Henry VII King Henry VII example essay topic

Henry VII King Henry VII, who defeated king Richard at the battle of Bosworth, reigned from between 24th August 1485, until 1509. He was the founder of the Tudor dynasty that lasted for well over 100 years. He was a very shrewd character who showed no favouritism and was intent on building up England's finance and therefore increasing their prestige as a European power. Another one of his aims was to smooth things over with the Yorkists.

His first move to do this was to marry Elizabeth of York, the eldest sister of the princes in the tower, and thus uniting the houses of Lancaster and York to end the Wars of the Roses that had been raging for the last 30 years. Although Henry had ended the Wars of the Roses, there were still a few unsatisfied Yorkists that were ready to cause a few problems. First there was Margaret of Burgundy, Richard's sister, organised the two "pretenders" Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. The first rebellion came from Simnel. He claimed to be the son of Clarence (Richard's brother), the Earl of Warwick. He gained support from the Northwest and Ireland, however after the real Earl of Warwick had been paraded around the streets of London, Henry crushed his forces at the Battle of Stoke.

Perkin Warbeck was the son of a Belgian merchant, and he claimed he was the younger of the princes in the tower. He got support from Ireland, Scotland, Burgundy, and several other European states. He arrived in Cornwall but was defeated in 1497 and two years later he and the real Earl Of Warwick were executed. A huge problem for kings and queens in the past have been the nobles.

At this time the nobles were bribing, altering the course of justice, and generally just considering themselves to be above the law. This was not helped by the Wars of the Roses, which had meant that the kings of the last 30 years had problems of their own and did not have time to worry about them. Most of them even had their own private armies. To settle this down and get some money from them at the same time he founded the Court Of Star Chamber His councillors as well as himself dealt with nobles guilty of lawlessness. A good example of Henry showing no favouritism at all is when a very good friend of his, the Earl of Oxford visited him for Henry only to fine him lb 15,000 (a substantial amount of money in those days) for keeping a private army.

Empson and Dudley were two very important figures in Henry's moneymaking. They were his two chief tax collectors. They would take money from people whatever it took. They would enforce "loans" on people (these were never given back) on a system called Morton's fork.

This means that if the person had an extravagant, expensive house then they obviously had quite a lot of money and could pay a "loan" to the king. However if someone had a modest house they were obviously saving up and had lots of funds to spare. However Henry was very clever with this money and did not spend it on extravagant clothes or jewellery, which made people a bit more understanding that he was doing it for the good of the country rather than for his own, personal wealth. Henry's foreign policy was another one of his strengths. First he signed the treaty of Medina del Campo that secured Arthur, the heir to the throne the hand of Catherine of Aragon in marriage (after Arthur's death Henry V would marry her).

She was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. The Spanish were one of the biggest European powers at the time so this was a very powerful ally to have. Next he mobilised an army to attack the north of France. France was fighting Spain in the south at that time so the last thing they wanted was to be invaded from the north. So king Charles V was only too happy to pay Henry not to attack him in the treaty of Etap les in 1492. Then is 1503 he married his daughter, Margaret Tudor to the king of Scotland, James IV in the treaty of Ayto n.

Henry VII had a very long and successful reign. He had a heir to the throne. He founded the Tudor dynasty and fought of rebellions of Yorkists. He finished in good financial standing (he left lb 1,800,000 to his son Henry V, a huge amount of money at the time). He finished on good terms with the rest of Europe. He is very understated as he was one of the most successful kings ever and does not always have the recognition he deserves.