S1 E1: The Red Rose and The White

This is History: The Tudors

This episode chronicles the fragile early reign of Henry VII following his victory at Bosworth Field, detailing his three-pronged strategy to legitimize a new dynasty through bloodline claims, a strategic

Key takeaways

• Henry VII legitimized his rule through three simultaneous moves: claiming Lancastrian bloodline, marrying Elizabeth of York to unite the houses, and backdating his reign to August 21, 1485, one day before Bosworth.
• A mysterious sweating sickness epidemic killed up to 15,000 Londoners in six weeks, delaying Henry's coronation by two months and halting normal capital activity.

Main topics

• Tudor legitimacy and political propaganda
• Wars of the Roses aftermath and reconciliation

Notable quotes

"He's king because, in some sense, he always was."

Conclusion

The episode highlights how Henry VII's ruthless pragmatism and rapid political

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Some evil thing happened here. Speaker 2 (0:02) Three people die in a quiet suburb in the same house, years apart. Speaker 3 (0:09) It's not a coincidence. This wasn't ghosts and goblins, okay? These were murders. Speaker 2 (0:14) From Sony Music Entertainment, this is What Happened to the Harrisons. Start listening today, wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free. Speaker 4 (0:30) The royal servant fills the elegant bowl with water, adds a few drops of perfumed oil, steps back and checks that everything is just so. The bowl? Yes. Linen sheets? Got them. A cushion for the boss to kneel on? Yes, that's there too. They have everything they need, except for the obvious. That's Henry VII, the first Tudor king of England. Oh, and 29 filthy beggars with rancid, stinking feet. Speaker 4 (1:05) It's the Thursday before Easter 1486 and here at the bishops residence in Lincoln beside the great Gothic Cathedral a striking piece of royal spectacle is set to play out. Speaker 4 (1:20) Less than eight months ago, King Henry swept into England and took the crown from his deadly rival, Richard III. Since then, he's been shoring up his royal power. Before the battle that won him the crown, Henry made a promise. He asked God to judge his right to start a new royal dynasty. And he won, which translates to a big holy thumbs up. Now Henry is letting God know that he's grateful. Because if there's one thing a king can do to make the almighty feel seen, it's a spot of royal foot washing. During the Last Supper, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. That tender act showed he was not just a Lord, but a servant. Speaker 4 (2:15) King Henry strides into the hall of the bishop's residence. He's a 29-year-old man of average height, with long, wavy brown hair, small blue eyes, a pale complexion and a mouth of fairly horrible teeth. He's not exactly attractive, but he's cheerful-looking. After the king come the paupers. There are 29 of them because that number matches the king's age. And they've been sweating their athlete's foot and verrucas for months. This is supposed to be a grisly task, and it is. But fair play to Henry. The beggars put their worst foot forward and Henry gives them each a royal peddy. Then a messenger bursts in. That messenger is Sir Reginald Bray, one of Henry's oldest and closest allies. And from the look on Bray's face, the news is bad. Speaker 4 (3:15) The paupers are told to use those freshly pampered feet of theirs to scram. Once they're gone, Bray delivers the horrible news. 150 miles away in Essex, a fugitive is on the run. And not any fugitive. It's a troublemaker called Lord Lovell, a nobleman of huge wealth and influence and a die-hard loyalist to the old regime. He was supposed to be under royal supervision, taking sanctuary in a church, not quite captured but contained. Now, Bray says, Loveall is on the loose. But there's a problem. Henry has hardly any troops, armour or weapons and no track record at all of handling this kind of situation. Right now, Henry is holding nothing in his hands but the residue of 29 paupers' manky toenails. This new dynasty is just eight months old and already King Henry VII is facing up to his first existential crisis. Does he have what it takes to show that this is a new dawn for England? Or are the Tudors going to be one big flash in the pan? Speaker 4 (4:38) I'm Dan Jones, and from Sony Music Entertainment, this is history. Season 1 of The Tudors. Episode 1. The Red Rose and the White. Speaker 4 (4:58) Well, hello friends. Have you missed me? In the time since I said au revoir to the Plantagenets here on This Is History, I've been whisked away to the land of the Tudors, a dynasty you might be familiar with. Now, Tudor history is about as packed as the wardrobe of a Tudor pretender. More on that later. So, if you want to learn more, do listen to this week's bonus episode. There... I open up to producer Al about why the Tudors live rent-free in my head and whether this whole Tudor dynasty ever deserved to claim royal lineage. But Speaker 1 (5:38) for now, let's get early modern. Speaker 1 (5:46) In the grand scheme of British history, maybe even Speaker 4 (5:49) world history, there aren't many hotter properties than the Tudors. Their names, their faces, their diabolical psychodramas. The Tudors aren't cuddly, but they're box office. This is the dynasty that gave us Henry VIII, stacking wives and packing on love handles, Bloody Mary, making a bonfire of her religious enemies, and Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, having her ultimate main character moment with the Spanish Armada bearing down. This is the mob that, in just over a century, changed the whole fabric of the English state, church and international reputation. Theirs is the era of the Reformation, of Shakespeare, of voyages to the New World. Like them or not, the Tudors hit parts that other royal dynasties struggle to even tickle. Which is why... Having spent ten seasons of this podcast with my beloved Plantagenets and their medieval mayhem, it's time for us to get down and dirty with their early modern successors. So, if you've been here since day one, welcome back. I promise we're going to have just as much fun as we charge out of the Wars of the Roses and into the 16th century. But if you're coming to this show fresh, well, I'm very happy to have you on board. It's time for us to saddle up for a wild ride with English history's most dysfunctional family. Speaker 4 (7:37) All of which brings me back to the Bishop's Palace in Lincoln in the spring of 1486, where Henry VII, not even a year into his reign, is looking like he might just be the last Tudor as well as the first. His predecessor, Richard III, lasted two years and two months. Right now, even that feels like it's eons away. So how did Henry end up in this tangle? Well, let's take a quick rewind. On August 22nd, 1485, at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire, Henry Tudor took on Richard III in the mother of all battles, with the crown quite literally up for grabs. It was a battle that could have gone either way, but in the end, Henry's stepfather, Thomas, Lord Stanley, supplied his men to the Tudor cause, securing the win. Speaker 4 (8:37) Richard was surrounded and hacked to death. His body was stripped naked, slung over a horse and taken off to Leicester, where it was buried in a hastily dug grave in the Church of the Greyfriars. Richard's corpse was abused, kicked, mutilated, someone even stabbed him in the backside. You can imagine this joker propping up the bar and retelling the story of how he butt-knifed the old crook back. until his dying day. Speaker 4 (9:08) In his place, still on the battlefield, Henry was proclaimed king. Now, the setting was crucially important. Just like William the Conqueror back in 1066, Henry Tudor became king in 1485 because he stepped up and took the title. But of course, after Bosworth, this becomes a problem for Henry. It's all well and good for him to take the crown by force of arms, but he really doesn't want anyone else getting the same idea. If Becoming King is only