Loading summary
Transcript58 lines
- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home? Or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward/subscribe
- [00:35]
BetterHelp Advertiser
this is an ad by BetterHelp.
- [00:37]
Dan Snow
Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go?
- [00:46]
BetterHelp Advertiser
Take a breath. You're not alone. Let's talk about what's going on. Counseling helps you sort through the noise with with qualified professionals and online therapy makes it convenient. See if it's for you. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy and let life feel better.
- [01:07]
Blue Apron Advertiser
Mom, I saw Dylan's dad make dinner. Like actually cook and it was straight fire. He said it was Blue Apron assemble and Bake. All the ingredients showed up pre chopped and he just laid it out on a baking sheet and no cap. Dinner was on the table in like 25 minutes. Apparently it's chef designed and it has like over 40 grams of protein. That's a lot, right? So maybe we try it. Just saying. You can be the next Dylan's dad. Blue Apron get $50 off your first two orders plus free shipping with code STIR50. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com terms for more.
- [01:37]
Acast Advertiser
Hey listeners. Meet Russell.
- [01:39]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Hey.
- [01:40]
Acast Advertiser
Russell just launched a fitness app and he needed to get the word out to busy professionals looking to stay fit. So I turned to acast.
- [01:47]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
I used their Smart Recommendations feature to easily find shows that talk about health and fitness. Booking sponsorships through their platform was a breeze. And just like that, my app was in their ears during their morning run.
- [01:58]
Acast Advertiser
Sounds like a smart move, Russell. How's business looking now?
- [02:01]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Sweat is pouring and so are the installs.
- [02:04]
Acast Advertiser
Spread the word about your business with podcast ads on Acast. Start today at go acast.com advertise.
- [02:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from and Berlin to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. At around 11pm on 21 April 1509, Henry VII drew his final breath. He died in the royal bedchamber at Richmond. Richmond, the stylish Renaissance palace, had been built from 1498 after a fire devastated the earlier Sheen palace, named after the aristocratic title Henry had held during his long period of exile in Brittany, before he attempted the audacious gamble of fighting Richard III for the English throne. The rising of Richmond palace out of Sheen's ashes and symbolized Henry VII's rise. It was an astonishing and improbable story. In 1485, when he, Henry, Earl of Richmond, landed and marched to Bosworth, he was essentially a foreigner of little importance, a largely forgotten exile. No English King since 1066 had less experience of England than he did, or less training in the rigors of nobility and kingship. He'd grown up in Wales only once, briefly been to England. He had no experience of governing, no training as a prince, none of the usual aristocratic connections born of land holding and lordship, neither wealth nor land, and had spent 14 years as a captive. At his death 24 years later, he, Henry VII, was the first king since 1422 to pass power to his chosen heir, who would go on to rule without challenge. The achievement was huge, but the price was also vast. It took a lifetime, a reign of constant, relentless struggle. It meant never settling, never relaxing, always being on guard against the next threat and the next. It changed his strategy, his character, his appearance. It ground him down. But he had pulled off the virtually impossible. He had established a new dynasty. Dr. Sean Cunningham, head of Medieval Records at the National Archives, has written the new Penguin Monarch biography of Henry VII and joins me to discuss this extraordinary and unlikely reign. Doctor Sean Cunningham, welcome back to Not Just the Tudors.
- [05:01]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Hello, Susanna. Very pleased to be here.
- [05:03]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, congratulations on your new book. What an achievement it is to. To have written about a long and complex reign in a very short number of words.
- [05:14]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
I suppose that's the format of these books to try and get these stories across, simply because I think simplifying often gives you deeper insight into the things that really matter or the things that stand out as being most important in that period. So it's been an interesting exercise in measuring what really mattered to Henry VII and what really influenced his life.
- [05:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And it's a beautifully clear little book and I highly recommend it to everyone. One thing that really came out for me that you make as a substantial point was this idea that Henry VII's reign was one of unremitting struggle. And both we need to recognize the scale of his achievement, but also that the transformation over his lifetime and in the way he ruled is a response to that struggle.
- [06:06]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
That's right. I think in the past, many things have presented Henry as a man in control of his own destiny and that he could basically have a clean sweep of government and think about how the king sits in ruling the country. But this story of a usurper who comes to the throne with no experience, very few friends and a lot of enemies still in place, both within England and around Europe, that pressure is there from the start and that really constrains his options. So I think a lot of the things which we see as innovation or development are actually this response to the pressure he's feeling and the constraint on his rule. And that really changes the dynamic of why things happen the way they do. And you spot these very small periods of less intense pressure or sometimes a kind of joyful release where things look like they've been overcome and then the next thing comes along straight away. So it's a rollercoaster, really, of waves of quite intense threat with some karma periods where he can build some preparations for the next thing, I guess. I'm sure he doesn't realize that this is the end of the threat he's facing. You can see the long connection between his enemies rolling off into the end of his life, really. So he's planning, at some point, he begins to plan for the future very much and to secure his heir on the throne. But for most of the reign it's a firefight just to stay in power, to be able to control his friends and resist these threats to his, his kingship.
- [07:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And so I think we'll come back to that theme again and again. But let's dial back to think about the beginnings and the fact that, as you say, he has Lancastrian royal blood in his veins. But it's sort of quite thin, it's obscure, isn't it?
