Term ‘Tudor’ has become grossly distorting
“If ‘Tudor’ is misleading about
the royal family, the common designation
‘Tudor subjects’, ‘Tudor men and
women’ having ‘Tudor attitudes’, is even more so. There is no evidence that
people thought of themselves as such”.
Clifford S. L. Davies
The Tudors;
Name and Implications
May I augment and correct the summary of my article ‘A rose by any other name’ (Times Literary Supplement, 13 June 2008, pp. 14-15) which appeared in The Ricardian, volume 19 (2009), page 173. The summary misrepresents the main point. My argument is now repeated as part of my ‘Reputation, repute, reality’, a review article in English Historical Review volume 124 (2009) pages 1432-1447.1
Far from arguing that the
name ‘Tudor’ was wrongly attached to Henry VII, I do not dispute that his
surname, had he used one, would have been ‘Tudor’. (The point that it could as
easily have been ‘Meredith’ was merely a wry comment on the hazards of
converting Welsh pattonymics into English surnames.)
Hence ‘Tydder’ was rightly used by Richard
III, and later by Perkin Warbeck, to disparage Henry’s antecedents.2 It drew
attention to the somewhat scandalous marriage of Henry’s grandfather Owen
Tudor, a Welsh gentleman courtier, to Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V and
princess of the French royal line. Precisely for that reason, the word was
avoided by Henry, who, pre-Bosworth, was referred to by his supporters by his
peerage title of ‘Richmond’.3 More generally, royal families had little or no
occasion to use surnames. ‘Tudor’ was not used by or about the royal family in
the period 1485-1603. The name had some resonance in Wales, and seeps back to
some extent in English works from1589. Even so it is remarkable how few
contemporary commentators in 1603 to a transition from ‘Tudors’ to ‘Stuarts’.
The obsessive use of the word
‘Tudor’ by modern historians gives a false impression, of Sixteenth Century
reality. There seems to be an entity called ‘Tudor monarchy’, for instance;
take away the assumption that such an entity existed, and it becomes difficult
to see anything distinctively in common between the régimes of Henry VII, Henry
VIII, and Elizabeth I, let alone those of Edward VI and Mary I (oddly always
designated ‘Mary Tudor’ by historians, a designation with no contemporary
warrant4). This is not to deny that both Mary and Elizabeth made
much of themselves as daughters of Henry VIII, perhaps because of their
technical illegitimacy. Almanacs of around 1600 make much more of Luther’s
defiance of the Papacy, of Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and of Elizabeth’s
accession, than they do of 1485. In so far as Henry VII had a hereditary claim
to the throne, (as opposed to the concepts of ‘conquest’ or ‘victory’
indicating God’s will) it came very dubiously through his mother’s Beaufort
lineage from a bastard son, subsequently legitimised, of John of Gaunt.5
References to the ancient
‘British History’, to descent from Cadwaldr and connection to King Arthur, were
made without specific reference to Owen Tudor, though Owen was indeed descended
from Welsh princes (as of course were also Edward IV and his brothers through
the Mortimer line).
References to Edmund [Tudor],
Earl of Richmond, were again made without reference to Owen, to assert his
descent from the French royal family.6 In practice both Henry’s invasion in
1485 and his subsequent position were enormously strengthened by the support of
anti-Ricardian Yorkists and his eventual marriage to Elizabeth of York. Though
acknowledging this, Henry was reluctant to publicise it once his position
became established, and always maintained that, even if Elizabeth were to die
without issue, any subsequent children of his own would have full rights of
inheritance.7 In general, Henry VII was evasive on the whole issue of his
rights. Henry VIII had no such inhibitions, of course, and could celebrate his
own embodiment as ‘The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families Lancastre
and Yorke’.8 Far from picturing themselves as a ‘dynasty’ the ‘Tudor’ monarchs
always claimed to represent the reunification of the ancient royal house, unhappily
divided by a family quarrel in the Fifteenth Century. Interestingly, both Henry
VIII and Elizabeth Iseem to have valued their Yorkist descent far more than
their somewhat indirect Lancastrian connection.9
If ‘Tudor’ is misleading
about the royal family, the common designation ‘Tudor subjects’, ‘Tudor men and
women’ having ‘Tudor attitudes’, is even more so. There is no evidence that
people thought of themselves as such. The term gives a false sense of unity to
the 118 years in question. It also makes it difficult to avoid the insidious
but obviously false impression that somehow the Henrician Reformation or the
glories of Elizabethan England were implicit in the reign of Henry VII; an
impression buried deep in the sub-consciousness of historians and their
readers, even though rationally absurd. Historians cannot help but use, from
time to time, anachronistic terms. My own use of ‘Sixteenth Century’ is a case
in point. ‘Tudor’ is, however, a special case. It has acquired such resonance,
for the most part of glamour and glory, in some cases of deep-dyed villainy, as
to be grossly distorting. A self-denying ordinance about its use, or at least a
note of caution when it is used, might be in order while the implications of my
argument sink in and are worked through.
See also Damien
Mackey’s articles:
Horrible Histories: Turpitudinous Tudors
(3) Horrible
Histories: Turpitudinous Tudors
Anne Boleyn ‘a Jezebel and harlot’
(3) Anne Boleyn 'a
Jezebel and harlot'
John Fisher and John Baptist parallels
(3) John Fisher
and John Baptist parallels
Parallel Lives -Thomas Becket and Thomas More
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