"an invading army is about to land in Wales. and he had barely a claim to the throne of England." "His name was Henry Tudor." "he would create the dynasty that bore his name." "The Tudors" "But Henry VII remains obscure." "Elizabeth I." "Henry VII's is possibly the most extraordinary story of them all." "and an iron determination and rebuilding the monarchy in his own image." "described later as an infinitely suspicious ruler ... a dark prince." "His reign seen as a bleak wintry landscape." "For years I've explored his murky story." "intrigue and extortion." "the more you discover fascinating glimpses of this manipulative king oppressive and terrifying." "This is the story of Henry VII ... the first Tudor." "This is Henry ..." "It's what remains of his funeral effigy." "which was paraded through the streets of London after his death." "and clutching his orb and sceptre of state." "and the distinctive cast in his left eye." "and ravaged by illness and stress." "It's the face of a man who's never known a moments' peace." "Henry's journey to fulfill his unlikely destiny 7th August 1485." "His small fleet appeared from the south and anchored quietly in Mill Bay. coming through the surf. and says:" "Judge me Oh Lord and favour my cause." "Henry would need all the help he could get." "His army was a ragtag bunch of political dissidents and foreign mercenaries." "A mixture of different accents filled the air." "Henry had deliberately chosen this windswept and distant corner of Wales." "He wanted to slip in undetected." "giving him time to raise support in his Welsh homeland." "before facing Richard III's much larger army. feels almost not like an invasion." "It feels very furtive and anxious" "He knows that the odds are stacked against him." "to the homeland of" "Lord Stanley." "had half-promised Henry their support. but Richard's army was now hot on his heels." "He had no choice but to turn and fight. and that it massively outnumbered his own." "It had come down to this ... tomorrow he would claim the throne of England ... or die trying. drawn up on the ridge. watching as the battle unfolded." "Stanley was keeping his options open." "He only wanted to back a winner. ... and charged." "the two men fought nose to nose." "and Henry's standard bearer was cut down. that Sir William Stanley made his fateful decision." "Stanley's army piled in ... on Henry's side." "like a true king." "One of Henry's men reportedly heard him shout:" "or win." "Richard himself was swept away." "was viciously battered to death." "it was all over." "Henry's men moved busily about the battlefield." "Relieving the dead and dying of their valuables." "Piling bodies onto carts." "Lord Stanley placed the dead king's circlet on Henry's head." "to the shouts of acclamation from his troops." "Henry had achieved the impossible. had won the crown of England. but the real struggle was about to begin." "no monarch had passed on the crown without turmoil." "Building a dynasty would be a battle that Henry would fight for the rest of his life." "I'm taking off my shoes because I'm about to tread but in Europe." "This is amazing." "It feels astounding to stand here." "Every single English King and Queen since 1308 ... precisely here." "that Henry VII was crowned." "and Henry must have felt almost the impossible." "This was an affirmation of his victory at Bosworth." "It was a vindication of everything he'd prayed for on the beach at Milford Haven." "But there was perhaps a sense of something else. and trussed naked on the back of a donkey without so much as a rag to cover his genitals." "Henry's claim to the throne was precarious. provided the only trickle of royal blood in Henry's veins. banned from every claiming the throne. some 50 years previously." "Not exactly the ideal pedigree for a king." "the Earl of Richmond." "But his upbringing in exile had left him with no experience in governing. and a man who gave nothing away. he would need to behave like one." "That is exactly what he did." "Parliament has met at Westminster for over 800 years. stretch back to the Middle Ages." "Henry VII's first Parliament met." "He would use it to tackle the inconvenient truth of Richard III's reign." "and to rework recent events to suit himself." "Here is the written proof." "which shows how he did just that. putting the record straight." "King of England"." "And his legislation is referred to as the act of "false and malicious imaginations". ... he rewrote history." "It simply consists of a date ... here." "The Battle of Bosworth was fought on the 22 August 1485." "Henry VII has dated his reign:" "the XXI (in Roman numerals) day of August last past." "the day before the battle was fought." "We might ask: "What's in a day? Henry was effectively accusing everybody who had of treason." "but there was very little they could do." "and he was king." "enshrined in parliamentary record." "Henry's next move would bolster his position further." "A marriage to cement all his dynastic ambitions." "It was a strategic partnership." "The fulfillment of a pact made while he was in exile." "The pact on which his invasion was founded. in what would come to be known as the Wars of the Roses. represented by the white rose." "Richard III's coming