- [08:00]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
That's right. I mean, he has royal connections through Henry VI and his father's side. So his father marries Henry V's widow, Henry vi's mother, as a kind of fairly obscure household squire. And the Tudors, in the sense of their connection to English royal power, come from that relationship. And Henry VI is quite favorable to Jasper and Edmund Tudor. So that's where his connection to the English nobility comes from. On his mother's side, obviously, Margaret Beaufort is a formidable figure. She's a well known figure in the period, but she also has a less distinct royal lineage than many other people of that kind of generation of English noblewomen. The Beauforts being originally illegitimate and then legitimized by Richard ii. But may or may not have been specifically barred from inheriting the throne because of that royal blood. So there isn't a very straightforward and direct connection to the Plantagenet lineage in either side of his family. And so to overcome that, his marriage to Elizabeth of York and her very strong Plantagenet Mortimer ancestry, it lends a lot of credibility to him personally and the children they will have. And it also draws in that network of old Yorkist loyalists who want to see Edward V crowned. But then, as Richard iii declares Edward IV's marriage invalid and all of those children illegitimate, Henry's view of the power of that Yorkist connection to bolster his own weak claim, it kind of gets merged together with his victory in battle as an example of divine providence. So he's fully convinced that God has given him this opportunity and he promotes that side of his success rather than the bloodline, because that is picked up quite quickly as a weak and insignificant rite compared to quite a lot of other nobles still around in England in 1485.
- [10:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And remind us of his childhood story.
- [10:03]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Yeah. So he is one of exile and dislocation. Obviously. He's born in the late 1450s, when the wars of the Roses are beginning to generate polarization. He's a very young child when the Battle of Towton happens and Edward IV comes to the throne. So his wardship is given over to the Herbert family and he does live for a short time, born in Pembroke Castle and lives in Raglan Castle and then also moves to the Herbert residences in the Welsh Marches. So Leinster and Wheelie Castle with Anne Devereux, who's Lord Herbert's wife. So he's really living in the Marches. That's his really only experience of England as a child to sort of the age of 10. And then the Lancastrian recovery in 1470 reunites him with his mother and that resurgence very briefly, of Lancastrian power. But how much Henry VI knows about that, how much he's an agent of recovering power, whether it's all in the hands of Warwick and Margaret of Anjou, who are only pulling the strings of government that's again, completely destroyed at the battles of Barnus and Tewkesbury in the spring of 1471. So Henry has to go overseas into exile with his uncle, Jasper Tudor, the last horribly tentative blood connection to the Lancastrian family. Edward IV wants, not necessarily to kill them, but he certainly wants to control what they might become as figureheads or magnets for other conspiracies against his own power. Obviously, he's seen his brother, the Duke of Clarence and his ally and friend, the Earl of Warwick, turncoat against the Yorkist regime in 1469-70. So switching political allegiance is very much a thing in this period. And the Tudor family sits within that story, but it's not a particularly strong one. But it could become so with the right kind of foreign backing. So Edward wants to control Henry and his uncle. They flee overseas to Brittany, which is a logical choice, but also quite an interesting choice in terms of maybe an alignment with identity and language, the safe haven because of the politics of Brittany being a semi independent state, resisting the attempts of the French state to absorb it into the French nation at this time. So Henry has a long exile from 1471 right through to 1483, and at the end of that 12 years, he's beginning to become more connected with England. Edward IV tried various ways to bring him back, either to marry him into the Yorkist nobility or to have a deal with Margaret Beaufort, his mother, to reintegrate the Tudors more slowly into the future of Yorkist power. But again, that's is upset a little by Richard III's seizure of the crown in June or May, April, May, June 1483. So Henry is still in exile, but suddenly the political shift that happens in England with Richard III becoming king, Edward V being disbarred from inheriting the crown and all his brothers and sisters declared to be bastards, that switches the focus back to Henry as the galvanising point of this Yorkist network of household and local officials who were expecting Edward V to become king, although a king underage, so a minor, but with guarantees that he would work his way through to adulthood, which Richard had sworn to uphold as protector of that kingship after Edward iv died in April 1483. So Henry really doesn't have any expectation of being a powerful figure. He's in Brittany as a guest, but pretty much not able to interact with England, not able to learn the basics of being a leader in England. Looking after estates, dealing with people, mastering the law to defend his rights, building up a network of servants and followers. He's really living a courtly life in Brittany and observing things and learning how to find a way through, I guess so beginning to trust, but also to distrust people. And it creates this character who is, on the one hand, very loyal to the people who are loyal to him, but also slightly reserved and observant and a real planner and somebody who holds onto things where opportunities arrive. So you can see the shaping of him in his exile, in what happens during his reign. And I think this sets the foundation for how that 23 years of kingship actually progresses. It's very much playing out of the opportunities and restrictions he felt when he was a child. And, well, it turns into a young man. He's in his mid to late 20s by the time he's got a real prospect of challenging Richard III from 1483 onwards. So it's an unusual, by any standards, training for kingship. For any kind of English nobleman of the Middle Ages who had royal aspirations or royal connections, their exposure to learning those skills would have been extremely different. And so Henry is a real outlier in terms of people who inherited the crown in Middle Ages.
- [15:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes. I mean, you say in your book that he's essentially a foreigner in 1485. And there's a lovely line you quote from a French chronicler, Philippe de Commynes, who wrote that Henry was a man, quote, without power, without money, without right to the crown of England and without any reputation but what his person and deportment obtained for him. So what we know happens with the founding of a Tudor dynasty, the victory at Bosworth, it's all, as you put it, a colossal gamble. Like, how improbable was his victory?
