Henry VII (1485 – 1509) – 8/10
Today, I will be doing the first in my monarch-rating series - dealing with Henry VII.
Things were never going to be easy for Henry VII. He was born into the context of the Wars of the Roses – a conflict of around 50 years between the ‘Yorkist’ and ‘Lancastrian’ claimants to the English throne. Henry VII had a weak claim to the throne. Born in relative obscurity in Pembrokeshire, he had some royal blood on both sides – but not much. In fact, it was not self-evident that he was head of the ‘Lancastrian’ camp – let alone the obvious legitimate king. When he landed in Pembrokeshire in 1485, with the help of the French, he gained in support – but only because of his opposition to the relatively unpopular Richard III. At the Battle of Bosworth, the safe bet was on Richard – who had a far larger army than Henry. However, due to Richard’s unpopularity, several key nobles and their troops either defected or refused to enter their troops into the battle on Richard’s side at the battle. As a result, Richard lost his life and the throne. This shows just how very contingent Henry VII’s victory and the rise of the Tudors was. Henry VII and most of England, including several key nobles, knew as much – it was this legacy of questionable legitimacy that would come to define the early Tudor period. What makes Henry VII an effective ruler was how he overcame the sort of political instability which had plagued England for the past 100 years.
From the start, it was clear he was not safe. There were several structural and personal problems that made it uncomfortably likely he would be deposed. Right from the start in 1486, a pretender attempted to claim the throne for himself. Lambert Simnel, an Oxford carpenter, purported to be (both!) the now dead ‘Princes in the Tower’ and gained the support of powerful noble Yorkists – most notably the Earl of Lincoln. Although Lincoln and Simnel were outnumbered and defeated – this showed Henry the scale of the task that lay ahead of him.
There are several ways in which Henry successfully consolidated power and overcame his structurally difficult position. The first is his successful use of propaganda to provide a narrative of why he should be considered legitimate. This is impressive all things considering. The first, most basic step was his marriage to Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth had a pretty good claim to the throne – she was the daughter of Edward IV, who was King before Richard III and the two dead ‘Princes in the Tower’. That he married her was significant in two respects. Firstly, it brought legitimacy to a King who was short on it. For many, Elizabeth should have been the Queen after the deaths of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ – she being their sister. Secondly, it created the appearance of some sort of natural synthesis between the houses of Lancaster and York – epitomised by the use of the Tudor Rose, combining the red and white roses of the Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties.
Henry scored another propoganda victory, this time with foreign policy. Henry’s foreign policy was largely unsuccessful, but nevertheless was a domestic political success – creating an image of a warlike King able to defend England’s interests in France. To understand this, it is worth noting a few things about the nature of English finances and the relative power of English Kings at this point of English history. For the past 400 years or so, English Kings had been able to compete against cross-channel rivals, often controlling large swathes of French land. However, since the reign of Henry VI, power and wealth had diminished relative to continental rivals. England’s population and economic resources were paltry relative to France – giving it a very poor base to raise an army on. Yet at the same time, because of the successes of previous Kings against the French, there was an expectation placed upon English monarchs to do well against the French in combat.
As it often does, success would breed legitimacy – vitally important for Henry. It also would demonstrate the military prowess of the King – something invaluable in deterring domestic support for claimants. As a result, Henry VII decided to fight the French. However, Henry also recognised longlasting, more total war would be inimical to his aims. With French military power far outstripping the English, there was little hope or reason to want to pursue a continuance of the traditional Anglo-French rivalry. War could also be costly – sapping his potential for raising an army – and potentially draw the ire of foreign powers capable of giving claimants to the throne political support. This could make his position as King far less certain. It is for this reason that Henry VII went to war, but in a restrained and mainly performative way. Henry VII duly went to war with the French - specifically after the French tried to annex Brittany in 1488. This was good timing - the Breton annexation was certainly a French overreach that drew in an angry anti-French coalition. In doing this, ensured he went to war in alliance with competent allies - both the Burgundians and the Spanish - and so avoided the sole wrath of the French. Although Henry could not save Brittany, he did score somewhat of a propaganda victory. The war achieved most of his domestic political objectives – to his subjects, he had been seen to defend England against the French. He was able to gain a substantial £160,000 from Parliament – indicating a willingness for the influential gentry class, as well as most nobles to side with him.