to the throne in 1483 divided the House of York. and proclaimed himself king." "The princes were never seen again." "Their supporters fled to Brittany where they found a refugee in exile. daughter of the late King Edward IV." "It would be a union that promised to reconcile a divided England." "But Henry needed something to reinforce this union." "Something that would link this new dynasty with the English crown in the minds of his subjects." "So he brought in the decorators he plastered his family emblems ceilings and windows. that we still recognise it to this day." "but we can get a sense of how these badges and emblems were deployed and used by Henry." "... the Beaufort portcullis. ... Henry's red rose. ... was a master stroke." "What it allowed him to do on a par with those of his wife Elizabeth of York ... the white rose." "Together these two roses would combine to create ... the Tudor Rose." "Henry was stamping his mark on the nation. ... vital if Henry was to build a dynasty." "Henry would not have to wait long." "Prince Arthur was born early on the rain-lashed morning of 20 Sept 1486." "the legendary seat of Camelot." "This is a wonderful and very rare book ... a song book from Henry VII's court. and it says precisely this:" "I love the rose both red and white." "Is that your pure perfect appetite?" "To hear talk of them is my delight." "in roses three." "Arthur was the embodiment of the red and the white rose." "He was the Tudor Rose ... incarnate." "Henry and Elizabeth were lucky." "including another son." "Henry was building a myth that he and his family were the true and rightful royal blood of England." "But there were those who just didn't buy it." "they would do their own rewriting of history." "to expose Henry for the usurper he was." "What we have here is a genealogical role." "These family trees were owned by kings and noblemen their glorious ancestries. and what he was afraid of." "the Plantagenet king." "From him both Yorkists and Lancastrians traced their lines of descent. because the Lancastrians were exterminated." "This thick red line is what this role believes to be the main line of royal descent." "and his wife Elizabeth Woodville." "The main line of descent carries on to Richard III." "... it's actually unfinished." "Henry is noticeably absent." "Henry VII doesn't fit at all." "He's squashed in here. and it goes past the Lancastrian line." "It's not connected to it significantly." "And it keeps going up to here. ... a chamber servant." "So this roll was composed for a family who took a very dim view of Henry VII's claim to the throne indeed. were the rightful kings of England." "The roll belonged to a great Yorkist family called the de la Pooles." "was related to the late King Richard III." "and HE claimed that Richard had named him as his heir to the throne." "would in fact instigate the first serious rebellion of Henry VII's reign." "Lincoln's forces clashed with Henry's troops in the East Midlands." "But there would be no dead king as there had been at Bosworth. and Lincoln himself was slaughtered. and removed a genuine Yorkist contender for the throne." "he set about consolidating his rule." "He looked for new ways to drive home the power and permanence of his reign." "Through magnificent architecture   an opulent household   money!" "the very first pound as a coin." "This is an extraordinary privilege to see these." "Barry Cook looks after the medieval coin collection at the British Museum." "Henry VII is the first person to think:" ""I will create a pound coin"." "He gives it this very special name: "sovereign"." "What he's doing with the word "sovereign" is to say:" "I am sovereign over my land." Part of the whole royal package." "This is not a coin anybody would use in their daily lives." "to spread his message." "To put in circulation." "Literally to send a message." "but foreign visitors." "Henry would have given them and along with them a number of these?" "A takeaway souvenir of Henry's England?" "Absolutely ... you had a huge gold coin." "What does that tell you about the person who gives it to you in a casual way?" "Usually just the head of the monarch was featured. and the imperial crown on his head." "Every bit the image of a king." "But the most important part of the coin is on the reverse." "isn't it?" "The tradition in the medieval period you had a cross on the back of a coin." "and the arms of England superimposed upon it." "Very specifically associating the Coat of Arms of England with the symbols of the Tudor family ... the Tudor dynasty." "... inextricable." "Images is reality for power." "That's what these things are." "They're the one way a ruler can get the message across to the widest number of people before the advent of the modern world." "so what's on them is important." "But while Henry was starting to convince the international community and the aftershocks of rebellion rippled on." "Henry got wind of another plot." "Yorkist exiles in Europe were grooming a young man named Perkin Warbeck and were raising an army to invade England." "this was a disaster." "Many had accepted him as king only because the princes in the Tower were presumed dead." "their loyalties would be torn. this was a threat that Henry had