Henry VII summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Henry VII.

Henry VII, orig. Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, (born Jan. 28, 1457, Pembroke Castle, Pembrokeshire, Wales—died April 21, 1509, Richmond, Surrey, Eng.), King of England (1485–1509) and founder of the Tudor dynasty. As earl of Richmond and a kinsman in the House of Lancaster, he fled to Brittany after the triumph of the Yorkist forces in 1471. He later returned to England, rallied the opponents of Richard III, and defeated him at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485). He married Elizabeth of York and ended the Wars of the Roses, though Yorkist plots continued. He made peace with France (1492), the Netherlands (1496), and Scotland (1499) and used his children’s marriages to build European alliances. His commercial treaties and promotion of trade made England wealthy and powerful. He was succeeded by his son Henry VIII.

Hans Holbein the Younger: Portrait of Henry VIII of England

Henry VIII Summary

Henry VIII was the king of England (1509–47) who presided over the beginnings of the English Renaissance and the English Reformation. His six wives were, successively, Catherine of Aragon (the mother of the future queen Mary I), Anne Boleyn (the mother of the future queen Elizabeth I), Jane Seymour

Wars of the Roses Summary

Wars of the Roses, (1455–85), in English history, the series of dynastic civil wars whose violence and civil strife preceded the strong government of the Tudors. Fought between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne, the wars were named many years afterward from the supposed badges

government Summary

Government, the political system by which a country or community is administered and regulated. Most of the key words commonly used to describe governments—words such as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—are of Greek or Roman origin. They have been current for more than 2,000 years and have not

England Summary

England, predominant constituent unit of the United Kingdom, occupying more than half of the island of Great Britain. Outside the British Isles, England is often erroneously considered synonymous with the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) and even with the entire United