancastrians con tinued, helped by French support, since Richard III talked of invading France. In 1485 Henry landed at Milford Haven in Wales and advanced toward London. Than ks largely to the desertion of his stepfather, Lord Stanley, to him, he defeate d and slew Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth on Aug. 22, 1485. Claiming the throne by just title of inheritance and by the judgment of God in battle, he w as crowned on October 30 and secured parliamentary recognition of his title ear ly in November. Having established his claim to be king in his own right, he ma rried Elizabeth of York on Jan. 18, 1486. Character. The whole of Henry's youth had been spent in conditions of adversity, often in danger of betrayal an d death, and usually in a state of poverty. These experiences, together with th e uncertainties of his reign, taught him to be secretive and wary, to subordina te his passions and affections to calculation and policy, to be always patient and vigilant. There is evidence that he was interested in scholarship, that he could be affable and gracious, and that he disliked bloodshed and severity; but all these emotions had to give way to the needs of survival. The extant portra its and descriptions suggest a tired and anxious-looking man, with small blue e yes, bad teeth, and thin white hair. His experiences and needs had also made hi m acquisitive, a trait that increased with age and success, and one that was op portune for both the crown and the realm. OBJE: C:\My Documents\Royalty\HenryV II.jpg Married Jan 18, 1485/86 (approximately 24 years married) to:  Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV Plantagenet, King of England and Elizabeth Woodville.Born Feb 11, 1464/65 at Anjou, France Children: 1. Prince of Wales ArthurBorn Sep 20, 1486 2. Margaret TudorBorn Nov 29, 1489 at Westminster Palace, Westminster, Middlesex, England, died Oct 18, 1541 at Methven Castle, Perthshire, Scotland, 51 years 3. VIII Henry, King of EnglandBorn Jun 28, 1491 at Greeenwich Palace, London, Middlesex, England, died Jan 28, 1546/47 at Palace At Whitehall, London, England, approximately 54 years, buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, Windsor, Berkshire, England King of England (1509-47), who presided over the beginning of the English Renaissance and the English Reformation. His six wives were, successively, Catherine of Aragon (the mother of the future queen Mary I), Anne Boleyn (the mother of the future queen Elizabeth I), Jane Seymour (the mother of Henry's successor, Edward VI), Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr. Accession to the throne. Henry was the second son of Henry VII, first of the Tudor line, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, first king of the short-lived line of York. When his elder brother, Arthur, died in 1502, Henry became the heir to the throne; of all the Tudor monarchs, he alone spent his childhood in calm expectation of the crown, which helped give an assurance of majesty and righteousness to his willful, ebullient character. He excelled in book learning as well as in the physical exercises of an aristocratic society, and, whe n in 1509 he ascended the throne, great things were expected of him. Six feet tall, powerfully built, and a tireless athlete, huntsman, and dancer, he promised England the joys of spring after the long winter of Henry VII's reign. Henry and his ministers exploited the dislike inspired by his father's energetic pursuit of royal rights by sacrificing, without a thought, some of the unpopular institutions and some of the men that had served his predecessor. Yet the unpopular means for governing the realm soon reappeared because they were necessary. Soon after his accession, Henry married Catherine of Aragon, Arthur's widow, and the attendant lavish entertainments ate into the modest royal reserves. More serious was Henry's determination to engage in military adventure. Europe was being kept on the boil by rivalries between the French and Spanish kingdoms, mostly over Italian claims; and, against the advice of his older councillors, Henry in 1512 joined his father-in-law, Ferdinand II of Aragon, against France and ostensibly in support of a threatened pope, to whom the devout king for a long time paid almost slavish respect. Henry himself displayed no military talent, but a real victory was won by the Earl of Surrey at Flodden (1513) against a Scottish invasion. Despite the obvious pointlessness of the fighting, the appear ance of success was popular. Moreover, in Thomas Wolsey, who organized his first campaign in France, Henry discovered his first outstanding minister. By 1515 Wolsey was archbishop of York, lord chancellor of England, and a cardinal of the church; more important, he was the King's good friend, to whom was gladly left the active conduct of affairs. Henry never altogether abandoned the positive tasks of kingship and often interfered in business; though the world might think that England was ruled by the Cardinal, the King himself knew that he possessed perfect control any time he cared to assert it, and Wolsey only rarely mistook the world's opinion for the right one. Nevertheless, the years from 1515 to 1527 were marked by Wolsey's ascendancy, and his initiatives set the scene. The Cardinal had some occasional ambition for the papal tiara, and this Henry supported; Wolsey at Rome would have been a powerful card in English hands. In fact, there was never any chance of this happening, any more than there was of Henry's election to the imperial crown, briefly mooted in 1519 when the emperor Maximilian I died, to be succeeded by his grandson Charles V. That event altered the European situation. In Charles, the crowns of Spain, Burgundy (with the Netherlands), and Austria were united in an overwhelming complex of power that reduced all the dynasties of Europe, with the exception of France, to an inferior position. From 1521, Henry became an outpost of Charles V's imperial power. 4. Mary TudorBorn Mar 18, 1493/94 5. Edward TudorBorn ± 1500 6. Catherine TudorBorn Feb 2, 1501/02 | |||