House of Tudor

• 1. Introduction

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  The House of Tudor held the throne of England for 118 years, from 1485 to 1603, and produced some of the most dramatic, volatile, and consequential reigns in English history. Five monarchs carried the Tudor name: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Their story begins not in a palace but on a battlefield, with a Welsh adventurer's grandson seizing a crown by force of arms. What made this dynasty possible? Why did it nearly collapse multiple times under the weight of religious conflict, disputed succession, and royal obsession with heirs? And how did a line descended from an illegitimate branch of the royal family manage to bind England's warring factions together, break with the Catholic Church, and leave behind a legacy still visible in the British monarchy today?

• 2. A Claim Built on Sand

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  John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, was born of an illegitimate union between the 14th-century English prince John of Gaunt and his long-term mistress Katherine Swynford. Gaunt and Swynford eventually married in 1396, when Beaufort was 25. The church retroactively declared the Beauforts legitimate through a papal bull the same year, confirmed by Parliament in 1397. But Gaunt's son by his first wife, King Henry IV, issued a second proclamation recognising Beaufort legitimacy while simultaneously barring that line from the throne.

  Owen Tudor, Henry VII's paternal grandfather, added another unusual thread to the family's origins. He was a bodyguard for Catherine of Valois, widow of Henry V, who died in 1422. Evidence suggests the two were secretly married around 1428. Their son Edmund became Earl of Richmond on the 15th of December 1449 and married Lady Margaret Beaufort, the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt. Edmund died on the 3rd of November 1456. His widow Margaret, only 13 at the time, gave birth to the future Henry VII on the 28th of January 1457 at Pembroke Castle.

  The strongest legal claim to the throne was not Henry's at all but his wife's. Elizabeth of York, as the daughter of Edward IV and descendant of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, held the de facto heiress position of the House of York. Henry Tudor's title rested instead on conquest, on the Beaufort connection, and on the political skill of his mother, Lady Margaret, who forged alliances with discontented Yorkists while her son sheltered in Brittany. Two years after Richard III was crowned, Henry and his uncle Jasper sailed from the mouth of the Seine to the Milford Haven Waterway and defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field on the 22nd of August 1485.

• 3. Henry VII: The Consolidator

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  On the 18th of January 1486, at Westminster Abbey, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, honouring a pledge made three years earlier. They were third cousins, both great-great-grandchildren of John of Gaunt. The marriage combined the red rose of Lancaster with the white rose of York in the heraldic emblem known as the Tudor rose, a symbol that has been used by every English and then British monarch since.

  Henry and Elizabeth had seven children, four of whom survived early childhood: Arthur, Prince of Wales, born 1486 and died 1502; Henry, born 1491, who would reign as Henry VIII; Margaret, born 1489, who became Queen of Scots by marrying James IV; and Mary, born 1496, who briefly became Queen of France by marrying Louis XII.

  Foreign policy for Henry VII was primarily an instrument of dynastic security. His daughter Margaret's marriage to James IV of Scotland in 1503 was formalised through the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, signed in 1502. His son Arthur's marriage to Catherine of Aragon created an alliance with the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. When Arthur died four months after the wedding, Henry acquired a papal dispensation allowing his younger son to marry Arthur's widow, though he delayed acting on it.

  Henry went to war only twice: once in 1489 during the French-Breton War, and again in 1496-1497 in retaliation for Scottish support of the pretender Perkin Warbeck. Through strict monetary policy, he rebuilt the royal treasury, which had been drained by the Wars of the Roses, and left a considerable sum for his successor. He also eliminated rival claimants, including his first cousin once removed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and her son Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu.

• 4. Henry VIII and the Break with Rome

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  Henry VIII succeeded to the throne on the 22nd of April 1509 and married Catherine of Aragon on the 11th of June that same year. In his younger years he was described as tall, handsome, cultured, and generous, easy to be around and gentle in debate. The Henry familiar from portraits and popular memory belongs to his later life: obese, volatile, and notorious for cruelty.

  Catherine's first child was stillborn and her second, a son named Henry, Duke of Cornwall, died 52 days after birth. A surviving daughter, Mary, was born in 1516. As it became clear that Catherine would not produce a male heir, Henry asked his chief minister Cardinal Wolsey to seek an annulment from Rome. The Holy See resisted, under pressure from Catherine's nephew Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Wolsey died at Leicester on the 29th of November 1530, en route to the Tower of London, spared from the execution that would otherwise have awaited him.

  Thomas Cromwell, appointed chief minister around 1532, oversaw the parliamentary legislation that severed England from Rome, declared Henry Supreme Head of the Church of England, and enabled the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer to void the marriage to Catherine. She spent her last three years under a form of house arrest.

  Anne Boleyn gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, on the 7th of September 1533. Anne was arrested in 1536 along with six courtiers and charged with high treason and incest, including alleged relations with her own brother George Boleyn. She was executed in May 1536. Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, produced a son who would reign as Edward VI; Jane died of puerperal fever shortly after the birth.

  Henry's fourth marriage, to the Protestant German noblewoman Anne of Cleves in 1540, was arranged partly through a flattering portrait by the court painter Hans Holbein the Younger. Henry rode to Rochester to meet her on the 1st of January 1540. The marriage failed quickly; Anne agreed to a peaceful annulment and received a large settlement that included Richmond Palace and Hever Castle. Henry blamed Cromwell for the match and had him beheaded on the 28th of July 1540.

