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Template:Infobox Monarch Basic
Henry VII (January 28, 1457 – April 21, 1509), King of England, Lord of Ireland (August 22, 1485 – April 21, 1509), was the founder of the Tudor dynasty.
[edit] Rise to the throne
After the failure of the revolt of his cousin, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, Henry VII became the leading Lancastrian contender for the throne of England. Having gained the support of the in-laws of the late Yorkist King Edward IV, he landed with a force in Wales and marched into England, accompanied by his uncle, Jasper Tudor. Wales had traditionally been a Yorkist stronghold, and Henry owed the support he gathered to his ancestry, being directly descended, through his father, from the Lord Rhys. He amassed an army of around 5000 soldiers and travelled north. There his Lancastrian forces decisively defeated the Yorkists under Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 when several of Richard's key allies switched sides or deserted the field of battle. This battle effectively ended the long-running Wars of the Roses between the two houses. Henry's claim to the throne was tenuous and based upon a lineage of illegitimate succession. However, this was no barrier to the Throne; inheritance was not the sole method of becoming Sovereign. Claims could also be based on nomination (by the previous Sovereign), statute, prescription (de facto possession of power) and, as was the case with Henry VII, conquest.
The first of Henry's concerns on attaining the monarchy was the question of establishing the strength and supremacy of his rule. There were few other claimants to the throne left alive after the long civil war, so his main worry was pretenders such as Perkin Warbeck, who pretended to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes in the Tower. These pretenders were backed by disaffected nobles. Henry triumphed in securing his crown by a number of means but principally by dividing and undermining the power of the nobility.
