Henry VII, the son of Edmund earl of Richmond and the Lady Margaret Beaufort, a few weeks ago and 500 years before that won the battle of Bosworth (on 22 August 1485) and thereby won the crown of England; he then settled down to become king of England. He was twenty-eight years old when he won the crown, and he had twenty-four more years during which he held it. Thus his victory at Bosworth, which was a narrow thing, came effectively halfway through his life. For half his life he worked towards the crown, for much of the time not aware that he was doing so; for half his life he held it and became, in the opinion of many, a new king, a man who really set about making kingship into an effective force again in England.

In the first place I should like to see what Henry VII did to make himself king–what sort of kingship he ran and what inheritance he left to his successor. Henry became king at the end of a muddle of civil wars and disputes which had been going on for the best part of a hundred years, and he had first of all to restore the repute and honour to that position. His predecessors, the Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III, had very nearly achieved this but had then fallen short of accomplishing it. Henry therefore had to build up on past memory, a memory which by this time was well out of date, so as to revive the notion that the king of England was the ruler of England, to be obeyed and respected and to provide continuity, peace, order and law.