- [15:50]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
I think it was incredibly surprising, not least probably to him. I think he felt this was the last throw of the dice, really. He tried in October of 1483, with what we call Buckingham's Rebellion, to coordinate with this uprising against Richard III from the old Yorkist household members across the south of England. And he'd arrived too late from Brittany with a few mercenary ships and some soldiers. And really, that rebellion had petered out by the time he was even a factor in it. So 1483 was a disaster in terms of his opportunities, he might have felt he was crushed. 1485 becomes much more, I guess, of an achievable plan, achievable in that he can get into the country with a few, probably only 2 or 3,000 soldiers arriving with him, but then he can start to build an army as he marches through England and Wales to try and find a way to confront Richard III on the battlefield. And obviously, this isn't a gamble in isolation. This has been planned in communication with people like the Stanley family network and various other knights, Jasper Tudor, trying to revive his lordship and connection in South Wales. So people who have been either dormant in their loyalty to the Tudors or the Lancastrians through Richard III's reign, or people who have been persuaded because of what Richard's usurpation accession did to Edward V It's a flip to support the Tudor Yorkist merger, which Henry's promised to achieve through marrying Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughters. That makes people a little bit more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think people really know him. They don't know him as a leader or a soldier. The people who've been in exile with him have seen how he's tried to galvanize those different interests and different life experiences, different loyalties, to try and recast them into this mold of this could be a new regime. It's going to be a Tudor regime. If you back me, I will restore you to your lands and your estates and what influence you had. And that becomes, to put that to one side, that becomes the core household unit that the Tudors develop, that merged kind of former loyalties of Lancastrians, Yorkists and people who are really just Henry's very small family. So that gives him an opportunity to draw people into his army. So the Stanleys, William Stanley especially, commits soldiers fairly quickly once Henry is in England, so gets the gates of Shrewsbury open to him as he's marching towards Richard, who's camped first at Nottingham and then moves to Leicester. So by the time we get to the start of kind of second week of August 1485, the armies are not evenly matched by any stretch of the imagination. But because the Stanleys stay on the sidelines with maybe 6,000 soldiers between them, Henry might have 6,000 of his own, Richard might have 12,000 people ready. So it's kind of a three way split of evenly matched troops. So having seen what that situation looks like on the battlefield, Henry can at least say he's got a fighting chance. And he's seen in the Hundred Years War and his knowledge of reading histories, he's seen worse odds overcome by different forces. So he knows that in the hazard of battle he has a chance, especially if you can target the leaders. And people tend to throw down their weapons when the leaders are dead or captured. So he's, he's gambling on something happening on the battlefield, whether that's the Stanleys coming onto his side or some of the northern troops, with Richard not being able to engage, or not being willing to engage, or people hedging their bets at the last moment. All these things are up in the air as the battle starts and it turns out to be quite a slog and quite a stalemate and it needs that shift for something to break and a rapid conclusion to take shape. And Richard tries to do that himself by Launching a cavalry charge towards Henry's banners. And the Stanleys, eventually, when that cavalry charge is held up, decide the time has come to throw their support onto Henry's side, which I guess he was quite worried they wouldn't do, because despite all that communication, they'd never committed to him and joined up behind his banners. On the battlefield, Lord Stanley's son is being held hostage by King Richard, and Stanley actually takes the risk that in the confusion of the battle, his son won't be killed. So he's literally, again, he's gambling his family's future on Richard being too distracted by his wish to destroy Tudor, to actually kill the Stanley heir. So everyone is kind of taking huge risks here, not least Henry, who knows, if he's captured, he won't be spared because Richard would have erased him straight away, because that's the future to Richard iii, living a long and stable kingship and life. So I think Henry's quite prepared to die on the battlefield if he doesn't win. He knows there's not likely to be other outcomes, having seen what his Beaufort relatives endured after the Battle of Jukesbury. So this is the end game for the first phase of his life, really. Either he becomes King of England or he dies.
- [21:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I'm really struck by the fact that both Henry and Richard show huge amounts of personal bravery in that moment on the field. But the other thing that you said that I thought was so interesting in your book is that it shows that Richard had failed to win over some of the kingdom's leading families. And so I wanted to ask you about Henry VII's first moves as king. Do you think that he's upholding the customs of the realm or flouting them? Is he conciliatory or is he making enemies?
- [21:34]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
I think he has to present himself in a way which doesn't alarm people, because people will know from some of Richard's propaganda against Judah when he was in exile that he is an unworthy candidate. He has no experience, he has no bloodline. He will do all of these innovative foreign things to England and really upset the balance of how English government and society works. So the propaganda machine is working against Henry, and one of his first things he says to the Venetian ambassador is, look, I'm new to the country, but I'm not going to upset anything. I'm going to rule according to the customs. And he follows very much Richard III's coronation ceremonies. He makes the same oath. He doesn't really go wild in appointing his friends to high office and lavish rewards. He makes a few of his closest allies, barons and lords. He gives some rewards of office to people, but he doesn't create scores of new earls, for example. So he's not upsetting the, the jigsaw puzzle makeup of the nobility and their land holding. He's not trying to intervene in those established patterns of local power. He comes to power with this core group of friends and allies, some of whom are very experienced and have worked for government for the previous 30 years, but happened to have been thrown out of England in their reaction to Richard III's accession. So Henry has to incorporate those people into government, but he takes the best of their experience to try and begin to reshape some of the things in the way that he wants. But he knows he can't start ruling as Louis XII or Louis XIII might have done in France. So he's trying to think about what England's structures are like. How does a king with weak personal power and no experience cling onto things long enough to stop his enemies tipping him back out of, of power straight away? So those first couple of years, it starts off with that attempt to, to look like a king without threat to the polity, to the political community. And then as soon as he begins to face enemies and people begin to show their hand, at least to test the water of how enthusiastic the country might be for another bout of civil war to throw him out and get someone like the Earl of Warwick, you know, the Duke of Clarence's son, who is the last Plantagenet male heir, who is pretty much of age, the sort of age Edward V would have been. Is that now the time to put that person on the throne rather than this outsider foreigner who probably spoke French and or Welsh more than English? I guess him and his uncle would have spoken in Welsh to protect their secret conversations, but French would have been his language. So in the way he suddenly appears after a month on the campaign trail, they have to order ahead to get him even some shirts to wear when he enters London at the end of August. So he's a man with no money as well as no prospects. So this whole setup to try and convince the country that he's a not quite as illegitimate in terms of his rights to rule as everyone has said, but also that he's got the right kind of approach to make the country grow as his kingship grows, it's not a threat to the way things were and should be, but nor is it going to be wildly innovative and different. So that first step is an interesting period where he's learning to be king at the same time as he's being king. And that leads to several areas where what look like innovations are really just his attempt to grab hold of power and learn how that power should be used at the same time. So it looks like innovation, but he's looking through the playbook of kingship and trying to pick out the things which serve his own ends but don't threaten the way the country is judging him already. And of course, that seems to be working when you suddenly get tipped into a proper civil war again in 1487 and another rebellion in 1489 and then the start of the grand conspiracy of Perkin Warbeck, all of which is a very different set of threats to his power. And in responding to those, he's building an armoury of different techniques, a to keep himself in power, but gradually getting a tighter grip on the elements of the royal authority which control things. So it looks like he's becoming more authoritative, slightly more towards a tyrannical approach, in that he knows he has to be a strong ruler. And at some point that idea of moving on from trust and loyalty and love towards coercion and repression, that's the kind of response to this long term play out of the threat that never goes away. And there's other factors as well in the background, the dying off of his friends and family which restrict his kind of pool of allies. But that first step is very interesting because it does. Again, like his exile, it sets something of the tone for the way he's going to approach things. And from that moment he's kind of on a course from which it's very difficult to extricate himself.
