Entry tags:
[books 2015] Tudor history
8. Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn
My reading of the CJ Sansom books reminded me that I meant to read this when it came out and never got around to it, so I took a trip to the library.
It's an account of the reign of Henry VII, of which I confess I knew very little apart from "ended Wars of the Roses, made the English state solvent".
So, it turns out this was achieved by way of intimidation, blackmail, perversion of the law. People were brought up on trumped up charges and fined, or bound over to keep the peace for large sums of money.
The popular image of Henry VII as a miser is not entirely true. While he did micromanage the court's accounts, he also spent lavishly to cement the Tudor dynasty as a legitimate power in England and on the wider European stage.
I liked this book a lot - despite all the bad things I mention above, Henry VII comes across as quite human, as do all the characters. It provides a good context for the better-known parts of English history that come next. And as the country seems to be going through a Tudor-gasm at the moment with Wolf Hall on our screens (finally, a national craze I can totally get behind!), a timely read.
My reading of the CJ Sansom books reminded me that I meant to read this when it came out and never got around to it, so I took a trip to the library.
It's an account of the reign of Henry VII, of which I confess I knew very little apart from "ended Wars of the Roses, made the English state solvent".
So, it turns out this was achieved by way of intimidation, blackmail, perversion of the law. People were brought up on trumped up charges and fined, or bound over to keep the peace for large sums of money.
The popular image of Henry VII as a miser is not entirely true. While he did micromanage the court's accounts, he also spent lavishly to cement the Tudor dynasty as a legitimate power in England and on the wider European stage.
I liked this book a lot - despite all the bad things I mention above, Henry VII comes across as quite human, as do all the characters. It provides a good context for the better-known parts of English history that come next. And as the country seems to be going through a Tudor-gasm at the moment with Wolf Hall on our screens (finally, a national craze I can totally get behind!), a timely read.