Heritage > Rulers
Henry VII, 1485-1509
Henry was born in 1457 and eventually married Elizabeth of York. They had seven children: Arthur, Margaret, Henry, Elizabeth, Mary, Edward and Catherine.
The first Tudor king, who wrested the English throne from Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
Henry was the grand child of the marriage between Henry V's widow, Catherine of Valois and a Welshman, Sir Owen Tudor. Henry had spent all his life in Wales and was proud of his origins as a Welshman, but after the bloody battles of the War of the Roses, Henry was sent abroad to France to live. He returned to rule England at the age of 28 and had become a hard and calculating man, after his years of exile in France.
His sound administration helped to mend the damage done by 30 years of civil war and his reign is often seen as the start of modern history.
Henry VII's heraldic device was a sprig of hawthorn because Richard III's crown was found under a hawthorn bush after the Battle of Bosworth Field. He also devised the Tudor Rose, with red and white petals symbolishing the union of the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York.
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