Henry VII was Ruler of Britain from 1485-1509, earning the crown at the Challenge of Bosworth Field, which finished the Wars of the Roses. Regarding the John Guy, "few in English history have ascended the throne with less connection with federal government than Henry VII"; this makes it exceptional that Henry could found a dynasty that could last before death of his granddaughter in 1603. Henry's reign is seen as a change between the middle ages and early on modern periods, so it is important to look at whether the British monarchy had changed appropriately during Henry's time on the throne. This essay can look at Henry's kingship, the new ideas that he brought to enable him in which to stay power, and perhaps, how he built on and upgraded the ideas of his predecessors. The level of creativity in Henry's financial insurance policy, attitude towards the nobility, and exactly how he presented himself and his family will all be matters which will be reviewed, as well as the possible affect of Edward IV; a monarch whose kingship seems similar in several ways compared to that of Henry VII.
Due to the nature of Henry's accession to the throne, his immediate target in 1485 and the years that followed was to make a secure condition. He wanted to stay in London, then had to increase his guideline; he do this by increasing the power of the Justices of the Peacefulness, and by the finish of Henry's reign that they had surpassed Sheriffs to become the chief municipality officers. These Justices depended after Henry for his or her position, and through them he was able to exercise his will across almost all of the country and never have to leave London. By comparison, Henry's French contemporaries exercised hardly any authority beyond Paris, as the powerful French dukes and other nobility manipulated large swathes of France. In order to implement his guidelines, Henry would need a specific amount of control over Parliament, something his predecessors hadn't realised, or weren't skillful enough to acquire. Henry VI's reign was characterised by too great a reliance on Parliament, leaving the legacy of a fragile ruler, whereas Edward IV and Richard III were inclined to take care of Parliament with contempt. Henry was able to find a middle earth between both of these extremes, and gave him great affect over the House of Commons. Henry effectively manipulated the appointment of the Speaker of the Commons, and therefore decided on people who he realized would be faithful to him, and channel his passions through Parliament. Henry was able to rule effectively without much the help of Parliament; from 1485 to 1509 Parliament met on only seven occasions, and five of these situations were in the first decade of Henry's reign. This would suggest that once Henry believed that he had guaranteed his position as king, he thought that he no more had to consult with parliament, his preference being to work with the Council for Learned Rules, which allowed him to avoid parliament. Under Henry parliament became a 'silicone stamp', the official seal of approval for Henry's procedures, indicating the control he wielded in the Commons.
At the start of Henry's reign the Exchequer was in control of royal finances, something which was basically free from problem, but was crippling slow-moving, and kept Henry lacking money. He needed money to finance a royal army, to be able to endure on the throne, and set up himself as king. It really is here that the effect of Edward IV is seen; Henry reinstated the King's Chamber, an establishment that was more streamlined and more efficient than the Exchequer. Henry developed Edward's system, and it was a mixture of innovation and increasing on existing ideas that earned Henry the reputation as a master financier. The men who performed the post of Treasurer of the Chamber, Sir Thomas Lovell and Sir John Heron, became two of Henry's most respected aides, and working with expert advisors such as Sir Reginald Bray, the Crown became extremely attained at maximising income from its lands. It could be argued that Henry's coverage of centralisation was forced somewhat than an advancement, as it was essential for him to exercise control over the complete country to be able to prevent a menace to his kingship. Inside a European framework, the coverage could be considered innovative, however in a English framework, the government was already more established than much of Europe, and it could appear to be another rational step by any monarch able to do so, in this case, Henry VII. The King's Chamber was certainly an innovation, as it helped to enhance the efficiency of Henry's funds, but it might certainly be argued that the creativity was Edward IV's, and it was borrowed and developed by Henry.
Considering the way he had taken the throne, Henry cannot afford to ignore the power and affect possessed by the local nobility. Henry therefore needed to exercise a certain amount of control over these nobles. Henry outlawed retaining, the practice of nobles raising a private military, which significantly reduced the probability of any noble having the ability to challenge the ruler. By pursuing an insurance plan of appointing customers of the gentry to the important local and regional roles, this averted already powerful nobles from dominating a location. This was a clever insurance policy, as by promoting participants of the gentry to administrative articles; it better their social standing up, and tied them to Henry, which makes it likely they would be loyal to him. Henry liked to keep carefully the older nobility round the court as it made it easier for him to keep an eye on them; he grew suspicious if any member was absent for just about any significant period of time. Henry limited the amount of new lords that he appointed. This heightened the status of the subject, as so few lordships were awarded, the recipients would be particularly pleased to Henry that they had been designated for interpersonal elevation, and were dedicated to him. During his reign, he appointed one Earl and five Barons, as opposed to Edward IV, who created nine Earls and thirteen barons. The number of peers dropped from fifty-five to forty-two, as Henry didn't replace a few of the young families that had died out. Henry was quite pleased to reward noblemen that he trusted, but he handed out responsibility less often than prior kings. Many of the grandest offices that had previously been focuses on for noble ambition were now stored by the ruler, or awarded to his sons, preventing the nobility from wielding any great electricity. Henry viewed the nobles that he trusted as weapons in enforcing his guideline across all parts, placing devoted nobles in regions of the country that he considered disloyal. The House of Lords was to echo the Commons in expressing the views of the king, as Henry stuffed it with religious peers, who were dependent upon him for their position. These men occupied positions in Henry's Celebrity Chamber and Privy Council, which grew in importance during Henry's reign, and acted in the needs of the ruler. Henry was perhaps permitted to be marginally more innovative in the way he dealt with the nobility, and acquired more room to manoeuvre, as the Wars of the Roses experienced wiped out many of the powerful noble individuals, which earlier kings such as Edward IV possessed to deal with. Nonetheless, Henry maintained the threat of the nobility very effectively, and there were no uprisings which were a major menace to Henry's rule. Henry incorporated the gentry into municipality and the product owner classes into administration, creating a devoted, functional and effective state, that was under his control.
