Tudor rose

• 1. Introduction

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  The Tudor rose is the heraldic floral emblem of England, and it carries a secret its creator very much intended to keep. When Henry VII married Elizabeth of York in January 1486, he fused the red rose of Lancaster with the white rose of York into a single double bloom. The gesture looked like a peace offering between two warring dynasties. In reality, historian Thomas Penn argues the entire rose mythology was largely an invention of Henry's own making. How did a political symbol get retrofitted with a history it never had? And how did that invented emblem end up on a 20-pence coin, the cap badge of a military intelligence corps, and the flags of two American cities?

• 2. A King's Invention

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  At the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Henry VII seized the crown from Richard III. In battle, Richard had fought under the banner of the boar; Henry fought under the dragon of his native Wales. The rose had almost nothing to do with it. Thomas Penn writes that the red rose described as Lancastrian barely existed before Henry VII came to power. Earlier Lancastrian kings used a rose only occasionally, and when they did, it was often gold rather than red. Henry VI, the king who presided over the country's descent into civil war, preferred the antelope as his badge. Penn notes that people living through the conflicts of the 15th century did not call them the Wars of the Roses. For roughly 25 years, from 1461 to 1485, the only royal rose in use was white, and it belonged to the Yorkist king Edward IV. Henry VII's father was Edmund Tudor, and his mother was Margaret Beaufort of the House of Lancaster. His marriage to Elizabeth of York gave him a dynastic claim to both houses, and he exploited that claim by casting himself as a peacemaker king. The red-and-white rose combination was the emblem of that performance, crafted after the war it claimed to symbolize.

• 3. Stone and Paint

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  When Arthur, Prince of Wales, died in 1502, his tomb in Worcester Cathedral displayed both roses together. The placement was deliberate, asserting Arthur's descent from Lancaster and York simultaneously. Henry VIII, who inherited the throne after his brother Arthur's death, was himself descended from the House of York through his mother, and he used the Tudor rose more freely than his cautious father had. Henry VIII had the legendary Round Table at Winchester Castle repainted during his reign. The table was then believed to be genuine, and its new paint scheme placed a Tudor rose at the centre. Henry VII had already turned Westminster Abbey into a showcase for the symbol. The Henry VII Chapel, built principally with the Tudor rose and the Beaufort portcullis as decorative motifs, served as a form of propaganda to anchor his claim to the throne. It was later used as the site of his own tomb.

• 4. Portraits and Compound Badges

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  Nicholas Hilliard's Pelican Portrait of Elizabeth I shows the Tudor rose badge in one of its more elaborate forms: slipped and crowned, meaning shown as a cutting with a stem and leaves beneath a crown. Since an Order in Council dated the 5th of November 1800, that slipped and crowned version has served as the official royal floral emblem of England. The Tudor rose could also be combined with other emblems by dividing it in half and joining it to half of a different badge, a technique called dimidiation. The Westminster Tournament Roll records a badge pairing Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon: a slipped Tudor rose conjoined with Catherine's personal badge, the Spanish pomegranate. Their daughter Mary I bore the same compound badge. After James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne as James I, his badge joined a Tudor rose with a Scottish thistle beneath a royal crown.

• 5. From Coin to Carrier

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  The crowned and slipped Tudor rose now functions as the plant badge of England in the same way the thistle represents Scotland, the leek represents Wales, and the shamrock represents Ireland. It appears on the dress uniforms of the Yeomen Warders at the Tower of London and of the Yeomen of the Guard. Between 1982 and 2008, it featured on the British 20-pence coin, and it remains part of the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom and the coat of arms of Canada. The badge of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom places the Tudor rose alongside the floral badges of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's current flagship aircraft carrier, carries a Tudor rose in her heraldic badge with colours divided vertically, inheriting that scheme from the early 20th century battleship of the same name. The Intelligence Corps of the British Army includes the Tudor rose in its cap badge. The Nautical Training Corps, a uniformed youth organisation founded in Brighton in 1944, places a Tudor rose on the shank of an anchor with the motto "For God, Queen and Country".

• 6. Towns, Cities, and Across the Atlantic

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  The Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield displays the Tudor rose frequently, a consequence of Henry VIII granting the town its Royal Town status. Oxford carries the rose on its coat of arms, and VisitEngland, the country's tourist board, uses it as a symbol, albeit in a single colour. The town of Todmorden, historically split by the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire, used a half-red, half-white design known as the Border Rose. Across the Atlantic, the connection runs deeper than decoration. The borough of Queens in New York City carries a Tudor rose on its flag and seal. Annapolis, Maryland displays a Tudor rose alongside a thistle on its flag and seal. York, South Carolina is nicknamed The White Rose City; Lancaster, South Carolina is nicknamed The Red Rose City. York, Pennsylvania and Lancaster, Pennsylvania carry the same nicknames, with stylised roses in their emblems. The England national football team carries ten Tudor roses on its crest, and the old astronomical symbol for the asteroid 8 Flora, discovered in 1847, has been identified as the Rose of England.