#i mean with becket it's a vis-a-vis thing

[natequarter]

quit your job. coincidentally i am stabbing you through the chest homoerotically. i hope this helps influence your decision

[richmond-rex]

What do you think Henry VII remembers, if anything, of his other uncle Henry VI?

This is such an interesting question and something that I myself have been wondering, so thank you for providing me with the opportunity to expand my thoughts on here 🌹

We know that Henry VII only ever saw his uncle King Henry VI once during his life, when he was 13 years old. However, I’d argue King Henry must have caused quite a great impression on him, and considering Henry Tudor was old enough at that time, also a profoundly lasting one. So far young Henry Earl of Richmond had been living as a ward of his uncle Jasper’s enemies, the Herberts. By 1470 his old guardian, William Herbert, had been executed, and then, as the Earl of Warwick changed sides and brought about Henry VI’s readeption, Henry Tudor was returned to his uncle Jasper who took him to London to meet King Henry VI. That Jasper felt like acquainting his nephew with his brother denotes a special degree of closeness and advocates for his idea of family, in my opinion.

According to André, Henry VII’s court poet and self-styled regius historiographus, on 27 October 1470 Henry VI held ‘a splendid feast with the nobles and best men of the kingdom’ to commemorate his return to the throne. As the king was washing his hands, young Richmond was brought to his presence, and according to André, ‘the king prophesied that someday the boy would undertake the governance of the kingdom and would have all things under his own power.’ Polydore Vergil, a historian that began his service under Henry VII in 1506, wrote in his Three Books that in that 1470 meeting ‘the king... is reported to have said:’

“This truly, this is he unto whom both we and our adversaries must yield and give over the dominion.”

It seems not even Vergil lends much credence to this tale as expressed by his choice of words: reported to have said. As expected, this myth has largely been viewed as Tudor propaganda and indeed the episode has been immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry VI part III. In the play, King Henry VI meets a toddler Henry Richmond (then escorted by Somerset), calls him ‘England’s hope’, and says Richmond was ‘Likely in time to bless a regal throne’. Given that King Henry VI had his own son Prince Edward as his heir at the time, it seems unlikely he would ever have said such a thing. However, if anything remotely close to that happened, then I agree with Leanda de Lisle in saying that it must have been King Henry VI taking Henry Tudor to be his own son Edward, who thanks to his imprisonment in the Tower he had not seen for five years (and would not ever see again). It’s absurdly sad to think King Henry VI would confound his nephew with his son but arguably also not out of the realm of possibility. We don’t know if Henry Tudor saw his uncle King Henry again, but it’s also not unlikely that he, his mother and uncle Jasper stayed at court for the feast of All Hallows’ (1 November) and All Souls’ Day (2 November).

If King Henry VI ever made such prophecy, wittingly or not, then it must have greatly impacted on Henry Tudor. Henry VII believed to have been chosen by God to, against all odds, become king of England. He once wrote about ‘the crown which it has pleased God to give us with the victory over our enemy at our first field’. Henry Tudor was reported to be very pious—he made pilgrimages to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury every Easter, as well as frequent pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and donations to the shrine of St Vincent Ferrer in Brittany. He also founded the cult of the Breton saint St Armel in England and boosted the teachings of St Francis by his patronage of the Franciscan order. He especially favoured the Observants (the Franciscans, also known as the Greyfriars), granting them annuities for the establishment of monasteries in England and abroad. It seems he also favoured staying at religious houses when travelling or going on progress around the kingdom.

Most importantly, Henry VII held a singular devotion to the Virgin Mary and his adoption of the red rose as his personal symbol—aside from dynastic reasons—had everything to do with the religious connotations of that flower. Henry VII could have associated himself with his uncle Henry VI by adopting his antelope badge, for example, but instead, he chose the five-petal flower associated with the Virgin Mary and the Passion of Christ. The Franciscans were noted for their devotion to the Passion, and Henry VII had come in contact with the Observants during his exile in Brittany. The rose had five petals like the five wounds of Christ—St Bernard of Clairvaux once stated: “As many wounds as there are on the Saviour’s body, so many roses are there! Look at His feet and His hands; do you not see roses?” 

Forgive me for still going on a tangent about it, but Henry VII’s personal devotion to the Virgin Mary and the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception is exemplified in his Book of Hours, where a miniature shows a figure representing the king kneeling at a prayer desk before a vision of the Virgin as a baby held by her mother, St Anne (or, alternatively, The Virgin and the Child Jesus). His devotion to the Virgin was also highlighted in his rebuilding of the Lady Chapel (now Henry VII’s Chapel) at Westminster Abbey which I will return to in a moment.

