English King Henry VII will be 550 years old this Sunday, January 28, having been born in 1457.  

King Henry is the 18th cousin, 15 times removed to me. He was the first in the line of the Kings of the House of Tudor. Henry VII, who was son of Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort, was born in 1457. Henry married Elizabeth of York (Elizabeth Plantagenet) in 1486, who bore him four children: Arthur, Henry, Margaret and Mary. Henry died in 1509 after reigning 24 years. Their son, Henry VIII was the brother-in-law of William Carey through Henry's second of six wives, Anne Boleyn. William is my 21st cousin, twelve times removed.

"Elizabeth of York was born at Westminster on 11 Feb 1465, and she died giving birth to a dau. on her birthday in 1503. She was the daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Born into one of the houses caught in the struggle that would later so eloquently be called 'The Wars of the Roses,' one would think that she had a difficult childhood. In fact, she was living a pleasantly secure life until the death of her father in 1483. When she was five years old she was to have married George Neville, eIdest son of John, Earl of Northumberland, later Marquis of Montagu, and Neville was created Duke of Bedford, but his father switched sides against the King, Bedford was deprived of all his titles and Elizabeth's bettrothal was cancelled. In 1475 Edward planned to marry her to Louis, the French Dauphin, but Edward soon discovered that Louis had no intention of keeping his obligations and therefore the engagement was broken off. Bernard André, the blind poet laureate and historian, hints that Edward offered Elizabeth to Henry of Richmond, but that Henry declined, suspecting that the offer was a trap to put him into the King's power.

"However, when Edward IV died, things took a decidedly bad turn. Elizabeth Woodville wanted her young son, now Edward V to go to London with a strong army, but her wishes were not honored. So, when he set out with just the usual attendants, it was easy for his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester to intercept the caravan and take the young King to the palace lodgings in the Tower of London.

"Elizabeth Woodville must have distrusted this move by Richard, since she took her remaining son Richard, the Duke of York, and her six daughters to Westminster Abbey. However, Elizabeth was convinced to let Richard join his brother at the Tower (on the premise that the young King was lonely) under the protection of Richard. It was at this time that the young princes (technically a King and a prince) disappeared, and the Lord Protector, brother of the late Edward IV became King Richard III.

"Elizabeth's mother now made a plan, together with Margaret Beaufort, to marry their two children, Henry and Elizabeth. On Christmas Day, 1483, at the cathedral of Rennes in Brittany, where he was in exile, Henry Tudor swore to marry Elizabeth as soon as he had secured the throne.

"Richard III, of course, was determined to stop such a scheme being put into operation. The Titulus Regius is simply the document in which Richard laid out his claim to the throne. Briefly, the case is this: that Richard's brother, Edward IV, had made a troth-plight with Lady Eleanor Butler, and then, while Lady Eleanor was still alive, had married Elizabeth Woodville, thus making hte children of the marriage illegitimate, thus invalidating their claim to the throne, thus making Richard the rightful King.

"When Richard III's wife died in 1485 he proposed to marry Elizabeth himself. Luckily, his advisers persuaded him to drop this strange notion.

"When Henry of Richmond landed at Milford Haven, Elizabeth was sent to safe keeping at Sheriff Hutton, near York, deep in the heart of Gloucester country. Henry's victory at Bosworth meant Elizabeth's release and her journey to London to meet the man she was to marry.

"Henry delayed the wedding for a number of months, possibly because he wished to make it quite cIear that he was King of England in his own right and not because he was marrying the heiress of Edward IV, but probably also for simple practical reasons. Parlia ment was impatient of the delay and before Christmas 1485 the Commons urged him to honour his pledge. So, on 18 Jan 1486, having acquired the necessary papal dispensation, the marriage was solemnized. Thus the two royal houses - York and Lancaster - were finally united. Their marriage symbolically brought an end to the Wars of the Roses (although rebellions would spring up during Henry's reign) and was responsible for the creation of the Tudor Rose- the joining of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster.

"Elizabeth is one of the least important, though not the least attractive, of the Queens of England. Little is known about her. What evidence there is suggests that the relations between Henry VII and his Queen were happy. Of Elizabeth and Henry's seven children, four survived childhood: Arthur, Margaret, Henry and Mary.

Source: http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/aboutElizabethofYork.htm


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