All of the King’s tennis balls

In our Premier League of all-time Kings and Queens, Henry VIII is right up there with the best of them. He is remembered as a womaniser, a religious renegade, a ruthless demagogue and man that was rather keen on tennis. We know this last fact because recently someone discovered one of his mouldering tennis balls lodged in the roof of Westminster Hall.

Henry VIII was equipped with all of the personality of a self-confident lion, which means that he has rather stolen his father’s thunder. Far from being a chip off the old block, Henry VIII’s impetuous personality was the mirror image of that of his father, the first Tudor king, Henry VII.

Henry VII was a wily operator, whose gritty determination had been fostered during a 14 year exile in Brittany. Driven and ambitious, he eventually succeeded in drumming up an army of 5,000 men, mostly comprised of Scottish and French mercenaries, and arrived in England, promptly defeating King Richard III (later of Shakespearian fame) in a bloodbath at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.

By 1485, royal administration of England somewhat resembled the current managerial situation at Chelsea football club, as Henry became the fourth man to slip on the royal crown in just two years. The wars between the House of Lancaster and the House of York (remembered as the Wars of the Roses) had been raging for thirty years and Henry VII’s throne must have seemed a very wobbly one indeed.

However, Henry proved to be just the man for the job. By marrying Elizabeth of York (who is thought to be the inspiration for the queen in a deck of cards), Henry fused the two warring factions together and he soon set about assembling his own Tudor dynasty with the birth of Arthur, who died in 1502, and Henry.

Henry VII is remembered by historians for his effective suppression of rebellions by a couple of eccentrically named pretenders. The first of these was Lambert Simnel, who was crowned as King of England in Dublin in 1487 and was subsequently defeated emphatically at the Battle of Stoke.

Following Simnel came Perkin Warbeck, a Flemish lad who happened by chance to closely resemble one of England’s murdered princes, Richard of York. After a number of aborted invasion attempts and a flurry of pan-continental squabbling, Warbeck finally carried off a military campaign in Cornwall that quickly descended into a fiasco in 1497.

Tudors being Tudors, Henry VII had Warbeck hanged for his troubles, but extended a touch of ironic magnanimity to Simnel, setting him to work in the King’s kitchens as a spit turner. Henry himself lived on until 1509 when he bequeathed his kingdom to his unruly son Henry, allowing the frivolity, weddings and executions to ensue.

So, whilst we often find time to remember the wife-swapping, priest chopping, vain Henry, we should also spare a thought for his father who set things up in the first place. As Englishmen we are still fond of our red-headed Spanish-defying Tudors, and it is important that we appreciate the man the set up the shop in the first place, Henry VII.

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Etaples, which is situated on the northern French coast, is the site of one of Henry VII’s major diplomatic successes, as here he signed a treaty of alliance with the dangerous French in 1492. You can also discover more about the Flemish origins of the ‘pretender’ Perkin Warbeck by visiting his home town of Tournai. Both of these destinations are within a short distance of Calais. Find the best online offers on ferries to France to enable you to visit these destinations today.

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