I’m not sure but I think it was Vergil who reported Henry VII as having said that religion was his ‘continual refuge’ during exile. His piety has been largely attributed to the influence of his mother Margaret Beaufort, herself also a very pious woman. But given how many years—and formative years those were—they spent apart, I imagine that Henry must have looked up to someone closer to him at the time, namely his uncle Jasper Tudor. We know that after the death of Catherine of Valois Jasper and his brother Edmund were raised by nuns at Barking Abbey, and that then at some point they joined King Henry VI’s court. According to John Blacman, Henry VI’s biographer and chaplain writing in 1485:

[…] and like pains did [Henry VI] apply in the case of his half-brothers, the Lords Jasper and Edmund, in their boyhood and youth; providing for them most strict and safe guardianship, putting them under the care of virtuous and worthy priests, both for teaching and for right living and conversation, lest the untamed practices of youth should grow rank if they lacked any to prune them.

Blacman also claimed that the king personally protected his half-brothers from sexual temptation by keeping ‘careful watch through hidden windows of his chamber’ (yes, I know). Like his uncle King Henry VI, Henry VII would also set a court that ‘maintained the highest standards of sexual behaviour’. Indeed, Retha Warnicke made an extensive compilation of scandals during the first two Tudor reigns and not a single case of sexual misconduct was found to have taken place during Henry VII’s time, marking his court as a decidedly different one than Edward IV’s had been.

Going back to Henry VI’s supposed prophecy, his words surely must have acquired a great weight in Henry Tudor’s mind by 1483 when he made his bid to the English throne. By that time King Henry VI had become a popular saint in England and even though Edward IV had tried to have him modestly—and somewhat obscurely—buried in Chertsey Abbey, Surrey, people had started to flock to his grave. A peasant claimed that Henry VI helped him when he had a bean trapped in his ear, which only popped out after he prayed to the king. Painted images of King Henry VI began showing up in churches around the country, like this one at Barton in Norfolk:

One of King Henry VI’s most ardent devotees was Henry Tudor’s mother Margaret Beaufort (Jasper’s feelings towards the cult are unknown) who had met her kinsman when she was about nine years old. When King Henry VI allegedly offered her the option of remaining married to Suffolk’s son or be remarried to his brother Edmund, Margaret says St Nicholas came to her in a dream dressed as a bishop, telling her to choose Edmund. Again, if this story is true or not, we may never know, but Margaret told that to her confessor John (bishop, then saint) Fisher—why would a famously pious woman such as Margaret Beaufort lie to her own confessor, thus committing a sin? It might be that the events took a mystical turn in Margaret’s imagination as a young girl, but that she associated divine intervention to hers and her son’s fate, and likewise to King Henry VI’s proposal, is clear.

It seems Richard III tried to control King Henry VI’s ever-growing cult by moving Henry VI’s body from Chertsey Abbey to St George’s Chapel at Windsor, a place where visitors wouldn’t have easy access to the king. Nevertheless, when Henry VII came to the throne he wholeheartedly encouraged pilgrimages to the place. Henry VII launched an official campaign to have his uncle canonised, with several petitions to popes Innocent VIII, Alexander VI and Julius II. Henry also ordered the compilation of a book of miracles worked by his uncle, and a biography of Henry VI was published in 1500 claiming that Henry VI had been ever pious and chaste during his life, towards his queen never behaving ‘unseemly ... but with all conjugal honesty and gravity’. Henry VII planned to have the body of King Henry VI re-interred at the heart of the new Lady Chapel he was planning at Westminster Abbey. 

However much Henry VII enjoyed good relations with the papacy, especially Pope Innocent VIII, his campaign to have his uncle King Henry VI canonised never came into fruition. Henry VII decided for him and his wife to be buried at his new Lady Chapel instead, next to the tomb of his grandmother Queen Catherine of Valois. In his will, he stated his wish for his body to be buried:

“in the Chapell where our said graunt Dame laye buried, the which Chapell we have begoune to buylde of newe, in the honour of our blessed Lady.”

That doesn’t mean Henry VII set aside the memory of his uncle King Henry VI. He employed the same man that was overseeing the construction of the Lady Chapel at Westminster, Reginald Bray, to continue the rebuilding of St George’s Chapel at Windsor set in motion by his predecessor Edward IV (it came to be informally known as the Bray Chapel). The modest thirteenth-century chapel of Edward the Confessor was expanded into a vast cathedral-like chapel where, importantly, Henry VI’s body was placed alongside a famous relic, the fragment of the True Cross (a reliquary known as the Cross of Gneth) and the bones of John Schorne (revered for curing gout and toothache).