- [26:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And one of the immediate challenges is to deal with the unstable, potentially disloyal provinces in the country. How does he do that?
- [26:49]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
He's aware that Richard III was a man of great power in the north and a very good leader in the north for most of the 1470s and had done deals with people like the Percy's and the Stanleys, to the major noble figures in the northern regions on both sides of the Pennines. So Henry's aware because of what happened at Bosworth, where the Earl of Northumberland brought most of Richard's northern retainers to the battlefield, but didn't really engage them in the fighting, or didn't either, didn't wish to or couldn't, or they couldn't be deployed in a way which tipped the balance of the fight. So that whole network of Richard's friends in the north still existed in an untroubled way, really, Henry has to work out how to deal with that legacy of loyalty to his enemy at the same time as trying to persuade them they should be loyal to him. So some of that is to be into the north and to be seen in companionship and in association with the leaders of Northern society. So that the Tudor court goes to York and Lincoln in the spring of 1486, ostensibly to go around a lot of the big cities in towns, and go to Worcester and Coventry as well. But heading into the north is really the key to subduing potentially a dangerous threat. And, you know, there's an attempt on Henry's life which the Earl of Northumberland seems to have thwarted. There is a rebellion of Lord Lovell, Viscount Lovell, Richard's friends, and Sir Humphrey Stafford, trying to merge together areas where either Richard or the Earl of Warwick, on the other Plantagenet side of the Yorkist family existed. So the West Midlands and Yorkshire. So there's a. A fluttering of rebellion already. And again, this gives Henry an indication that he's not going to have an easy ride unless he can begin some mechanisms to bind people's loyalty to the new regime. So some of that is going back and looking at enforcing allegiance, either through opportunity or through financial threat or through some sort of pressure on how people are willing to behave. And it's trying to narrow down people's options so that if they stay loyal, there's really no threat to their status and their ability to be themselves in their communities. But if they do begin to step out of line, there's either an increasing financial penalty to doing that, or they will lose office, or their friends will be drawn in to pay for their loyalty. So Henry's already arrived with these ideas up his sleeve, many of which were used by Edward iv, Henry VI and even earlier back to Edward ii. I think he, Henry VII does look quite a lot at Edward II's reign and the civil war in that period, because he picks up on the royal prerogative rights so strongly and how Edward deals with his rebels. In 1322-3, Henry VII picks up some of those techniques through bonds and recognizances as well, mainly for loyalty. So this idea that he invents this system and it arrives fully formed after 1500, when Edmund Dudley is orchestrating this royal clamp down on people's freedom to action, it's actually right there at the start of the reign. It's there as part of this process of anchoring people's loyalty to the new regime and making them think twice about stepping out of line or building networks of conspiracy. And he tries to expand this into a mech where everyone is connected to other people who might be brought back from the brink. And obviously it does work in that he survives all of those threats in that first five years, but obviously he doesn't really know if what happens at the Battle of Stoke is going to be his Bosworth and he's going to be the royal victim as Richard III had been. So we can see the outcome. But Henry couldn't. So he's testing these policies as he goes along, as his kingship is expanding and he's learning his role, but he's got no idea how much of a success they're going to be and how round the corner there might be another even more insidious threat to his power. So it's again, very interesting to see a king in real time adapting the way he rules to the threats he's facing. But of course, that means he's always being fairly reactive or predictive. He's not doing what medieval kings should be doing. So a lot of the traditional approaches, interactions, reliances and alliances are not being activated because Henry is already thinking about resetting the regime to incorporate all of these threats and to try and dilute them. So it's kind of almost a kingship to deal with the problem that Henry has created by becoming king, rather than just ruling the country, as people might have expected. And for that reason, it becomes an unusual reign in that the normal things are happening, but in a kind of truncated or jolting kind of way. And the main focus is on keeping himself and his family in the ascendancy.
- [31:54]
BetterHelp Advertiser
Better help. Online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just. Just relax.
- [32:35]
Dan Snow
Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's history podcast. I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you want to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history, with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth follow Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the holy land. With 300 handmaidens in tow, she leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor and trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's history here.
- [33:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Talking of family, of course, one of the things he has done is married Elizabeth, the sister of the late king, that he acknowledges. Edward iv and their firstborn son is named Arthur. And I wanted to ask a couple of things about him. Of course, you've written his biography before and we've talked about him before, but something about the positioning of their firstborn son, the use of myth, the use of history as a form of legitimacy, and also trying to legitimize the rain by the connection with Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon. Why both these things, especially given that the French had been the ones who had helped Henry in 1485. So why does he turn to myth and to the Spanish in order to kind of shore up his heir?
