Henry VII King of England TUDOR, KING OF ENGLAND

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BIOGRAPHY
Prior to assuming the throne, Henry Tudor was Earl of Richmond.
Facts about this person:
Record Change  October 23, 1999
Note:
Henry Tudor
Owen's son Edmund had married Margaret Beaufort, who was descended from King Edward III's son John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. Edmund died while Margaret was pregnant with their first child, Henry, who was born on January 28, 1457 at Pembroke Castle in Wales. At first Henry was kept hidden in Wales by his uncle, Jasper Tudor. In 1471 Henry VI died - he may have been murdered - in the Tower of London, and Henry Tudor became the Lancastrian claimant to the throne. Fearing for his nephew's safety, Jasper Tudor smuggled him to Brittany (in France).
In 1483 Edward IV died suddenly and his young sons, Edward V and Richard, disappeared in the Tower of London. Their uncle, who had imprisoned the boys, swiftly crowned himself Richard III. Not surprisingly, he was an unpopular king. In 1485 Henry Tudor returned to Wales, raised an army, invaded England, and defeated Richard III at the battle of Bosworth Field. Richard died in the battle, and Henry Tudor became Henry VII, the first Tudor king.
King Henry VII and the Tudor Dynasty
In 1486 Henry married Richard's niece, Elizabeth of York, uniting the houses of Lancaster and York and ending the Wars of the Roses (although Henry did have to deal with Yorkist uprisings early in his reign).
An Elizabethan writer, Sir Francis Bacon, said that Henry VII was not an indulgent husband because his aversion to the House of York was so predominant in him as it found place not only in his wars and councils but in his chamber and bed. Despite this supposed aversion, Henry and Elizabeth managed to have eight children. The first child, Arthur, died in his teens. Less than a year later Elizabeth died giving birth to her last child, who also died. Two other children had died young, so Henry VII was left with just three offspring: Margaret, who was already the queen of Scotland; Henry, the future king of England; and Mary, a future queen of France.
In 1509 Henry VII died of tuberculosis. He had brought law and order to England after years of chaos, and made the country important in the eyes of the world. He is not, however, the Tudor king best remembered today. That honor belongs to his infamous sucessor, the much-married Henry VIII.The battle was over. On a stretch of high ground in the midland heart of the kingdom twenty thousand men had met in fierce, clumsy combat, and the day had ended in the decisive defeat of the stonger army. Its leader, the King, had been killed fighting heroically, and men had seen his naked corpse slung across his horse's back and borne away to an obscure grave. His captains were dead, captured, or in flight, his troops broken and demoralized. But in the victor's army all was rejoicing. In following the claimant to the throne his supporters had chosen the winning side, and when they saw the golden circlet which had fallen from the King's head placed upon their leader's, their lingering doubts fled before the conviction that God had blessed his cause, and they hailed him joyously as their sovereign. The day was 22 August 1485; the battlefield was to be named after the small neighboring town of Market Bosworth; the fallen King was the third and ablest of English monarchs who bore the name Richard; and the man whom the battle made a king was to be the seventh and perhaps the greatest of those who bore the name Henry. The very fact that Henry Tudor became King of England at all is somewhat of a miracle. His claim to the English throne was tenuous at best. His father was Edmund Tudor, a Welshman of Welsh royal lineage, but that was not too important as far as his claim to the English throne went. What was important though was his heritage through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of Edward III. This descent from King Edward was through his third son, John of Guant. John's third wife, Katherine Swynford had borne him several children as his mistress before he married her. The children born before the marriage were later legitmized, but barred from the succession. Margaret Beaufort was descended from one of the children born before the marriage of John and Catherine. By 1485 the Wars of the Roses had been raging in England for many years between the Houses of York and Lancaster. The Lancastrian Henry later took for his bride Elizabeth of York thereby uniting the houses.
The real matter was decided on the battlefield, at the Battle of Bosworth Field. It was here that Henry and his forces met with Richard III and Henry won the crown. It was truly through the defeat of Richard and the 'right of conquest' that Henry claimed the throne. It was solidified however, by his marriage to Elizabeth of York, the eldest child of the late King Edward IV.
The main problem facing Henry was restoring faith and strength in the monarchy. He also had to deal with other claimants, with some of them having a far stronger claim than his own. To deal with this, Henry strengthened the government and his own power, at the expense of the nobles. Henry also had to deal with a treasury that was nearly bankrupt. The English monarchy had never been one of the wealthiest of Europe and even more so after the War of the Roses. Through his monetary strategy, Henry managed to steadily accumulate wealth during his reign, so that by the time he died, he left a considerable fortune to his son, Henry VIII.
It could be debated whether or not Henry VII was a great king, but he was clearly a successful king. He had several goals that he had accomplished by the end of his reign. He had established a new dynasty after 30 years of struggle, he had strengthened the judicial system as well as the treasury and had successfully denied all the other claimants to his throne. The monarchy that he left to his son was a fairly secure one and most definitely a wealthy one.