The Tudors ruled England for 118 years and changed it more fundamentally than any dynasty before or since. They took a country that was Catholic, medieval and peripheral and left one that was Protestant, centralised and beginning to look outward.
Henry VII (1485-1509)
Won the crown at Bosworth Field, killing Richard III and ending the Wars of the Roses. His claim was weak, so he married Elizabeth of York to unite the rival houses and invented the Tudor rose — red and white combined — as propaganda for it. He was careful, unglamorous and financially shrewd, and left a full treasury.
Henry VIII (1509-1547)
Spent it. Henry is the most famous English king, mostly for his marriages, but the consequential thing he did was break with Rome.
Wanting his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled so he could marry Anne Boleyn, and refused by the Pope, he made himself Supreme Head of the Church in England in 1534. The Dissolution of the Monasteries followed, seizing enormous wealth and destroying institutions that had run education, medicine and poor relief for centuries. Ruined abbeys across Britain date from this.
The six wives
- Catherine of Aragon — divorced
- Anne Boleyn — beheaded
- Jane Seymour — died, having produced a son
- Anne of Cleves — divorced
- Catherine Howard — beheaded
- Catherine Parr — survived him
Edward VI (1547-1553)
Nine when he inherited, fifteen when he died. His regents pushed England into firmly Protestant territory, producing the Book of Common Prayer.
Mary I (1553-1558)
Catholic, and determined to reverse it all. Around 280 Protestants were burned at the stake, earning her the name Bloody Mary. She married Philip II of Spain, lost Calais, and died childless after five years.
Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
The longest and most consequential Tudor reign. She restored Protestantism through a deliberately moderate religious settlement designed to be broad enough for most people to live with, which largely worked.
She never married — using the prospect as a diplomatic tool for decades — and became the Virgin Queen, an image she managed with real political skill. Her reign saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the voyages of Drake and Raleigh, and the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe.
She died childless in 1603, and the crown passed to James VI of Scotland, uniting the crowns and ending the dynasty.
Where to see them
Hampton Court Palace is the great Tudor survival, with Henry’s kitchens and Great Hall. The Tower of London holds the sites of the executions. Hever Castle was Anne Boleyn’s childhood home.