Overshadowed by his son and granddaughter, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, Henry VII is often an afterthought of Tudor history, and yet without him one of the most famous dynasties in British history would never have existed.
Here are seven things you might not know about the first Tudor monarch:
The Welsh believed he would fulfil a prophecy
‘When the bull comes from the far land to battle with his great ashen spear,
To be an earl again in the land of Llewelyn,
Let the far-splitting spear shed the blood of the Saxon on the stubble . . .
When the long yellow summer comes and victory comes to us
And the spreading of the sails of Brittany,
And when the heat comes and when the fever is kindled,
There are portents that victory will be given to us . . .'
So sang the Welsh bards in 1485, who longed for Henry Tudor to return to the ‘land of his fathers' as the long-promised hero who would fulfil the prophecy of Myrddin (Merlin) and deliver the Welsh people from their Saxon oppressor. Though he was born in Pembroke Castle into the Welsh Tudor family, Henry's Welshness has often been over-exaggerated, but Henry himself was conscious of the political advantages of polishing his image as the descendant of the ‘ancient Kings of Brytaine and Princes of Wales'.
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