Henry Tudor - the Church's man?

LacheyS

LacheyS

I have heard the repeated wisdom that Henry VIII was headed for an archbishopric and a cardinal's biretta before the death of his brother, Arthur.

Is this something that was essentially unavoidable if Arthur had lived?

If so, presuming the demise of Henry VII in 1509 proceeds as OTL, would Henry have been a priest already by that time? And if Arthur decided he needed him for another purpose, could he be allowed to leave the priesthood? And if Arthur died childless just after his father, would we get a Cardinal King a la Portugal, or would Henry be permitted to return to the laity?
 

VVD0D95

Banned
LacheyS said:
I have heard the repeated wisdom that Henry VIII was headed for an archbishopric and a cardinal's biretta before the death of his brother, Arthur.

Is this something that was essentially unavoidable if Arthur had lived?

If so, presuming the demise of Henry VII in 1509 proceeds as OTL, would Henry have been a priest already by that time? And if Arthur decided he needed him for another purpose, could he be allowed to leave the priesthood? And if Arthur died childless just after his father, would we get a Cardinal King a la Portugal, or would Henry be permitted to return to the laity?
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Considering Henry VII seemed hellbent on securing his dynasty, I do not think Henry VIII in this timeline would ever join the clergy realistically
 

Just a Rube

It's something that gets said occasionally, but there's no real evidence that it's the case.

Henry VII was far too aware of how precarious the dynastic situation was to allow his entire dynasty to depend solely on Arthur; the Wars of the Roses were only a few decades in the past, and the succession after Arthur and Henry was extremely unclear.
 
Kynan

Kynan

As stated previously, no. What seems to have been Henry VII's plan for his younger son was to allow him to be a semi-powerful vassal, higher than Buckingham and Norfolk, thus able to support King Arthur when the time came.
 

isabella

I can not really understand the origin of this popular legend...
Considering who after Arthur's death Elizabeth decide to risk her own life trying to have another son for securing the dynasty (and she died in childbirth with a stillborn daughter) I think this is impossible...
Henry and Elizabeth had already lost another son (the youngest, Edward dead few months after his first birthday) before Arthur and were likely worried for the future and the stability of England and their dynasty
 

mcdnab

Definitely unlikely in my view. Henry VII claimed the throne by right of conquest therefore any previous claim was null. The only line of descent (in his view) was from him - so Arthur, Henry and then his daughters (the issue was raised when Margaret was married to James IV - and clearly Henry believed his daughter did have a lawful claim in the extinction of his male line)

Also the suggestion that a surviving Arthur saves Elizabeth is not a given in my view. The evidence suggests that despite the circumstances of their marriage they were a close and relatively happy couple therefore a conception as they comforted each other wouldn't be unlikely but Elizabeth was only in her thirties and her mother continued bearing children into her 40s. It would not be unlikely that she would have conceived again whether Arthur lived or not.
Her pregnancies - Arthur 1486, Margaret 1489, Henry 1491, Mary 1496, Edmund 1499, Katherine 1503 - all show a relatively similar gap with it widening as she aged so another pregnancy in 1502/3 would have been in keeping with that anyway.

A surviving Elizabeth of York though would have an impact on her surviving children's character - Henry in particular I suspect.
 
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