Good
to Be
King?

Give Henry VII
His Proper Due
as Tudor Founder.

By Ronald Fritze
Posted on September 16, 2008, from Athens, Alabama

Almost 100 years ago in 1910 the distinguished English historian H. A. L. Fisher wrote the following description of Henry VII.

The man who had been saluted as king ... upon the field of Bosworth on August 22, 1485, was twenty-eight years of age. A life of plots, adventures, and escapes had made him wary and supple; he had known what it was to ride for his life in the habit of a serf across the Breton border; to consort with fugitives and exiles, sharing their hatreds and their hopes, in their attempts to descry hidden currents of feeling, in their calculus of perilous chances and watchful expedients. He had intrigued and begged, sailed and marched, fought and won. A sense of the treachery of men and things was in his blood. But he looked at life shrewdly, coolly, and a little whimsically, like a man of intellect as he was; and in the workings of his alert and pithy wit there was nothing world-weary or bitter.

Fisher's words are evocative of the man who was Henry VII and remain an accurate character sketch in spite of a century of historical research between when they were written and the present.

Popular history has largely forgotten Henry VII. Portraits of the king show him as a slight man with lively eyes, or perhaps, as per Fisher, even whimsical eyes. His misfortune was to reign between two of the most famous (or notorious) English kings — Richard III and Henry VIII. Although Henry VII defeated Richard III and had the vanquished king's crown placed on his head, it is Richard III who lives on in the popular mind as one of history's great villains. Thanks to Shakespeare, Richard III will never be forgotten. But also thanks to Shakespeare, he will also never be remembered with a great deal of historical accuracy.

In his old age, Henry VII was physically overshadowed by his mesomorphic son Henry VIII. In his historical reputation, Henry VIII has overshadowed his father to an even greater degree. Henry VIII was one of those rare, larger-than-life people. Henry VII was not.

It is important to give Henry VII his proper due as a king and a historical figure. What did he accomplish? He seized the English throne during the political turmoil of the fifteenth century that is popularly called the Wars of the Roses. But he did more than seize the throne, he held on to it — and as a result he founded the Tudor dynasty. What his successors, his son and three grandchildren, did as rulers brought about a radical break with England's medieval past. Their story will form a large and important part of this course.

When Henry VII felt the crown placed on his head at Bosworth, it is almost certain that he was happy. He had worked hard and risked much to get where he was that day. He was also intelligent enough to know that his struggle was hardly over and that he remained in great danger as the new king of the mountain. Others waited in the wings to knock him off if the opportunity arose.

The historical odds were fairly high that an opportunity to remove him would not only arise, but would also be successful. During the two hundred years previous to Henry's rule, only a few English kings had died of old age or natural causes. Edward I died of old age. Edward II was murdered by rebellious nobles with the collusion of his own wife. Edward III died of old age. Richard II was overthrown and either committed suicide or was murdered by his rebellious nobles. The usurper Henry IV suffered from chronic ill health and died in his mid-forties while maintaining the most tenuous of holds on his throne. Unremitting worry probably hastened his demise. His son Henry V proved among the greatest of the warrior kings of England but some sort of intestinal disease, probably dysentery, killed him in his mid-thirties. His successor Henry VI proved to be incapable as a king and was thrust aside by Edward of York and eventually was murdered. Edward IV died prematurely of apparent exhaustion, barely reaching forty, and had also briefly lost his throne back to Henry VI. His son Edward V is one of the mysterious Princes in the Tower. How he died is not certain but it is certain he never really got to rule and that someone murdered him. His usurping uncle Richard III died in battle at Bosworth.

Late medieval England was a dangerous place to be king. It is a tribute to Henry VII that he managed to die in bed of old age and successfully bequeathed his kingdom to his burly son Henry VIII.