Henry VII(1457–1509)

Henry Tudor was born at Pembroke Castle in south-west Wales on 28 January 1457, into a family whose name came from the Welsh house of Penmynydd in Anglesey, through his grandfather Owen Tudor. His father died before he was born and his claim to the English throne, through his mother Margaret Beaufort, was thin and came through a line once barred from the succession. He was born into the middle of the Wars of the Roses, the long dynastic struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York, and when the Yorkist Edward IV secured the throne the boy became a marked man. From the age of fourteen he lived in exile in Brittany and France, for fourteen years, the last serious hope of the Lancastrian cause and a standing target for assassination and extradition.

His chance came when the Yorkist king Richard III, his own position shaken by the disappearance of his nephews and the defection of powerful supporters, lost the confidence of much of the English nobility. In August 1485 Henry sailed from France with a small force of exiles and French and Scottish soldiers, landed at Milford Haven in the Wales of his birth, and marched east gathering Welsh and English support as he went, his red dragon banner appealing directly to the old prophecies of a Welsh deliverer.

On 22 August 1485 the two armies met near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. Henry was outnumbered and far less experienced in war than the king who faced him, and the battle hung for a time on the powerful Stanley family, who stood aside with their men until the decisive moment. When Richard, seeing Henry's small personal guard, led a mounted charge straight at him to end the matter sword to sword, the Stanleys at last threw their force in on Henry's side. Richard was unhorsed and killed fighting in the press, the last English king to die in battle, and the crown, by tradition found in the field, was set on Henry's head. The Wars of the Roses were effectively over.

He proved a far better king than his thin claim and untried generalship had promised. He married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, uniting the red rose and the white in a single line and draining the dynastic poison from English politics. He put down the rebellions and pretenders of his early reign with firmness and then with mercy, broke the over-mighty private armies of the nobility, restored the shattered royal finances until the crown was solvent and feared, and handed on to his son a peaceful, wealthy and secure kingdom, something no English ruler had managed for a century.

He died at Richmond on 21 April 1509 and was buried beneath the magnificent fan-vaulted chapel he had built at Westminster Abbey, which still bears his name. The Tudor name carries his memory as the Pembroke-born exile of Welsh stock who came home across the sea, won a kingdom in a single morning at Bosworth, ended the longest civil war in English history, and founded the dynasty that would shape the nation for the next hundred and eighteen years.