- [34:40]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
I think some of it is performing that kingship role in the traditional sense. It's part of the legitimate activities of an English king is to have the traditional enemies of France not included in the list of friends. And the Spanish are interesting in that. Certainly the Aragonese side have got that Lancastrian link back to John Argaunt and the descendants of the earlier marriages. There's a Lancastrian thread which comes back again through the potential marriage of Arthur and Catherine of Aragon, which creates this other dimension to the future of the Tudor family, if that Arthur is inheriting his father and mother's English claims. But also some of that Spanish thread back to the earlier Plantagenets too. So he's looking at that. And that's part of marriage alliances and high politics. But the myth side of it is very interesting because it's tapping into a kind of cultural shift, which is that cultural shift of printing and circulation. So Caxton has published Thomas Malory's Mold d' Arthur in 1483, I think. So it's not a bestseller of the day. At least it's one of those stories which people are really attached to already. And obviously it's a great story. So Henry is aware that in the literate societies of the court and the counties, people are aware of this story. And he can see how his own story, the once and future king return of the legitimate ruler, can be grafted onto that. And in a way he's picking up how both Edward IV and right back to Edward I and Edward III had used the Round Table and Arthur's knights to kind of galvanize their courtly associations and build loyalty. I mean, the Order of the Garter is a similar kind of exercise in using the military power and. And that kind of bandit brothers view of putting your life on the line with fellow men. So Henry is tapping into all of that again from his knowledge of reading about English history and how it fits into the romances and histories of literature. But specifically this idea of a British king, a uniting king who resists an external enemy, going back to Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Red and White Dragons and the Saxons being resisted by the British, the Red Dragon of Cadwaladr and things like this, it's all reassembled and repackaged into this visual identity and it's really distilled into Prince Arthur's christening at Winchester, obviously a site of Camelot, with Edward I's roundtable visible to all. And then it's a kind of first opportunity to really go to town on broadcasting the physical imagery of this ancestry. So his father's line into North Wales and back to the British kings in the Celtic part of Britain that resisted the Saxons for as long as they could. And you've got that link through Arthur as an ideal of kingship and almost saying Prince Arthur is now ready to take up, through proper training, this mantle of a unifying king who can be everything you expect from a leader. Because we make sure with all of this ancestry that he merges in his blood with the training they're going to give him, that he will become an ideal king for England. And interestingly, it's the Spanish connection that he goes for. Develop that, because the marriage discussions pretty much begin straight away as soon as Arthur's born. And it's not with the northern European countries, it's with the emerging power of Spain. So very interesting shift within this framework of reenacting the traditional tropes of English kingship. But actually there's subtle differences in how that's being constructed and they do come into play quite strongly during the reign.
- [38:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
We have after this a couple of pretenders, one of whom wore, I think, become the major focus of Henry's reign. But first we have Lambert Simnel. In the end, do you feel that he is vanquished by Henry's skill in battle or the fact that Simnor, in claiming to be one of the escaped princes in the Tower, just doesn't manage to generate enough support In England.
- [39:16]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Yeah, I think that's interesting. Two, because Henry is not personally going to risk himself in that struggle. So he decides as soon as he sees the size of Simral's army when it has landed that he's not going to risk his own person. And before that step it's coming out of Ireland, this conspiracy. So the whole. Despite Richard III's sister Margaret of York, the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy is supplying some very, very good mercenary troops to be the core of this army. Most of this army it comes from Irish tenants of the Fitzgerald family who can see Henry's arrival as a self proclaimed heir of Lancaster as a threat to their ascendancy in the Dublin government, having been installed by the Yorkists earlier in the 15th century and have entrenched their power really with a lot of the Lancasters being exiled to England. So there's a, there's a potential shift change in the political lordship of Ireland which inspires this pretty kind of, I guess it's a speedient opportunity, a very opportunistic attempt to, to use the Irish to throw Henry the Seventh off the throne and then have their status enforced by whoever comes afterwards which they hope to control. So signal is a cipher to kind of represent all of these opportunities to attack Henry vii. It's a vehicle that is his arch enemy, I suppose Margaret of York has devised. The Fitzgeralds have jumped on board because it suits them. They think that the north of England, that hotbed of Ricardian supports that had already twitched a little bit in 1486, would become much more enthusiastic. They land in Cumbria near Furness Abbey and march across the north of Yorkshire over the Pennines and then begin to march towards York. But they get no support really. There's a few lords who are persuaded to join, but the Earl of Northumberland stays loyal to Henry vii. The Lord's groups of Bolton and Masham bring some, some of their tenants to threaten York. And there's a few skirmishes on the way, but they don't really expand their army into a, a massive tens of thousands of northern willing, willing followers of Edward VI who has been crowned in Dublin. So that again that royal endorsement or the ability to say, for Henry to say I am God's chosen King of England suddenly is looking a little bit more shaky because Edward VI has been crowned. Simnel's been crowned as a, as a rival king. I think most people realize this is just an opportunity to be persuasive by having God's endorsement as another factor on the march to say, look, we've Got the legitimate king here and Henry Tudor is not the legitimate king. The fighting is really fairly one sided. Henry gets the Earl of Oxford to do most of the fighting again as he had done at Bosworth. Archers against unarmored foot soldiers. It's a pretty horrific one sided contest really. I think it's a lot, a lot more violent and bloody than Bosworth was just because of that imbalance between the equipment and defensive capacity of the rebels. And Henry I think is watching the battle from a church tower at Newark. Well, yell of Oxford with the Stanleys in the background as well, this time where they're out of the way. So he's managed the setup to escape if he has to. B his friend is doing all of the dying for him and the Stanleys can't really influence things. So he's learned from his own experience how to avoid a sudden end to his opportunities. He will live to fight another day if he has to. But maybe it appears to him more of a risk and a direct challenge than it turns out to be. It's just he might have expected more support in the North. And as soon as he realized he wasn't dealing with a domestic English rebellion, it's really an imported iris and continental mercenary army, he knows he's kind of overcome that hurdle of persuading the first tranche of local lords to stay loyal in the north. So that gives him confidence that having at least remained indifferent, not committing to the enemy, he's got something to build on. So he can begin then to start expanding foreign policy, thinking about marriages, certainly thinking about the ticks burden. And he begins to raise troops to go to Brittany and help defend Brittany against the French. So he's taking on more costly responsibilities and interests. More of a traditional English output in that it's more outward looking than self preservation internally. So that 1487 it feels like, oh, I've overcome some of those threats. We could begin to think about a kingship which looks more like the pattern of what we'd expect. But of course the next thing bubbles up fairly soon in response to some of that. So this is the pattern that he sets in the rain. He overcomes one thing, begins to change the kingship that he's employing. And a lot of that is to do with taxation under pressure on people's purses one way or another. And that inspires the next crisis. So most of the rain jolts along like this and the techniques of ruling become responsive to those threats. Rather than having a long term plan that can be systematically worked through and absorbed into the mechanics of government.
