Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, Ralph Neville, 3rd Earl of Westmorland and Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, were arrested and asked if they would swear allegiance to Henry. They agreed and were allowed to keep their titles, estates and appointments. But the king was taking no chances with Neville and he was made to hand his son Ralph over to assure his loyalty.
John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, had been a loyal supporter of Henry and he was ‘immediately recognised as one of the great men of Henry VII’s regime’ as Lord Admiral and then Lord Great Chamberlain. He also created his father-in-law Thomas Stanley, the Earl of Derby, and appointed him High Constable and High Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster. Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, was pardoned and elevated to Duke of Bedford. The Earldom of Wiltshire was returned to the young Henry Stafford, son of the executed Duke of Buckingham, and he was handed to King Henry’s mother Margaret Beaufort so she could raise him.
Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond, had won his throne on the field of battle, the last king of England to do so. The next step was to restore stability in the kingdom and end the thirty years of bloody civil war. Margaret Beaufort arranged the marriage between her son Henry Tudor and Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth of York, uniting the two warring families. It allowed Henry to work on maintaining the peace and restoring the power of the English monarchy. The death of Richard and being crowned queen was retribution for Elizabeth, in memory of her brothers who had been murdered in the Tower.
Henry VII imprisoned the Yorkist heir to the throne, 10-year-old Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, in the Tower after Bosworth. The claimants John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, and his son, also John, Earl of Lincoln, both submitted to Henry VII after Bosworth but John junior was soon plotting against the king. In 1487 he promoted Lambert Simnel, who bore a likeness to Edward, but he planned to seize power for himself if the rebellion was successful.
John acquired money from his aunt Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, and then sailed to Ireland with Simnel and mercenaries where Gerald FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare, welcomed him. FitzGerald wanted a return of Yorkist rule because Richard III had allowed him to govern Ireland as its ‘uncrowned king’. Simnel was proclaimed Edward VI and was crowned king in Dublin but Henry VII countered by parading Edward Plantagenet in St Paul’s Cathedral, to show that he was still alive.
Pole landed in Lancashire and Henry VII was concerned his step-father Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, would hedge his bets before committing himself, as he had done at the battle of Bosworth. Pole marched to York, but the traditionally Yorkist stronghold refused to open its gates to him. He then defeated a small Lancastrian force at Bramham Moor in Yorkshire and marched south towards London. John and most of the other Yorkist supporters were killed at the battle of Stoke Field in Nottinghamshire on 16 June 1487.
Thomas Howard had declined an opportunity to escape from the Tower during the Simnel rebellion so Henry VII returned his Earldom of Surrey and a few of his estates. He was sent north to put down a rebellion against taxation, after Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, was murdered in York. Twelve-year-old Henry Percy would be raised at court and the king chose husbands for his sisters. Henry was eventually appointed to the traditional family post of the Warden of the Eastern Marches in 1503.
Henry Daubeney’s father wanted to be connected to the Basset family so he could claim Beaumont’s huge inheritance. So he took in Basset’s two daughters and let his son choose one. Henry’s father died when he was only 15 but the teenager still fought to get the Basset fortune.
Henry Stafford, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, paid the king for permission to marry Cecily Bonville, hoping to get his hands on her inheritance. But Cecily’s son Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, acquired the right to be his father’s executor, leaving Stafford with an aging wife and fourteen irate step-children.
Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, was kept in the Tower for many years because of his claim to the throne. Some say he had a mental disability but his long imprisonment ‘out of all company of men and sight of beasts’ could not have helped and ‘he could not discern a goose from a capon.’ In 1499 Perkin Warbeck impersonated Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, one of the princes who disappeared in the Tower in 1483. King James IV of Scotland declared his support for Perkin Warbeck and the powerful Ralph Neville, 3rd Earl of Westmorland, headed north to join him.
There was even talk of a plot to free Edward as a figurehead for a rebellion in November. So he was put on trial and Lord High Steward John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, heard him plead guilty. He was beheaded, the final male member of the House of Plantagenet with a claim to the throne. William, brother of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, was executed for treason at the same time.
While Edward had been a figurehead for those wishing to challenge Henry VII, he may have been executed to appease new allies, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. Their daughter Catherine of Aragon was due to marry Henry’s heir Arthur, and Henry VII wanted no one to challenge his succession.
The Poles were the leading Yorkist contenders following Richard III’s death at Bosworth. Margaret of York was married to Henry VII’s cousin Richard Pole in 1487 to stop conspirators using her as a figurehead for a rebellion. The couple were then kept at court where they served Prince Arthur and his wife to be, Catherine of Aragon.
John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, had submitted to Henry VII after Bosworth and while he served the king faithfully, Edmund de la Pole was not so loyal after he was demoted to Earl of Suffolk in 1491. He was determined to seize the throne and escaped from England in 1501 only to find the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, refused to support him. James Tyrrell was executed for helping Edmund escape while William Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, was imprisoned in the Tower for supporting him.
In 1506 Maximilian’s son Philip of Burgundy was sailing to Castile to claim the throne on behalf of his wife when a storm drove his ship ashore and he became a guest of Henry VII. Philip was allowed to continue on his journey but only after Maximilian had handed over Pole, with a guarantee he would not be executed. While Henry VII stuck to his word, his son Henry VIII would not feel bound by the agreement and he beheaded Pole in 1513.
The birth of Henry VII and Elizabeth’s first son unified the House of Tudor and the House of York in blood. The boy was named after the legendary King Arthur and he was created Duke of Cornwall. Eleven-year-old Prince Arthur was betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, creating an Anglo-Spanish alliance against France. They married in November 1501 but Arthur would die only five months later, aged 15.
Henry VII was anxious to maintain the Treaty of Medina del Campo so he discussed marrying Catherine to his second son Henry, Prince of Wales. Ten-year-old Henry had been raised out of the spotlight of the royal court and was ‘untrained in the exacting art of kingship’. Catherine claimed her marriage to Arthur had not been consummated so a papal dispensation was only needed to silence the ‘impediment of public honesty’. But Henry VII and the Spanish ambassador both wanted the stronger dispensation called an ‘affinity’ from the pope, in case the teenage princess was lying.
Thomas Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, escorted the king’s daughter Margaret to Scotland in 1503, as part of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. She was betrothed to James IV of Scotland in an attempt to break the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France.
Meanwhile, Henry and Catherine were betrothed in June 1503. But the situation in Spain became complicated when Isabella died in 1504, leaving the kingdom of Castile to her daughter Joanna the Mad. Ferdinand was anxious for Catherine to stay out of the political turmoil, so he made his daughter an ambassador to England. Matters were further complicated when Prince Henry declared he did not want to marry Catherine as soon as he turned 14. The relationship between Ferdinand and Henry VII deteriorated but young Henry eventually married Catherine when the king died in 1509, declaring the union was his father’s wish.