However, Henry also miscalculated slightly – a second pretender, Perkin Warbeck, gained the support of both the French and the Habsburg Burgundians. Henry’s choice to both go to war with France, and also to make peace earlier than the Habsburgs had made both frustrated with him, and so both gave Warbech willing support. Warbeck – who claimed to be Richard, the youngest of the ‘Princes of the Tower’ – attempted twice to invade England, failing in both cases. In this case, I think Henry’s success was of his own doing – as we will see Henry had built an effective military by milking every financial source available to him for just this sort of eventuality.
Structural Political Reform and Finance
The final aspect of Henry’s successful strategy – that of strengthening the financial and structural political position of the monarchy reveals a subtle genius. This was done in two ways – reducing the power of the nobility and raising high levels of finance within England. The two of these combined created a sturdy political framework which made practically definitely definite long-term Tudor rule.
Firstly, from the very beginning, Henry became suspicious of leading noble magnates. This was reasonable – after all the decisive role leading magnates played in politics had been the undoing of many a recent King. To name a few examples, Richard III was defeated in no small part by supposedly subservient magnates – disloyalty more or less caused his defeat at Bosworth – and the notorious ‘Earl of Warwick’, whose shifting allegiances between Henry VI and Edward IV earned him the epithet ‘Kingmaker’. What’s more, the Earl of Lincoln had been more or less responsible for giving Lambert Simnel’s delusions any chance of success. Given Henry’s relative illegitimacy, it was far from inconceivable that powerful magnate revolt would end his reign. As a result, Henry aimed to curtail the power of magnates – but in a way that would also ensure continued loyalties from them.
To do this, as David Scott, a historian, argues Henry – foreshadowing a similar strategy in France undertaken by Louis XIV 200 years later – attempted to move noble power closer to court. Henry VII prioritised the integration of gentry members into positions traditionally reserved for magnates – thereby increasing dependence of important political players on his person and reducing noble power. The two most clear examples of this process were the King’s promotion of both Empson and Dudley. These two individuals became politically central to Henry’s reign - doing extensive amounts of administrative work for Henry, as well as advising him on his council. They represented a broader shift which Henry set in motion – that of an increasingly centralised political system where the monarch had the decisive role in the making and unmaking powerful individuals. Henry also tried to rely less on anyone – doing immense amounts of administrative and bureaucratic work himself – in order to ensure he was better placed than anyone to know the ins-and-outs of potential political problems and ensure no one was getting strong at his expense through his patronage.
This went hand in hand with another trend – that of increasing financial efficiency in central government. Very important administrative and bureaucratic reforms were initiated by Henry VII. The creation of the groundwork for an embryonic state was done under Henry VII. In the wake of the loss of France, several structural changes had taken place so that the King was under pressure to make changes to how he raised finance. Most importantly, the loss of French territories had a complex and financially detrimental effect of England. Not only had the English lost a great deal of taxable land, the consolidation of France by the French Kings also had foreign policy implications. The French now had a taxable base that far outstripped the English one – and so war with them was increasingly impractical. In many respects, England became a secondary power, unable to make meaningful advances against the French and Habsburgs. However, due to the way in which the King had traditionally raised finance, becoming a minor power created financial problems as well. Kings had increasingly relied on Parliament to raise income during the Hundred Years’ War. Gentry members tended to recognise the necessity of war with France to defend English possessions on the continent - and so voted funds. However, war with France was no longer realistic. English Kings were reliant on regular finance being voted through by Parliament - but because war was now impractical, Parliament would refuse to vote funds. Although Henry had raised money once for the aforementioned excursion to Brittany, the King - as with many of his successors - recognised the limitations of English war and so could not rely on regular subsidies from Parliament.
