At this moment of utmost need, fortune once again smiled on Henry Tudor. Lord Stanley and his brother Sir William had brought a substantial army of their own followers to the battle. Hitherto – torn between their allegiance to York and Stanley’s position as Lady Margaret Beaufort’s husband – their forces had held aloof. But now Sir William Stanley charged to rescue his nephew by marriage.
That carried the day. Richard III, despite overwhelming odds, fought on, cutting down Henry Tudor’s standard-bearer and coming within reach of Henry himself. But finally numbers told. Richard III was unhorsed, run through and hacked to death. His naked, muddy and mutilated body was slung across a horse and put on public display before receiving a hasty burial. Meantime, his battle crown, which had fallen off in the struggle and become caught in a hawthorn bush, was retrieved and put on the victor’s head by Lord Stanley.
Henry Tudor, the only surviving and improbably remote heir of Lancaster, was king.
Events now moved at breakneck speed. On 27 August 1485 Henry VII, as he now was, entered London and offered up his battle standards at St Paul’s, on 30 October he was crowned, and a week later, on 7 November, he met parliament. Its first act was to confirm his title to the throne, though without going into awkward details about his exact hereditary claim, while its last, just before it was prorogued on 10 December, was to petition him to marry Elizabeth of York. ‘Which marriage,’ the speaker declared, ‘they hoped God would bless with a progency of the race of kings, to the great satisfaction of the whole realm.’10
Five weeks later, the deed was done.
The story of how Henry Tudor survived against the odds, and won his throne and his bride against even greater odds, is one of the world’s great adventure stories. It made possible our Henry’s very existence. But, in the fullness of time, it would also present him with a problem. For his relations with his father were to be complex at best. Yet he could not deny the greatness of his achievement. Indeed, even forty years later he would take him as the yardstick against which to measure his own record.
As well he might. His father had won his throne in battle, in man-to-man combat with his rival. And he would defend it in battle twice more. It was the ultimate test of kingship – and of manhood.
Would Henry be able to do more? Would he be able to do as much?
Notes - CHAPTER 2: ANCESTORS
1. D. R. Carlson, ‘The Latin Writings of John Skelton’, Studies in Philology 88 (1991) IV, 1–125, 40.
2. J. E. Powell and K. Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (1968), 363.
3. GEC XII ii, 905 n.g.
4. Vergil A, 135.
5. Great Chronicle, 212 and 431n.; J. Warkworth, Chronicle of the first thirteen years of Edward IV, ed. J. O. Halliwell, CS old series 10 (1839), 11.
6. C. L. Schofield, Edward IV, 2 vols (1923) I, 546; H. Ellis, ed., Original Letters illustrative of English History, 1st s. 3 vols (1824), 2nd s. 4 vols (1827), 3rd s. 4 vols (1846), I, 140; OxfordDNB, ‘Millyng’.
7. Schofield, Edward IV I, 546; Great Chronicle, 213; GEC XI, 545. 373
8. J. Bruce, ed., History of the Arrival of Edward IV, CS old series 1 (1838), 17.
9. A. Wroe, Perkin (2003), 471.
10. RP VI, 278.
THE WEDDING OF HENRY’S PARENTS was followed by scenes of popular rejoicing. ‘The people,’ Bernard André writes in his contemporary life of Henry VII, ‘constructed bonfires far and wide to show their gladness and the City of London was filled with dancing, singing and entertainment.’1 At last, and after so long, it was possible to hope for peace.
But the marriage was only the first step to the union of the roses. To complete it, the royal couple needed children: the ‘progeny of the race of kings’ to which the speaker had looked forward in his petition of 10 December 1485.
And, bearing in mind the uncertainty of the times, they needed them quickly. Here again Henry VII’s extraordinary luck held. Among his immediate predecessors, Henry VI had had to wait almost eight years for a son, and even the strapping Edward IV for six. Elizabeth of York, instead, gave Henry VII his son and heir within eight months.
He was named Arthur, and the king idolized him. Arthur was unique. Matchless. Perfect in body and mind. Nothing was too good for him, and no limit was placed on the hopes invested in him. He would be more honourably brought up than any king’s son in England before. And, in time, he would outdo them all. Never, in short, have so many eggs been placed in one basket.
In time, his father’s unapologetic favouritism towards his elder brother would be deeply invidious to Henry. But, in a backhanded way, it gave him space. He was never allowed to share Arthur’s glory. But equally, Arthur was never on his back either. Nor was his father. It was a quid pro quo that was to have profound effects for both Henry’s upbringing and his character.
All queens, of course, were expected to bear children: that – as many of Henry’s wives would find to their cost – was their job. But in 1486 the pressures on Elizabeth of York had been particularly intense, as André makes clear in his account: ‘Both men and women prayed to Almighty God that the king and queen would be favoured with offspring, and that eventually a child might be conceived and a new prince be born, so that they might heap up further joys upon their present delights.’
The prayers were answered. And sooner than anybody dared hope. For ‘the fairest queen’ became pregnant almost immediately: non multis post diebus (‘after only a few days’).
The celebrations for Elizabeth of York’s pregnancy were, André claims, almost greater than those for the wedding itself. Everyone, high and low, in court and country and church and state joined in:
Then a new happiness took over the happiest kingdom, great enjoyment filled the queen, the church experienced perfect joy, while huge excitement gripped the court and an incredible pleasure arose over the whole country.2
For