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Henry VII, also known as Henry Tudor, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death in 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
The House of Tudor was an English and Welsh dynasty that held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a Welsh noble family, and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and the Lordship of Ireland for 118 years with five monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the Scottish House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, descended through his mother from the House of Beaufort, a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.
Perkin Warbeck was a pretender to the English throne claiming to be Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, who was the second son of Edward IV and one of the so-called "Princes in the Tower". Richard, were he alive, would have been the rightful claimant to the throne, assuming that his elder brother Edward V was dead and that he was legitimate—a point that had been previously contested by his uncle, King Richard III.
The Battle of Stoke Field on 16 June 1487 may be considered the last battle of the Wars of the Roses, since it was the last major engagement between contenders for the throne whose claims derived from descent from the houses of Lancaster and York. The Battle of Bosworth Field, two years previously, had established Henry VII on the throne, ending the last period of Yorkist rule and initiating that of the Tudors. The Battle of Stoke Field was the decisive engagement in an attempt by leading Yorkists to unseat the King in favour of the pretender Lambert Simnel.
Lambert Simnel was a pretender to the throne of England. In 1487, his claim to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, threatened the newly established reign of Henry VII (1485–1509). Simnel became the figurehead of a Yorkist rebellion organised by John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. The rebellion was crushed in 1487. Simnel was pardoned because of his tender years, and was thereafter employed by the royal household as a scullion.
The Princes in the Tower refers to the mystery of the fate of the deposed King Edward V of England and his younger brother Prince Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, heirs to the throne of King Edward IV of England. The brothers were the only sons of the king by his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, living at the time of their father's death in 1483. Aged 12 and 9 years old, respectively, they were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle and England's regent, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for Edward V's forthcoming coronation. Before the young king's coronation, however, he and his brother were declared illegitimate by Parliament. Gloucester ascended the throne as Richard III.
Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, by his wife Isabel Neville. As a result of Margaret's marriage to Richard Pole, she was also known as Margaret Pole. She was one of just two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right without a husband in the House of Lords.
Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick was the son of Isabel Neville and George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, and a potential claimant to the English throne during the reigns of both his uncle, Richard III (1483–1485), and Richard's successor, Henry VII (1485–1509). He was also a younger brother of Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury. Edward was tried and executed for treason in 1499.
The House of York was a cadet branch of the English royal House of Plantagenet. Three of its members became kings of England in the late 15th century. The House of York descended in the male line from Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, the fourth surviving son of Edward III. In time, it also represented Edward III's senior line, when an heir of York married the heiress-descendant of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward III's second surviving son. It is based on these descents that they claimed the English crown. Compared with its rival, the House of Lancaster, it had a superior claim to the throne of England according to cognatic primogeniture, but an inferior claim according to agnatic primogeniture. The reign of this dynasty ended with the death of Richard III of England at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. It became extinct in the male line with the death of Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, in 1499.
Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, was the sixth child and second son of King Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville, born in Shrewsbury. Richard and his older brother, who briefly reigned as King Edward V of England, mysteriously disappeared shortly after their uncle Richard III became king in 1483.
Cork, located on Ireland's south coast, is the second largest city within the Republic of Ireland after Dublin and the third largest on the island of Ireland after Dublin and Belfast. Cork City is the largest city in the province of Munster. Its history dates back to the sixth century.
The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: A Romance is an 1830 historical novel by Mary Shelley about the life of Perkin Warbeck. The book takes a Yorkist point of view and proceeds from the conceit that Perkin Warbeck died in childhood and the supposed impostor was indeed Richard of Shrewsbury. Henry VII of England is repeatedly described as a "fiend" who hates Elizabeth of York, his wife and Richard's sister, and the future Henry VIII, mentioned only twice in the novel, is a vile youth who abuses dogs. Her preface establishes that records of the Tower of London, as well as the histories of Edward Hall, Raphael Holinshed, and Francis Bacon, the letters of Sir John Ramsay to Henry VII that are printed in the Appendix to John Pinkerton's History of Scotland establish this as fact. Each chapter opens with a quotation. The entire book is prefaced with a quotation in French by Georges Chastellain and Jean Molinet.
Events from the 1490s in England.
The Second Cornish uprising occurred in September 1497 when the pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck landed at Whitesand Bay, near Land's End, on 7 September with just 120 men in two ships.
The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and in following centuries as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne from 1455 to 1487. The wars were fought between supporters of the House of Lancaster and House of York, two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet. The conflict resulted in the end of Lancaster's male line in 1471, leaving the Tudor family to inherit their claim to the throne through the female line. Conflict was largely brought to an end upon the union of the two houses through marriage, creating the Tudor dynasty that would subsequently rule England.
John Payne, Bishop of Meath, held that office from 1483 until his death in 1506; he was also Master of the Rolls in Ireland. He is best remembered for his part in the coronation of Lambert Simnel, the pretender to the Crown of England, in 1487.
Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare KG, known variously as "Garret the Great" or "The Great Earl", was Ireland's premier peer. He served as Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1477 to 1494, and from 1496 onward. His power was so great that he was called "the uncrowned King of Ireland".
Sir Thomas Plunket (c.1440–1519) was a wealthy Irish landowner, lawyer and judge in fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century Ireland. He held office as Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer and Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas. After the change of the English royal family in 1485, his loyalty to the new Tudor dynasty was deeply suspect, and he was involved in two attempts to put a pretender on the English throne. On each occasion he was disgraced, fined and removed from office; yet he had sufficient political influence to ensure his return to favour and high office.
Sir John Savage, KG, KB, PC (1444–1492), was an English knight of the Savage family, who was a noted military commander of the late 15th-century. Savage most notably fought at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where he commanded the left flank of the Tudor (Lancastrian) army to victory and is said to have personally slain the Duke of Norfolk in single combat. Earlier in the Wars of the Roses, Savage had been a supporter and friend of the Yorkist King Edward IV, fighting alongside him and helping him to victories at the Battle of Barnet in April 1471 and the Battle of Tewkesbury the following month. He returned to active military service in 1482 when he joined the invasion of Scotland led by the King's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, where the Duke made him a Knight banneret.
An eleven-day Siege of Waterford took place, in Waterford in 1495, after the pretender to the throne of Henry VII, Perkin Warbeck's failed attack on Deal, Kent. Warbeck was joined by Cork's Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Desmond when they went to Ireland and launched an invasion of Waterford on 23 July 1495.
