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or money, but he did was to become in time the British Colonies in

    let him have Letters Patent, the official go-ahead America, still called New England.

    Philip's sudden death in September sent Joanna off the rails and she took to

    carrying the embalmed body of her husband with her wherever she went. So

    Henry did a quick double shuffle and threw in his lot with Ferdinand again.

    The marriage between Catherine and prince Henry was on the front burner

    once more and duly went ahead (see Chapters 3, 4 and 5).

    Figuring out finances

    We've already bust the myth about Henry's tightness, but he was very good

    at making money and unusually for a king � who had people for things like

    this � he checked the accounts himself.

    Here's the lowdown on Henry's finances:

    Most cash came through the Chamber Treasury rather than the

    Exchequer, so that Henry could check it.

    He kept grants and payments to a minimum.

    His new men, like Reginald Bray, didn't cost as much as the nobility and

    the churchmen who worked for Henry were paid out of Church funds.

    He kept military expenditure down (see the earlier section `France' for how

    cheap the Etaples campaign was). The exception was fitting out new war-

    ships like Mary Rose for �8,000 (for the end of the Mary Rose see Chapter 3).

    He relied heavily on customs duties (taxes) via the Port of London.

    These brought him in about �500,000 in 24 years.

Chapter 2: Starting a Dynasty: Henry VII 49
    Henry set up forced loans from the rich merchants of the livery compa-

    nies (the equivalent of today's City brokers), especially in London. He

    used this money to finance the invasion of France in 1492, for example.

    He got cash from the rent of his lands.

    In the first ten years of his reign Henry made about �10,000 a year

    through tax. By 1504, taxation brought in �31,000.

    The fact that Henry only once called Parliament in the last 12 years of

    his reign means he was doing well financially. Later kings like the Stuarts

    usually only called Parliament when they were broke.

    Henry got good deals for his merchants wherever he could, like the pow-

    erful merchant venturers, who watched world exploration carefully. In

    the 1490s Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama were taking their

    lives in their hands sailing east and west in search of new ways to old

    worlds and ended up finding new worlds instead. Henry taxed the mer-

    chants in return, but everybody made money out of deals like Medina

    del Campo and Magnus Intercursus.

    He set up a tax on the super-rich, which the nobility resented. Yet this

    enabled him to control their wealth and helped give him an income of

    �130,000 a year. This made Henry VIII's treasury very well off.

    Henry VII was the last English king to die solvent for 200 years.

    Meeting Henry, the Human

    Henry's arranged marriage to Elizabeth of York seems to have become a

    love match, but luck wasn't on their side. In an age of high infant mortality,

    their youngest son Edmund died at just over 1 year of age in June 1500. Their

    eldest, Arthur, on whom Henry pinned all his hopes, died in April 1502. The

    following February Elizabeth died too, shortly after giving birth to a stillborn

    daughter. Suddenly, the 46-year-old Henry was a widower with two daugh-

    ters, Margaret and Mary, but only one son remaining � the 11-year-old Henry,

    who would become king Henry VIII (see Chapters 3 to 6).

    Francis Bacon said in the 17th century: `For [Henry VII's] pleasures, there is

    no news of them.' And for 300 years historians followed this idea that Henry

    was a grim curmudgeon with no sense of humour and a miser obsessed with

    counting his cash.

    But historians now know that Henry loved hunting, was highly superstitious (once

    threatening to hang all the mastiffs in England because he believed them to be

    unlucky) and spent heavily on lowbrow entertainments. He once lost �40 on cards

    in one day, and how can we explain

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