Yet, wedged between two of the most notorious monarchs in English history – the arch-villain Richard III and the massive figure of Henry VIII – Henry VII remains mysterious, or as his first biographer, the seventeenth-century political thinker Francis Bacon put it, ‘a dark prince’. He was a man with a highly dubious claim to the throne, who seized power and passed it on in the first untroubled succession in almost a century. By its end, he had laid the foundations for the dynasty that bore his name: Tudor. During his reign, the civil wars that had convulsed the country for much of the fifteenth century burned themselves out. Henry VII ruled England for almost a quarter-century, from 1485 to 1509. Houses of Lancaster and York, and the House of Tudor (By permission of the British Library)ġ4. From Thomas More’s coronation verses, on the rainstorm that disrupted Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s procession through London, 23 June 1509. (By permission of the British Library)ġ3. Drawing by Garter king-of-arms Thomas Wriothesley. (Copyright © Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)ġ2. Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, lord privy seal and Henry VII’s diplomatic mastermind. Informer’s report by John Flamank, detailing the secret conversation among Henry VII’s officials at Calais, September 1504. A group of plate-armoured jousters arrives at a tournament. ‘Score cheque’ from the first day of the November 1501 jousts at Westminster, celebrating the marriage of Prince Arthur to Catherine of Aragon. (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)Ĩ.
Catherine of Aragon, aged about twenty, by Michael Sittow. (By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge)Ħ. (The Royal Collection, copyright © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)ĥ. A laughing boy, thought to be Prince Henry, by Guido Mazzoni. (Copyright © National Portrait Gallery, London)Ĥ. (Copyright © Victoria and Albert Museum, London)ģ. Terracotta portrait bust by Pietro Torrigiano. Frontispiece of the ‘Liber de optimo fato’, or ‘Book of Excellent Fortunes’, by William Parron. ‘Since men love at their own pleasure and fear at the pleasure of the prince, the wise prince should build his foundation upon that which is his own, not upon that which belongs to others: only he must seek to avoid being hated.’ġ. Now Must You Supply the Mother’s Part Also
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