It could be argued that Henry's best innovations came in neuro-scientific the overall economy. Henry was meticulous in his administration of the country's finances, and took a far more prominent role than arguably any ruler before him in their management. He was able to build up and exploit crown lands in a way not done by prior kings. The first work of Parliament in Henry's reign was the Take action of Resumption, which restored all lands taken from the crown since the 2nd of October 1455. Similar serves adopted, allowing Henry to confiscate the land of his opponents, which was soaked up into the crown estates, adding to Henry's personal earnings. Parliament also restored some property lost by the crown dating back to the reigns of Richard II and Edward III, showing the amount of impact Henry had over Parliament, and how they were happy to work in the best interests of the crown. Henry possessed a greater swath of crown lands than any English monarch before him, which allowed him to acquire huge amounts of rent, adding to the prosperity of the crown. There is little that was new in the framework of Henry's financial supervision; a lot of it was derived from the Yorkist precedent, especially the ideas of Edward IV. Henry's development was his hard work and devotion toward rehabilitating the royal earnings of Britain, something no prior English king experienced done with such vigor. The Yorkist model was unquestionably improved upon by Henry, though it can only just be speculated how Edward IV would have fared acquired he been given enough time on the throne that Henry acquired. Henry VII was heavily mixed up in growth of the navy, conditioning it by building a lot more warships, which created more opportunities. In times of peace he appointed out warships to dealers in times of peace, with sellers using Henry's boats to journey as far as the Levant. Henry revolutionised the navy, turning from a way of transporting troops, into a weapon of offence. He built a dried out dock in Portsmouth in 1496, an invention which hadn't yet been seen in France or Spain. Henry was able to increase royal earnings to over 100, 000 per annum, set alongside the 70, 000 per annum of Edward IV's reign. However, although Francis Bacon discussions of Henry's financial prowess, he was still poor in relation to other monarchs; in 1509 Henry's income was 113, 000, whilst the income of the Ruler of France in the same 12 months was 800, 000. Overall, Henry's main advancement in crown money was himself; it was his effort and persistence that allowed him to leave his boy a complete treasury, that was employed by Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I to concrete England's status as a European power.
Henry received the crown in fight, and he'd need to do something quickly to silence any questions relating to his case to the throne. His use of imagery was crucial to this, a characteristic that was passed down to the future Tudor monarchs. Edward IV and Richard III experienced used the white rose as symbolic of the house of York, as well as perhaps as a response to this Henry and the home of Lancaster commenced to relate themselves with the red rose. Once Henry possessed become king, the red rose was symbolic among many; Henry's great creativity was to incorporate the white rose and the red when he wedded Elizabeth of York. The Tudor increased symbolised the joining jointly of the houses of York and Lancaster, and offered the Tudor dynasty a symbol and a graphic they could be associated with. The first issue of Henry VII coinage included the increase rose, in an obvious distinction to the solitary rose which came out on the coinage of Edward IV. Henry's use of the Tudor rose on his great seal placed a precedent for his successors, all of whom copied it to their own designs. There is absolutely no indication to claim that Henry designed the rose, but he certainly implemented it and used it broadly, and it was used by his successors to bolster their hereditary claim to the throne. Henry's popular use of his dynastic badges on structures, documents proclaimed his inherited to rule. Henry's use of imagery could very well be his most important innovation; it created a legacy that his Tudor successors could build upon and use with their advantage.
Henry is identified by Polydore Vergil as generous to foreign guests, and was luxurious in his hospitality towards them. It is likely that Henry was willing to job himself as a great Western european monarch, and by impressing foreign friends he hoped they might tell tales of Henry's grandeur in their homeland. Henry rebuilt some of the royal palaces, and his most liked, Richmond was styled in the fashion of the Burgundian court which fitted in with the Western european design of kingship he was attempting to present. He built new towers with royal lodgings at Windsor and the Tower of London, and produced a fresh house at Greenwich, tightly following the design of the brick urban residences of the Burgundian Netherlands. Henry had not been able to completely change the British monarchy into an early on modern Western monarchy, but he certainly laid the foundations that allowed the greater celebrated Henry VIII to perform on the European stage.
In finish, although there were innovations in Henry's kingship, especially the adoption of the Tudor increased, overall his reign and legacy was built on effort rather than innovative policy. Much of his financial reform was built upon improvements and ideas of his Yorkist predecessors. Edward IV released the King's Chamber to the British monarchy, and Henry reinstated it in the beginning of his reign, and by working hard, with meticulous attention to detail, he was able to change the fortunes of the British crown's funds. Temperley identifies Henry as "the manufacturer of modern Britain, the forerunner in our naval greatness", which is a fair analysis, as his reign kept a solid groundwork which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I could build. It really is no criticism of Henry to state that his kingship had not been particularly progressive, he was successful by using good sense and spending so much time. He reduced the energy of the nobility, a job made just a bit easier by the fall of a lot of his foes in the Wars of the Roses, centralised the government, and nursed the funds of the crown back again to health. His use of imagery and heraldry created the thought of a Tudor dynasty, and does much to legitimise his claim to the throne. He could be called an opportunist, in the sense that many of the reforms he implemented weren't his, but it could also be argued that he worked hard to set-up the chance, and was therefore eligible for it. There have been innovations in Henry's kingship, and even though the majority of them weren't his, he worked as hard as any monarch before or after him to ensure the success of the English monarchy.