- [45:16]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
How much greater a threat is Perkin Warbeck and why?
- [45:21]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
The threat of Warbeck isn't initially an invasion and rebellion. It's a much more insidious attempt to unpick the threads that are holding the Tudor regime together, which is targeting the Yorkist support that Henry has adopted through his wife. And with Prince Arthur as a young child, first of all living in Farnham and then in the Welsh Marches, he's not really in the picture as a visible figurehead yet. It's all about Henry. It's all about him. And Henry is only there because Elizabeth of York's friends and family have decided to give him their loyalty, well, through his wife. And her claims being claims to royal power being diluted, if not sidelined, to allow Henry to rule. So the plotters behind Warbeck target those links and say, we've got an escaped prince in the Tower, an elder brother of the Queen, therefore your legitimate loyalty should switch back to the male heir of Edward. Ivan the Queen is still an heir of Edward iv, but she doesn't transmit that right now that we have her prince. So Warbeck impersonates Richard of York, claiming to be Richard iv. Again, it's Margaret of Burgundy. Margaret of York, who is the mastermind of this. And Maximilian Habsburg sees all sorts of opportunities to undermine the English. The French eventually move out of the way because they'd literally supported Warbeck. And Henry invades France in September 1492 to try and remove the French backing for this pretender. And that only has the effect of bouncing him into Maximilian's arms. So it takes support into a different level, in that Maximilian is looking for appliance and controllable King of England because he has vast territories to control and has claims to be Holy Roman Emperor and needs to manage all the pieces of his vast empire in a predictable way. So having a king who's looking after England and not offering any threats is a good thing for him. So he's very much on board with not necessarily offering troops and money, but offering that distraction and that concentration of risk that Henry has to deal with. So that's what Warbeck is for Henry. Henry very quickly works out, or at least believes, that he is a pretender and that there is no truth in any story of survival. Margaret of York is writing to a lot of the consorts, the wives of kings around Europe, saying, the real King of England is back and we need your alliances with England to be recalibrated on this basis. So she's using a very different network to try and persuade the rulers of all sorts of European states to think about England, if they do, in terms of legitimate kingship being Richard IV and Warbeck and Henry being illegitimate. And that does have quite a dripping effect on how treaties and negotiations really work in England's position. So Henry is fighting for his kind of identity in the profile of England as an honest broker in a lot of the alliances around European powers. Because Obviously in the mid-1490s, the French invade Italy and the start of the Italian wars really ramps up the involvement of other European states in the Italian peninsula. So Ferdinand and Isabella are also in that mix, along with Maximilian, the King of France, the Venetian Republic and the Papal States. So politics becomes very much cross European and England has a role in this balance of power. But obviously some sides want Henry to be in charge of that, others want Richard iv. So Henry is dealing with all of these linked problems, all of which stem from this idea that there's another rival king suddenly in the country. He deserves everybody's loyalty because he's from a higher and more legitimate family. The Tudors have seized the throne by power and are clinging onto it through this marriage. And actually that marriage is now not giving Henry any of that power. So it's time for reset. We've got this package of good experienced people behind King Richard IV who can rule. Henry's not been around long enough to really affect anything. It's an easy step to throw him off the throne and pick up where we left off in 1485. So Henry has to deal with this and he deals with it through that innate ability to survive and find a way through, negotiate almost one to one with people, really get to the heart of what's at issue and setting up things which take things forwards. It's a very much a decade of painful progress to try to undermine this. And it's. There's some set piece events, there's some insidious use of spies and information gathering, some traps and some uncomfortable moments. There's an attempted invasion in 1495. The Scots are always looking for an opportunity to invade and exploit things. Perkin Warbeck goes to Ireland and then to Scotland and we see a whole phase of the Anglo Scottish War coming into effect in 1496. 97 on the basis of how Warbeck has turned James IV's head in Scotland and what the implications for a weakened English state with an ally of Scotland in charge. So everyone is thinking of big politics and Henry VII is not really figuring in this. It's who can rule England and who can be controlled in ruling England. Kind of that shift in the British dynamic from having a strong England to having a weakened England because the ruler is put on the throne by somebody else. Now Henry obviously is a ruler put on the throne by the French in the Breton support, but it's not, is not deeply official in that it's not a state sanctioned invasion. It's kind of a lackluster support in the hope that having achieved the throne there'll be a more favorable and friendly relationships. And I think Maximilian is thinking along similar lines. But everyone is looking at that blueprint. Henry took the throne. But now with Warbeck as a representative of a much stronger Yorkist connection, can Henry resist that long enough in all of its spikes and flourishes and real the threat. And again, it's a decade of threat and maneuvering. And that's why it really takes its toll on him physically. I think the strain of trying to outmaneuver an army of plotters and enemies around Europe.
