Plates

(right) Henry VII as a young man, either just before or just after the beginning of his reign. Mid-sixteenth century drawing by Jacques de Boucq. (A sixteenth century copy of a contemporary sketch.) (Bridgeman)

(left) Henry VII c. 1505 when still in his forties, prematurely aged by illness and insecurity. (Bridgeman)

(left) ‘Richard IV’ – Perkin Warbeck – whom many believed to be the Duke of York (the younger of the ‘Princes in the Tower’). (Photo, author’s collection)

(right) Fra’ John Kendall, Grand Prior of the Knights of St John, who was secretly accused by his secretary of having been in contact with Warbeck and plotting to murder Henry VII. (Photo, author’s collection)

Young, handsome and charming, c.1513. Anon. (Bridgeman)

Henry VIII

In his prime. A copy at Chatsworth of Holbein’s portrait in a lost fresco at the Palace of Whitehall. (Photo, author’s collection)

Old, ill and merciless, 1540s. Portrait medal by Steven van Herryck. (Photo, author’s collection)

Penshurst Place was a favourite residence of Henry VIII’s victim, the Duke of Buckingham, and gives us some idea of his vast wealth and magnificence. (Bridgeman)

(above) Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief minister. Convinced that the White Rose families were a danger, he destroyed them in 1538 by inventing the so-called ‘Exeter Conspiracy’. Early seventeenth century copy of a portrait by Holbein from The National Portrait Gallery. (Photo, author’s collection)

(left) Bishop John Fisher, beheaded in 1535 for refusing to accept Henry VIII’s break with Rome. He encouraged the plan to replace the king with Mary and a Yorkist king consort. (Photo, author’s collection)

(right) A young Katherine of Aragon, c. 1504–5. Her failure to give Henry VIII a male heir heightened his sense of insecurity and fear of Yorkist conspiracies. (The Trustees of the 9th Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund)

(left) The Lady Mary (Mary I) in the 1540s. Bastardized by her father, there are hints that during the 1530s she was ready to replace him on the throne and take a Yorkist husband as her consort – Reginald Pole. (By kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle from hisprivate collection at Penshurst Place, Kent, England)

Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–58), Clarence’s grandson. During the 1530s the Yorkists hoped to make him king consort. Henry VIII saw Pole as a dangerous rival and sent assassins to Italy to kill him. (Photo, author’s collection)

(left) Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury. Daughter of Edward IV’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, she was the last Plantagenet. In 1541 Henry VIII had her beheaded without trial as part of his campaign to exterminate the White Rose families.(TopFoto)

(right) Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517–47), beheaded by Henry VIII who suspected he was planning to seize the throne  – the only ‘evidence’ being that he had added the coat of arms of a Saxon king of England to his heraldic achievement. (Photo,author’s collection)