  The fifth wife, Catherine Howard, niece of the Catholic Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was executed on the 13th of February 1542 for alleged infidelity with Thomas Culpeper. Her death destroyed the last serious Catholic hopes for national reconciliation. Henry's sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, survived him. She helped reconcile Henry with his daughters Mary and Elizabeth and fostered a working relationship between herself and the young Edward.

• 5. Edward VI and the Brief Reign of Lady Jane Grey

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  Henry VIII died on the 28th of January 1547, leaving a nine-year-old son to inherit the throne. Edward VI never had the chance to rule independently. His uncle Edward Seymour created himself Duke of Somerset on the 15th of February 1547 and seized control of the Privy Council.

  Somerset aimed to unite England and Scotland by marrying Edward to the young Mary, Queen of Scots. He led an army to Scotland, where at the Battle of Pinkie on the 10th of September 1547 the English won a decisive victory. Despite this, Queen Mary was smuggled to France and betrothed to the future King Francis II.

  The Crown's publication of the Book of Common Prayer in 1549 provoked the Prayer Book Rebellion, particularly fierce in Devon and Cornwall, where many people spoke only the Cornish language and could not follow English services. Somerset was eventually removed from power by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who created himself Duke of Northumberland. Northumberland ordered churches stripped of Catholic symbolism and oversaw a revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1552.

  Edward VI died on the 6th of July 1553 at the age of 15. Before his death, under Northumberland's pressure, he named his cousin Lady Jane Grey as successor to prevent the Catholic Lady Mary from inheriting. Jane was 16 and had married Northumberland's son, Lord Guildford Dudley, on the 21st of May 1553. She reportedly fainted when she learned she had been named queen and was made queen on the 10th of July. Nine days later, her father the Duke of Suffolk persuaded her to relinquish the throne to Mary, whose popular support was overwhelming. Jane and Lord Guildford were beheaded on the 12th of February 1554. She was only 17 years old.

• 6. Mary I: Faith and Its Costs

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  Mary I married Philip of Spain at Winchester Cathedral on the 25th of July 1554. Philip had become king jure uxoris and found Mary unattractive, spending minimal time with her. Despite believing herself pregnant several times during her five-year reign, she never bore children.

  In her determination to restore England to Catholicism, Mary ordered more than 280 Protestants burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions between 1554 and 1558. Charles Dickens later wrote that as Bloody Queen Mary this woman had become famous, and as Bloody Queen Mary she would ever be remembered with horror and detestation.

  Her popularity collapsed further when England lost Calais, the last English territory on French soil, to Francis, Duke of Guise, in January 1558. Yet Mary's reign was not without tangible achievements. She introduced a new coining system that would remain in use until the 18th century, opened trade relations with Russia by welcoming the first Russian ambassador to England, explored commercial potential in Russian, African, and Baltic markets, and took steps to counter the currency debasements and budgetary deficits left by her predecessors. Mary died on the 17th of November 1558 at the age of 42.

• 7. Elizabeth I: A Dynasty's Last Chapter

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  Elizabeth I was staying at Hatfield House when she learned of Mary's death, and rode to London to the cheers of both the ruling class and the common people. Her path to the throne had been gruelling: her mother Anne Boleyn was executed when Elizabeth was a child; Henry VIII had declared her illegitimate before restoring her to the line of succession in the Third Succession Act of 1543; and she was imprisoned in the Tower of London following Wyatt's rebellion in 1554.

  At her coronation in January 1559, most of the Catholic bishops appointed by Mary refused to perform the service in English. The relatively minor Bishop of Carlisle, Owen Oglethorpe, eventually performed the ceremony; but when he attempted the traditional Catholic portions, Elizabeth left. The Act of Uniformity 1558 and Act of Supremacy 1558, known collectively as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, established compulsory Sunday church attendance and imposed an oath on clergymen recognising the Church of England's independence from Rome.

  Elizabeth never married, though she came closest between 1579 and 1581, when she was courted by Francis, Duke of Anjou, son of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. By 1581, when she was forty-eight, she acknowledged that bearing children was no longer possible.

  Multiple plots targeted her reign. In 1569, the Rebellion of the Northern Earls sought to replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1571, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk planned to marry Mary and install her as queen; the plot was discovered and Howard was beheaded. In 1601, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex attempted to raise London against the government; the city refused to rebel, and Essex was executed. Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis in 1570, excommunicating Elizabeth and releasing her subjects from loyalty to her.

  Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed at Fotheringhay Castle on the 8th of February 1587 after Elizabeth signed the death warrant, persuaded of Mary's complicity in plots against her. The following year, Philip II of Spain launched the Spanish Armada, commanded by Alonso de Guzmán El Bueno, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia. The Spanish fleet outnumbered the English by a wide margin, but was defeated through a combination of bad weather, poor logistics, and the skills of Francis Drake and Charles Howard, 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham. That summer at Tilbury, Elizabeth declared she had the body of a weak and feeble woman but the heart and stomach of a king.

  Elizabeth died childless at Richmond Palace on the 24th of March 1603. Her chief minister William Cecil had been corresponding with James VI of Scotland, great-grandson of Margaret Tudor, and James's succession went unopposed. He was a great-grandson of Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor, who had married James IV of Scotland in 1503 under the Treaty of Perpetual Peace that Henry VII had negotiated a century before.