to defuse." "Henry spun a web of surveillance." "Outwardly he was always calm and inscrutable ... giving nothing away." "But this masked a savage intensity. and the chaplains and confessors that the trail of conspiracy led him very close to home indeed." "right to the heart of the royal household." "To his Lord Chamberlain who was responsible for the king's personal security. whose intervention had won Henry the Battle of Bosworth." "When Henry's men searched Stanley's house they found studded with white roses." "enough money to bankroll an army." "Henry began to feel he would never be able to convince everyone that he was the rightful king. starting with how he ran his household." "This is the fabulous great hall at Hampton Court. but Hampton Court is laid out along much the same lines." "This is the awe-inspiring public face of the royal household." "you'd have to be one of the many hundreds of servants or an accredited visitor." "But the king was rarely seen here. which began behind this heavily guarded door." "you weren't coming in." "This is one of the great public apartments." "On the feast days of court it would be packed with petitioners of all kinds hoping to catch a glimpse of the king. and behind which very few indeed were ever admitted." "or privy chamber." "ate and relaxed." "It was what happened behind this door that would become synonymous with Henry VII's reign." "With the discovery of the Stanley plot the privy chamber went into lock-down." "its workings were transparent. only those who would best content the king were admitted." "So at the heart of this glittering household was an institutional black hole whose workings were known only to Henry himself." "Inside the privy chamber things were changing." "especially when it came to money." "The remit of his private chamber treasury was expanding." "they are books of payments." "What is interesting about these books is that they represent" "Henry's very personal control of finance. and he will sign at the bottom. falcons brought from Hungary." "... quite a journey." "Historian Sean Cunningham has been studying Henry's account books. and these pages are written by Henry himself." "I love this entry in particular." "weighty crowns"." "You can sense him weighing it in his hand." "Picking up his weighty crown ... that's good." "I like this:" "... "good crowns"." "There's some good crowns we have here." "There's thousands of pounds worth of bullion going literally through the king's hands. and how he used it was key." "There was all sorts of unofficial activity going on. or certain persons riding on the king's business." "who's this?" "Charles ..." "probably Sir Charles Somerset." "He was one of the king's masters of intelligence." "A man of Flanders ... on official business." "which is a bit frustrating. you have a sense that he's on His Majesty's Secret Service." "Henry was building up a dense network of spies and informers." "whose reach would extend into the furthest and darkest corners of the realm. putting under surveillance those who looked likely to cause trouble." "the Yorkist pretender and eventually executed." "Henry VII had been on the throne for 15 years." "Only now did he feel truly safe." "Things seemed good. and named it after his Earldom ... Richmond." "Here in his maze of rooms Henry could control his allies and keep a close eye on his enemies." "The Spanish ambassador was clearly impressed by the state of the nation." "he said "was remarkably tranquil." "there had always been a number of competing claims for the throne." "Prince Arthur." "There remained not a drop of doubtful royal blood left in the kingdom." "The stage was now set for the most significant moment of Henry's reign so far." "A royal marriage that had taken a decade to broker." "was to marry a great Spanish princess." "... Katherine of Aragon. setting the seal on his dynastic ambitions." "The celebrations would be glorious." "Katherine's procession rode into the city across London Bridge. but what awaited her was spectacular. that would be Henry's ultimate PR event." "It would showcase his chief source of political capital ... his sons." "London was in a carnival mood." "The heaving streets were a riot of colour. was the king's younger son." "The 10 year old Prince Henry loved the limelight." "Already he was a boy with the popular touch." "and to Katherine in particular." "She was about to become part of something very special indeed." "this lavish occasion provoked unease. was a young legal student called Thomas More." "More later described the procession." "He'd been enraptured by Katherine." ""that words couldn't do her justice." "But he ended on a slightly hesitant note." "that these celebrations will prove a happy omen. that the festivities were somehow tempting fate." "The wedding was a triumph." "The Tudor myth was turning into reality. it wouldn't be long before Thomas More's words would be fulfilled." "a boat docked at Greenwich." "where the king and queen were in residence." "Aboard was a messenger who brought terrible news. ... and was dead." "Henry was devastated." "Prince Arthur was laid to rest at Worcester Cathedral." "and the glare of international attention. reflecting the scale of the tragedy." "the west