11. The early Tudor England. Henry VII

In 1485, a different Britain was slowly to develop out of the wild and passionate times of the Middle Ages. The Wars of the Roses had ended and it was time for harmony. The arts were encour­aged, the church was fairly treated, and the sick and the poor were regarded with compassion, though poor country people were cold in winter, ate rough food, and slept in huts and sheds. Even nobles had to live a rough life. Great lords and ladies had no privacy; their christenings, marriages, funerals, and sometimes even their deathbeds were public. There were also such public shows as executions, hangings, burnings, acted slowly out in front of crowds. But new times had come. A most glorious period in English history had started. It had begun with the Tudor rule in the country.

On 22 August, 1485, a new dynasty was born. Henry Tudor, the victor at Bosworth Field, became King Henry VII of England. He was born on 28 January, 1457, at Pembroke Castle. He was the only son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond (c. 1430-56). He was very much a child of the civil War of the Roses, for his father had been taken by the Yorkists in the summer of 1456 and died a prisoner in Carmarthen Castle. When Henry VI was restored to his throne, Henry was brought to the Lancastrian court. Richard Ill's usurpation of the throne in June 1483 had antagonised many of the York­ist nobility and subsequent rumours of the murders of Edward V and his brother brought Henry nearer the throne. He gained the throne when he defeated and his forces killed Richard III at Bosworth. This battle ensured a Lancastrian victory in the Wars of the Roses. To gain the support of Yorkists and to strengthen his claim to the throne, Henry married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, of the House of York (1465-1503). She was the eldest daughter of Ed­ward IV. In such a way Henry VII who was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 30 Octo­ber, 1485, united 'the white rose and the red' and launched England upon a century of peace. England was moving into a period of unprecedented growth and social change.

By 1485, the kingdom had begun to recover from the demographic catastrophe of the Black Death and the agricultural depression of the late 14th century. The major obstacle to strong monarchy was the willingness of the nobil­ity to take advantage of weak kingship, although in Henry VII and Elizabeth of York nobility faced clever and determined rulers. The power of the nobility had been weakened by loss of life and property in the Wars of the Roses, but it was still considerable. Henry VII was able to combine financial and political policies. During the course of his reign, about two-thirds of the great nobility found them­selves dependent on the king's mercy for mis­deeds they had committed. At best, if these great families offended the king, he could force them to pay heavy fines, and Henry was also able to enforce the Statute of Livery and Maintenance, according to which the nobility were forbidden to keep private armies. Such laws had existed before, but it needed a strong king to enforce them.

The Yorkist revolts continued until 1497, but Henry restored order after the Wars of the Roses by the Star Chamber and achieved independence from Parliament by amassing a private fortune through confiscations. Henry succeeded in crushing the independence of the nobility by means of a policy of forced fines. His Chancellor, Cardinal Morton, was made responsible for the col­lection of these fines (two of Henry's principal tax collectors, Empsom and Dudley were executed by Henry VIII), and they were en­forced by the privy councillors. This form of taxation became known as Morton's Fork, the dilemma being that, if a subject liable for tax­ation lived an extravagant lifestyle, obviously they could afford to pay the fine; if they lived austerely (строго, аскетично), they should have sufficient funds saved with which to pay.

Henry was determined to make the monar­chy rich and strong. He reclaimed royal lands that had been lost since the reign of Henry V and seized the estates of men who had op­posed him in war or had died without heirs.

Henry's aim was to make the Crown finan­cially independent, and the lands and the fines he took from the old nobility helped him do this. Henry also raised taxes for wars, which he then did not fight. He never spent money unless he had to. He was careful to keep the friendship of the merchant and lesser gentry classes. Like him they wanted peace and pros­perity. He created new nobility from among them, and men unknown before now became Henry's statesmen. But they all knew that their rise to importance was completely de­pendent on the Crown. He also encouraged the spread of education by importing French scholars who helped to create the English Renaissance of the Tudor period.

Henry VII's dynasty was re­spected in Europe for his eldest son, Arthur, to marry the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. When Arthur died in 1502, the Spanish royal family was keen that Catherine should remarry the younger of Henry's sons, the future Henry VIII. Henry's daughter mar­ried King James IV of Scotland⁵, a tradition­al means of attempting to secure good rela­tions between England and Scotland. Despite Henry VII's desire for wealth, particularly in the last years of his reign, he maintained a splendid court to indicate to the nobility at home and rulers abroad that the Tudor dynas­ty was the established royal house of England.

He died on 21 April, 1509, at Richmond, Surrey, and was buried at Westminster Abbey. Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster Abbey has become a sumptuous mausoleum for the Tu­dor family.