Henry sought out a new solution. Instead of relying on parliament, Henry made efficient the King’s existing sources of finance. It is worth noting the difference between Parliamentary and non-Parliamentary finance here. For monarchs before 1640, there were generally two ways of getting money. The first was through parliament voting through taxes. The benefit of this was that it was usually guaranteed to raise considerable sums. However, MPs would not chose to burden themselves with taxes unless they thought it was justified – and this was not often forthcoming. The second way was a combination of private sources of income for the monarch. This included the use of crown lands – i.e. lands that Henry VII had personal ownership of – which monarchs would gain revenue from, or in tough times could sell. The monarch also had several powers – known as prerogatives – that allowed him to raise finance. These were legal ways of the King to increase his revenue without consulting Parliament. In both these areas – with crown lands and prerogatives – Henry squeezed and squeezed.
He squeezed in two ways. First, Henry created something that we would recognise as an embryonic centralised bureaucracy – making detailed records about inflows and outflows. He would keep his money in places only he knew, and merged revenues gained from different sources to better know what he received, and how he should spend it – by his death 80% of revenues were to be centrally held. The second thing Henry did was to press his legal rights in an almost tyrannical manner. The most infamous example of this was the ‘council learned in law’, headed by his two chief ministers – Empson and Dudley – that sought to draw in every pound that could be construed as legally his. This often meant using the privileged legal position of the king – who was meant to uphold justice – in a way that clearly contravened convention. Fines for not obeying archaic and often strange laws, the use of detested ‘Wards’ - where the crown leached off noble lands if the head of the family died before the heir was of age – as well as the selling of pardons for often random and arbitrary imprisonment created considerable resentment. Despite this, Henry’s reign was undeniably a financial success – Henry VII raised a massive quantity of money, around £110,000 a year.
Having finance independent of Parliament was a real success –Henry VII was able to have the political and financial flexibility to react to potential future threats. It gave him resources far outstripping local magnates, allowing a slow restoration of de facto control of localities to the monarchy. It also made him look a controlled, strong and effective monarch. This image of a hardy and wily political operator is one Henry was keen to convey to his subjects. Henry was not lavish with this money, but not frugal either – instead using it in a targeted and measured way, as well as slowly building up a £1 million stockpile. He generally invested cleverly, a special focus was securing his legitimacy. To give an example, he spent £30,000 in building a private chapel in Westminster Abbey that would act to house his body when dead - a good way of suring up his legitimacy.
Despite the successes in raising money, and his shrewdness in spending it, we must not also understate the luck Henry VII had. The resentment caused by his methods could have conceivably lead to widespread support for alternative political leaders – when Henry died in 1509, his two councillors were quickly reprimanded and executed. It was resentment by key nobles, after all, that had allowed Henry VII to depose Richard III in the first place. Ultimately, Henry VII probably pushed a bit too far – creating resentment on a level that need not exist. A similar attempt to push the feudal prerogatives to their upper limits by a later King – Charles I – would spell disaster for not just the king, but the whole monarchy. Although considerable political and ideological development had taken place over the 150 years between their two reigns, the similarities in the sort of resentment – that of a monarch overstepping their mark – should not be ignored just because Henry VII ultimately achieved his objectives. Henry created tension where there need not have been any – and he should be judged. That being said, Henry did place himself in a position – in which he had considerable economic resources and little reliance on magnates – where he could better deal with this sort of threat. In this way, we should judge Henry’s financial legacy positively, but not rosily – he did make mistakes, and was by no means infallible.
Conclusion
In conclusion, then, Henry VII was largely an effective political operator who came from a relatively weak position. Illegitimacy dogged his reign and dispelling threats to his dynasty therefore constituted a reasonable, just priority for him. He effectively built up both an image and an arsenal that would be able to cope with most threats to his long-term political survival – and despite some miscalculations – used a wily political instinct to deal with structural and political problems.
I think there is a tendency to underestimate both Henry VII and his political significance for English history. The pivot away from France, the creation of new bureaucratic structures and new political stability within England was necessary for an England we recognise – one with a centralised state, as well as one that was able to conceive of itself as essentially different from Europe.
For these reasons, I think Henry VII is a man not to underestimate - an effective King who I rate 8/10
Yours,
WFF
Bibliography:
Leviathan, the Rise of Britain as a World Power: David Scott
http://www.thinkinghistory.co.uk/Issues/IssueHenryVIIShadows.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/554405?seq=16#metadata_info_tab_contents
https://thehistoryofengland.co.uk/resource/henry-viis-hatchet-men-empson-and-dudley/