- [52:13]
Dan Snow
Quick, choose a meal deal with McValue. The five dollar McChicken meal deal, a six dollar McDouble meal deal, or the new seven dollar Daily Double meal deal, each with its own small Fries drink
- [52:22]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
and Four Piece McNuggets.
- [52:23]
Dan Snow
There's actually no rush. I'm just excited for McDonald's for a limited time only.
- [52:26]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Prices and participation may vary.
- [52:27]
Dan Snow
Not alderman delivery. Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's history podcast. I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you want to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get a little lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the holy land. With 300 handmaidens in tow, she leads her own army. Everyone goes gaga for Eleanor. And trace the voyage of the first Vikings as they arrive on Iceland's lonely shores. For the best historical stories to get lost in, check out Dan Snow's history.
- [53:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I mean, that's one thing that's very striking is that by the early 16th century, Henry has become notably older. He has aged much more than his years and he seems to have changed in character as well. We talked earlier about the sort of shift from trust, love and loyalty as the opening hallmarks of his reign to one of power and kind of ruthlessness. So, I mean, do you see this as a change in character or as a change in strategy or both?
- [54:17]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
I think it is both, because one is a response to the other. And I think there's external factors for him to worry about in that he's lived through that decade of troubles. And Warbeck in 1497 especially Henry, has to take to the field four times or send soldiers to fight four times just to keep the throne. There's another major rebellion in England, the Southwestern rebellion. Warbeck also comes back and besieges Exeter. The King has an army ready to go and invade Scotland because of their support for Warbeck, that eventually happens without a real battle, but still the material has to be moved and men has to be moved north to the border. So he can see the effects on himself of this plot and the way it's drawing people into opposition to him. At the same time, by the end of the 1490s, a lot of his old friends are beginning to become either aged and ill or are actually dying. And that takes away an awful lot of experience and reliability within the regime. The people who he's asked for advice, the people who can admonish and change his mind. I think he hasn't really moved beyond this core group because of those threats earlier in the reign. He's never had the luxury of being more open handed about who is serving him in that royal household, what kind of authority and power can he delegate to people in the country, how trusted can they be to represent him as well as themselves and rule in the counties in the way that English medieval government's been set up to do. So he is worried that suddenly the bedrock of his regime is going to crumble. And that's also exacerbated by his heir, Prince Arthur, dying just after a spectacular marriage in November 1501. He's dead by Easter 1502. And then an attempt to react to that is the queen has another pregnancy straight away in her late 30s, and dies very soon after giving birth in February 1503. So Henry has lost a lot of his friends. He's now lost the family that have kind of kept him in power, both emotionally and literally, with their allies and friends working for him. So 1503 is a real low point for Henry. He doesn't have the same extensive network of enemies around him. But having reached that low point, somebody else, Edmond de la Pole, a nephew of the Yorkist kings, again leaps up and decides he wants to be the White Rose candidate to be the King of England. So a new set of plotting is set in motion. And again it draws in Maximilian and Margaret of Burgundy. So the pattern is repeated. You can see how Henry would have been dragged down by not only the incessant need to resist these threats, but also the physical effect of having to concentrate for so long. And having his family taken away from him literally would have been the outlet that would have let off some of that stress. So now he's a widower with young Prince Henry to carry the future of his family. And Obviously, as a 10, 11 year old prince Henry is also already demonstrating several characteristics which are not fully aligned with the King's wishes. And we see that manifested in the kind of jousting teenager who wants to basically be away from his father, but also away from his father's constraints. At the same time, Henry's trying to rebuild some of these connections after he does overcome Edmond de la Pole's threat. But by that stage he's gray, he's not very healthy. Every spring he seems to have an illness linked to a throat infection which might be the onset of tuberculosis. And it comes in cycles which last for longer. Each year from 1502 onwards, I guess it does coincide very much with his wife's death. So by the time we get to 1507, you know, he has a couple of episodes where they think he's going to die and his funeral and will is sort of put into train. So last few years of the regime are very, very strange for different reasons, in that Henry has to delegate power to bureaucrats who can mechanically work through this whole system of control through financial threat and actual payments for the kind of things the King would grant to people, licenses to do things, appointments to office, everything comes at a price. And through that price being paid, people are less willing, less able. He hopes to spend their money on destabilizing his power and becoming inclined to rebel. So it's a massive clampdown on the way politics works in response to this loss of family and friends.
- [59:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I mean, how much do we see a polarization of the royal court in those final years of Henry's reign?