We may argue that Henry VII’s campaign to have King Henry VI’s canonised was fundamentally political (much like Richard II’s campaign for Edward II) as many historians have done. King Henry VI as a saint, combined with his supposed prophecy, would successfully contribute to the image of Henry VII’s reign as one chosen by God. When we put Henry VII’s religious devotion into perspective, though, his efforts to have ‘the glorious King Henry’ canonised take another dimension—in fact, there’s no doubt that in Henry VII’s eyes God had intervened in his favour. Henry VII’s will also stated his wish for an image of himself to be placed in St Edward’s chapel at Westminster, depicting him returning to God and the Virgin Mary the circlet with which he had been crowned at the Battle of Bosworth.

This is me purely speculating, but I think that even though Henry VII only came in contact with King Henry VI once in his life, his half-uncle might have exercised a great influence on him through his uncle Jasper. Jasper seemed to have been genuinely attached to his brother Henry on a personal level as well as devoted to his political cause. If Henry VI’s saintly qualities had been enough to impress Margaret Beaufort, it is very likely that they might have impressed young Henry of Richmond as well.

[qqueenofhades]

Quick! Can you list the Gay Factor for the English kings and queens, Hilary? This is vital information.

Um. Clearly you are a person of impeccable good taste and interests.

William I: straight, was faithful to his wife, no known mistresses, had to put all his energy into that conquering lark

William II: possibly queer, never married, court acccused of sexual deviance and retainers blamed for being too effete and fashionable

Henry I: total horndog, 1 million illegitimate kids, Could Not Keep in Pants, who am I to say he didn't get down with everything that moved

Stephen: Boring but Genuinely Nice, loved wife, unprepared for job

Henry II: Also total horndog with tons of mistresses, but the Becket thing is a liiiiittle iffy if you ask me

Richard I: Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide

John: Straight, probably, but lbr his family was into banging everything so I'm not gonna say he wasn't

Henry III: Vanilla Straight

Edward I: Douche. Straight. Loved wife, though.

Edward II: Hella gay/bi; he had four kids with his wife but Gaveston was the real queen of England lbr

Edward III: Straight, loved wife, busy fighting wars and other Manly Chivalrous Stuff

Richard II: Biromantic queer, unfortunately also (later) crazy

Henry IV: Straight

Henry V: Defeated the French at Agincourt, which proves nothing about his sexuality either way but does mean he gave it to the French up the butt

Henry VI: Ace, probably

Edward IV: Famous womanizer, but shared his bed with favoured male courtiers (as was the practice at the time) and frankly is another of the guys who I figure was probably pounding it out with hot courtiers of whatever persuasion

Richard III: "A horse a horse my kingdom for a horse," once more does not prove he ISN'T into kinky stuff, amirite

Henry VII: Famously unpopular miserly bastard. Not nearly fabulous enough to be queer.

Henry VIII: Epitome of rich entitled straight fuckboy. If he was alive today, his name would be Chad.

Edward VI: Died at 15 so who knows.

Mary I: Was into Philip of Spain, he was not into her

Elizabeth: I'm like 101% convinced she was hella bi.

James I: Super super gay. Also a raging misogynist who loved witch hunts and persecuting women, though, so mixed bag

Charles I: One head was cut off, unsure about the other

Charles II: Yeah the dude banged e v e r y o n e so draw your own conclusions there

James II: Was also a horndog in youth, became Catholic, got deposed, presumably regretted life choices

Mary II and William III: Mary had a huge crush on a girl in her youth, William was accused of gayness by his enemies, but they were also married to each other so probably both biromantic

Anne: Also biromantic queer but had sex with her husband like hella (17 pregnancies but no living children)

George I: Really boring so who cares

George II: Also boring

George III: Crazy, but 13 kids with his wife before that

George IV: Another rich fuckboy well supplied with (illegitimate) kids

William IV: Was in the Royal Navy in his youth so hey

Victoria: Loved dick. Like, really loved it.

Edward VII: Literally made peace between England and France in 1904 so he could more conveniently pork French ladies and had an item of furniture known as a fuck chair

George V: Nah

Edward VIII: At least, uh, Wallis Simpson was a lady?

George VI: Nah

Elizabeth II: Nah

In short, this has been a very serious historical survey, thank you for your time.