House of Tudor

The dynasty founded by Henry Tudor, later crowned Henry VII, that ruled England and Ireland from 1485 to 1603. Their 118-year reign must be counted one of the most dramatic and colourful in the history of England, and is most clearly highlighted by the transition of England from being a Catholic nation to one that is Anglican, unique among the Reformation churches in which the monarch is "the Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy."

There were five Tudor monarchs:

Henry VII, 1485-1509,

Henry VIII, 1509-1547,

Edward VI, 1547-1553,

Mary I, 1553-1558,

Elizabeth I, 1558-1603.

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For three decades before the rise of the Tudor dynasty, England was immersed in one of the bloodiest continuous series of wars ever seen in the history of the nation for the throne between the House of Lancaster and the House of York that later historians call the War of the Roses (from the emblems of the two houses, the red rose of Lancaster and the white of York). When King Henry V died in 1422, his widow remarried, secretly, Owen Tudor, a Welsh squire. How they met remains a mystery. From the union came two sons, Jasper and Edmund Tudor, who were thus considered bastards but half-brothers of King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster. Henry Tudor (later King Henry VI) was the son of Edmund, who died of the plague while languishing in a Yorkist prison. His mother, Margaret Beaufort, just fourteen at the time of Henry's birth, would have no more children. Caught up in the chaos of the war, Henry was forced to flee England with his uncle Jasper when he was 14; there to seek refuge from any king or prince who would allow them to lap from the drips and drops of kindness that leak from the seams of their diplomatic and political games to keep their pawns in play.

In 1485 Henry decided he did not want to die "the slow death of endless, fugitive begging around the courts of Europe." He was going home to make a claim on the crown or die trying. Back in England, Richard III had, two years preciously, usurped the throne from the young Edward V, of whom he was the regent. Edward and his brother Richard were taken into the Tower of London; afterwards they disappeared and no one had heard of them ever since. Arriving in the westernmost end of Wales on Sunday 7 August, Henry marched east, gathering support as he went. Two weeks later his forces met Richard III's in the Battle of Bosworth Common. With an undecided agent piling in on his side at the last minute, Henry scored a resounding victory. Richard III was battered to death, with such violence his helmet drove into his skull. Henry marched on to London, and on 30 October was crowned King Henry VII, the first Tudor king. By marrying Elizabeth of York, and by redacting the genealogy, he would claim that he had united the two houses that had been at war for so long.