- [59:25]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
There's a little bit in that Empson and Dudley, the notorious fiscal judges, as they're called, they kind of sit outside of the court network in that their administrators brought in to do a job, they have the power to threaten dukes and earls as well as merchants. So they're not very popular in that they cut through the hierarchy of the court and employ Henry's wishes against all and sundry. So the court itself is more aligned against those policies. They try to find a way not to blame the King for them, but they can see that Henry is behind these measures being taken. Some people withdraw again because they're quite aged. The Earl of Oxford doesn't really shine particularly strongly in this period. It's an ally of Henry because he's quite old. But the Earl of Serry, another ex Yorkist, fought against Henry at Bosworth, is now a fully paid up loyalist. And he seems to be the kind of guy who carries a lot of these responsibilities to uphold Henry's position in those interactions at court. And we see right at the end, it's more in the royal household really, I suppose, the maneuvering around, trying to ensure that Prince Henry can move forwards as the next king without a threat from Emerson and Dudley, who possibly want to preserve their own position, but might see controlling the prince as the way to do that most effectively. So there is a little, well, certainly in the indictments for their treason, there's a suggestion that there was a step towards a civil conflict to control Henry after Henry VII's death. That's Prince Henry. That might be again egging the indictments into the right kind of self justification for the action that was taken against them. But yeah, it's a little bit symptomatic of the 1450s in that the court is behind the King. There isn't really a rival, but rivals are emerging in different ways. And when the King can't perform those kingly responsibilities through the power of that royal authority and rank and exercising the hierarchy and the loyalty that comes with the office of ruler, where somebody else is doing that on behalf of the King, they become a focal point. But it's also easier then to see the weakness of the King and therefore that opens the door to other candidates coming forward. So had that situation moved on for a number of years, say until Henry was not 17 and a half, but maybe 18 and a half or 2021, we might have seen a very different kind of introduction of Henry VIII to royal power than we actually got. So there might have been the need for more military action to shore up the succession. Who knows which nobles might have got on board, which royal claims might have emerged from the plant Tajinet bloodline to exploit that, as Sajuka Buckingham had tried to do in 1483, allegedly. But you could see why. And it's what brought down Edward Stafford in 1520. Much the same kind of view of his own ancestry in relation to how the King was exercising his power. So it's always in the back of the ruler's mind that he's sitting. Certainly the Tudors are thinking this. We are sitting on top of our or sitting at the table with a lot of people who've got a stronger claim to the throne than we have. And we have to make sure they can't connect the dots to threaten us collectively or individually through a spokesperson or leader who galvanizes those rights in a way that's acceptable to them, but not to us. So Henry and the Tudors are at some point honor exercise to preserve their power rather than rule effectively in a traditional way.
- [63:08]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I'd like to end then by asking you to assess Henry's success and the price that was paid for it. Your conclusion poses the question of whether his harshness was justified. And I'd like us to think about that together now.
- [63:28]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Yes, it's the kind of final balance of what you can get away with to preserve power. And you can weigh up all of the. The problems on the one side and the difficulties that Henry overcame and the strength that it gave him, and the experience of ruling in adversity, which is very different from ruling in a stable environment where you can really plan how you want to evolve, not only kingship, but the way the country comes together. So Henry has kind of abandoned parliament after 1504, so there's no sense of conversation with the country in the same way there had been earlier in the reign. So you get the sense of a king more isolated, ruling through agents who haven't got an investment in him or the Tudor program to be rulers. And that is difficult for political actors to pick up on because it seems so alien that a ruler would be separated from all of the mechanisms that unite the country as a kind of commonwealth, with the acceptable position of the king as the arbiter and the high power in that. But with checks and balances through council and parliament and requests for taxation and all of the usual steps up that interaction has to build to see that there's a balance in the policy and the polity. So Henry has ditched all of that. He's trying to rule through very short term and highly blunted kind of instruments which really annoy people because there seems to be no predictable way of interacting with these mechanisms. And a lot of that is being done deliberately to trick people. And even if you're found innocent, you still have to pay to extricate yourself from the process. So very alien and very upsetting to a lot of people who can't understand why this has come about. But in Henry's eyes, Henry's terms, staying in power, having had this life of dislocation and no opportunity, no prospects, having sort of carved it out for his heirs, having lost the first heir after a decade of training to be king, and having succeeded in getting his second heir over the line in a popular way, in a way which people have recognized as a real future, galvanizing, magnificent kind of prince to take England forward. Henry might have thought that his efforts to sacrifice the normality of a kingship, if it means his successor can reap all of those benefits and rule England in a way which is glorious and recover some of those more ancient medieval high points, he might have felt that was all worth the trouble, because ultimately he wasn't deposed. He defeated all those rebellions. He won all of his battles. He survived deaths in the family and plots within the royal household in a way that a lot of his predecessors had failed to do. So he wasn't deposed, not even for a few months. Even Edward IV spent some time in exile, waiting to recover the throne. So in various ways, he was successful, but in the way of doing that, he was very different and created a lot of fiction and a lot of uncertainty about where kingship was going. And I think young Henry VIII is a deliberate attempt to reset some of that in more traditional and glorious ways.
- [66:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, thank you for a wonderful overview of Henry vii. We have managed to get through quite a lot in an hour. You managed to get through even more in the 160 pages of your little book, which I highly recommend. It was actually quite a useful exercise because it reminded me of the value of editing just what a powerful product is produced when you have to grind something down to the absolute core of it. So it's a really wonderful little book, and everyone who's interested in Henry VII should start there. It's great to speak to you, Sean. Thank you so much for coming on.
- [67:34]
Dr. Sean Cunningham
Oh, thank you so much. It's been really great. Thank you.
- [67:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher, Max Wintool, my producer, Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddo, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorshistoryhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tutors From History. Industry Hit.
- [68:13]
Fin AI Advertiser
AI is transforming customer service. It's real and it works. And with fin, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service. We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses. This includes the real world complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order. And we also see it when FIN goes up against competitors. It's top of all the performance benchmarks, top of the G2 leaderboard. And if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which I think says it all. Check it out for yourself at Fin AI.
- [68:43]
Acast Advertiser
Say hello to Samantha.
- [68:45]
BetterHelp Advertiser
Hi there.
- [68:46]
Acast Advertiser
Samantha built a SaaS platform that helps small businesses manage their workflow. But she needed a smarter way to reach decision makers.
- [68:53]
BetterHelp Advertiser
That's where Acast came in. They helped me produce a professional audio ad which played to business owners and online ops leads using their audience attributes targeting tools. Suddenly, my platform was showing up in the ears of the exact people I needed to reach.
- [69:05]
Acast Advertiser
Now that's streamline marketing. Samantha, what's your tip for scaling smart?
- [69:09]
BetterHelp Advertiser
Solve a real problem and make sure the right people hear about it.
- [69:12]
Acast Advertiser
Promote your business with podcast ads on Acast. Get started at go.acast.com advertise.