He knew, none better, that such a claim would be flimsy at best. Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne was never based on ancestry alone. In fact, it was only when Richard duke of York usurped the throne from his young nephew Edward (son and heir of Edward IV) that Henry Tudor became a viable candidate for king. He had spent years in exile and campaigned tirelessly to win support for his claim to the English throne. He also needed the legitimacy of his wife’s claim to the throne. Despite his victory at Bosworth, the exiled nobleman who took the name Henry VII needed the support of those sympathetic to the defeated Yorkist cause. The union was both symbolic and necessary. Thus, the two warring houses were joined in marriage. After winning the throne of England, he wed Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of the dead Yorkist king Edward IV. The Lancastrians triumphed under the leadership of a 28-year-old exile named Henry Tudor. The Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485 was the last armed confrontation between Lancastrians and Yorkists, those two factions that had fought for decades in The Wars of the Roses. If Henry VII’s reign was to usher in ‘smooth-faced peace, with smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days’, few could have predicted it in 1485.
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