door blade downwards." "The man at arms rode a black caparisoned warhorse." "and into the choir." "his sword and shield were offered up and his coffin body was lowered into its grave. he had a hard heart that wept not." "his final resting place." "The political impact of Arthur's death was immense." "The Tudor dynasty now hung by a thread. the king's only surviving son." "But Elizabeth reassured the king that they were still young enough to have more children." "within months she was pregnant." "to the Tower where Elizabeth was to give birth." "She went into confinement surrounded by her ladies and gentlewomen." "But it was a traumatic and premature labour." "she slipped in and out of consciousness." "Henry was beside himself. ... but nothing worked. ... Elizabeth died. and Henry was shattered by her loss." "their marriage had represented something else as well." "The union of Lancaster and York." "The reuniting of England after decades of civil war." "Many had accepted Henry as king out of loyalty to Elizabeth's Yorkist family. ... all over again. than a poem that Thomas More wrote on the occasion of Elizabeth's death." "Where are our Towers?" "soon art thou gone from me. now shall I neuer see." "More was referring to the new chapel Henry VII was building at Westminster Abbey. and the Tudor Rose." "The chapel was intended to be yet another monument to the splendour of Henry's dynasty." "Thomas More's poem struck at the heart of the matter. the very foundations of his reign were shaken." "Henry's reaction to Elizabeth's death was one of complete physical collapse." "he came close to death. and his drive for control was even more remorseless." "were gone." "And Henry's crown was more at risk than ever." "Old enemies had resurfaced." "who had instigated the first rebellion against Henry had died fifteen years before." "was now a man." "raising an army." "Henry saw conspiracy at every turn." "But his resolve was unshakable." "He would hang onto the crown whatever the cost. they would be made to fear him." "Henry was perfecting a very effective system of repression." "His councilors were experts in extortion. to guarantee their good behaviour." "unpayable sums of money. it was like being on permanent bail." "Anybody who broke the conditions of his bonds faced financial ruin. ... it was unaffordable. know as the Council Learned in the Law." "It would become the most notorious expression of Henry's rule." "The minutes of its meetings are recorded here in this book. but it consisted of a number of Henry's most powerful legal advisers." "to the king." "It relied on information supplied by the regime's network who provided details or potential debts owing to the king." "What's interesting about the Council Learned is that it overrode a lot of the normal processes of government and of law. and haul them in front of this group of councilors." "It acts with complete impunity." "It is totally unaccountable." "rage and frustration into those people who were caught up in its dealings. was a silver-tongued lawyer named Edmund Dudley. and becoming intimately familiar with that linked the guilds and companies." "He saw first hand the dodgy dealings and corrupt transactions of the bankers and merchants that made the City tick. he was given a golden handshake by a grateful City." "But what the City did not expect was that Dudley was going to work for the king." "Dudley was a poacher turned gamekeeper." "Henry handed him an unprecedented role." "Dudley's expertise lay in defining and enforcing the king's legal rights. he used long-forgotten laws to inflict crushing financial penalties on Henry's subject." "Dudley described the brief he had been given. bound to his grace for great sums of money. but it was stretching the law to its absolute limits." "extraordinary justice." "Nowhere was this extraordinary justice applied more thoroughly ... the City of London." "the charges brought against people didn't just stem from obscure laws." "Sometimes they were entirely fabricated." "Perhaps nothing sums up the atmosphere of confusion and terror in the City at this time more than an appalling case of extortion involving" "Thomas Sunnyff and his wife Alice." "Dudley falsely accused the Sunnyffs of murdering a newborn child and dumping the body in the Thames." "The phony charges were designed to make it seem that the Sunnyffs had broken an existing bond for good behaviour." "a huge sum of money." "Sunnyff refused to pay." "he was carted off to prison where he stayed for 3 months." "the jury was rigged found him guilty. ... and paid up. for the murdering of the child." "Henry had an incredible stroke of luck." "He received an unexpected guest at court." "Philip of Burgundy was shipwrecked on the coast of England." "Henry welcomed this powerful prince but it was clear that Philip was trapped." "Henry would release him only if he agreed to hand Suffolk over." "So in mid-March a ship carrying the fugitive earl docked at the port of London." "A heavily armed reception committee marched him to the Tower." "He would never emerge." "The threat of Suffolk was finally gone. had left their mark." "This perpetual state of emergency had hardened into a way of rule." "England was now in the grip of a system that people found both disorientating and terrifying." "and they were resentful." "But they knew that Henry could not go on forever." "his health had been failing for years. and what sort of king he was going to be. keeping him confined in the royal household." "Prince Henry was growing handsome and athletic teenager." "But his father's control had begun to chafe." "was only too happy to show off his son." "He allowed Prince Henry to organise the spring tournament. but not in the way his father anticipated." "Tournaments were spectacular events lasting for days. jousting on horseback." "Prince Henry was not allowed to fight. and wasn't about to lose another. and has first hand experience of the joust. and jousting would be pointless if it was completely safe." "When you look at what they're fighting with." "this the safe kind. and that prevents the lance from penetrating too much. the danger is what makes it meaningful." "Strong bonds were formed in the jousting arena between knights." "like brothers in arms on a battlefield. his son Prince Henry would form his bonds in the tilt yard. but also he thinks differently from him as well." "It's really just a matter of Henry VII being perfectly aware of the importance of chivalry and chivalric display." "But he just wasn't willing to back that up with his own body." "Whereas his son couldn't wait to get involved personally. in a brash disregard for the rule book." "It was a performance that the king and his counselors found alarming." "But Prince Henry loved it." "he eagerly chatted with gentlemen of low degree." "His openness a sharp contrast with his father's remote detachment. valuing honour and glory ... over money. an entirely different proposition to his calculating and distant father." "allegiances were starting to shift." "Henry VII shut himself away at Richmond." "His health was failing yet again." "Only this time there would be no recovering. ... Henry VII died." "He had brought the kingdom to the brink of dynastic succession." "Almost ... but not quite." "This is a pen and ink drawing of the scene around Henry's bed in his privy chamber at the moment of his death." "Here we can see one of the king's gentlemen ushers and we can see here doctors holding urine flasks." "Among those present were some of Henry's oldest and closest servants." "In the past century the deaths of kings had brought and they were determined to make sure the same thing did not happen this time." "The 14 people in this picture were the only people who knew that Henry VII had died. and this is precisely what they did. until the court gathered for the Feast of the Garter on St George's day. there would need to be scapegoats." "People to take the rap for the wrongs that had been done in his father's name." "The new regime had to send out an emphatic statement that it would not be like the old." "One of those not at court on St George's day was Edmund Dudley." "He was away in the City." "Dudley had failed to understand how resented and isolated his rapidly acquired power had made him." "he failed to watch his back." "He had become the unacceptable face of the old regime. ... and finally executed. he worked with a populist touch. and the redressing of wrongs." "Thomas More's Coronation Poem celebrated the coming of this and contrasted the reign to come with the dark days that had just passed. the source of joy. and "no longer does fear hiss whispered secrets in one's ear." "This king is loved." "More also said that the crowning of a new king was like the coming of a new season." "But this reference to the seasons also said something else." "In fact it underscored a contrast that More emphasised throughout his poem. it had to follow a winter of repression and fear." "Henry VII had been the winter." "Henry VIII's funeral cortege progressed through London streets" "His effigy displayed on a carriage drawn by five horses draped in black velvet." "Henry VII had still achieved what he had set out to do." "He had passed on the crown of England." "Westminster Abbey is a national shrine." "poets and playwrights. in the chapel he had been building for the past six years." "It was one of the architectural wonders of the age. and it really is a staggering building." "This spectacular mausoleum is Henry's ultimate statement to the world." "Not what we might expect from a wintry miserly king." "Elizabeth. as they were in their prime." "They're intended to be eternal figures of kingship and queenship." "Henry's chapel remains at the heart of British political life." "It stands as testament to his extraordinary determination and will to power." "and wanted to be. he fought and he won his battles." "He unified a kingdom." "He accrued immense wealth." "But his greatest legacy would only become clear over time." "Running around the tomb is an inscription. the most glorious of kings. the most chaste and the most fruitful. it had also produced children." "The inscription concludes by saying that the land of England should count itself particularly lucky in the foremost of those offspring." "Henry VIII." "Lucky Old England." "Henry VIII's reign would be turbulent in the extreme." "Yet it was also his father's greatest achievement." "most notorious dynasty." "The Tudors."