"Let courage supply the want of our numbers," he cried. "And as for me, I propose to live with honour hereafter, or die with honour here."
Evening found him the victor of the day; Richard lay dead on the field, and his crown, which he had worn into battle, was found hanging on a bush. There on the scene of his triumph the crown was set on Henry's head, while the soldiers shouted joyfully, "God save King Henry VII.," and then burst into a solemn Te Deum.
In October Henry was formally crowned in the Abbey, and in the Abbey, too, a few months later, he married the Princess Elizabeth, once the helpless, homeless Sanctuary child. So were the Houses of York and Lancaster made one; so were the red roses and white roses grafted together, and the people of London celebrated the happy event with bonfires, dancing, songs, and banquet. Cardinal Bourchier, himself of Plantagenet stock, performed the marriage ceremony, and so, as an old writer prettily puts it, "his hand held the sweet posie wherein the white and red roses were first tied together."
Not till a year later was Elizabeth crowned, and by then a little son had been born to her, named Arthur at his father's wish, in memory of the stainless King Arthur, whom Henry VII. claimed as an ancestor through his Welsh grandfather, Owen Tudor.
It was about this time that a great change came over the people of England in regard to their opinion of Henry VI. They had begun by pitying him for his misfortunes; then they had called to mind his patience and humility, his kind deeds, his love of learning, and his pure life, till at last in their eyes he became nothing short of a saint. Richard III. had caused his body to be removed from Chertsey to Windsor, much to the anger of the priests at Chertsey, who had spread abroad stories of wonderful miracles performed at his tomb, which stories, being readily believed, had drawn many pilgrims to the place. And pilgrims never came empty-handed.
Henry VII. came under the influence of this feeling, and he resolved that honour should now be done to this king, whom men had liked and pitied, but had never honoured in life. He had already decided to build a new chapel to the Virgin Mary in the Abbey, or rather to entirely rebuild the Lady Chapel of Henry III., and here he intended Henry VI. should be reburied under a costly tomb. He went so far as to petition the Pope to add King Henry's name to the list of saints; but the Pope would only agree to do so for an extravagant sum of money, and Henry Tudor thought the money could be more profitably spent in other ways. So the matter was allowed to drop, and although the council which had been summoned to decide where Henry should finally be buried—in Windsor, Chertsey, or Westminster—gave their judgment in favour of Westminster, it is very doubtful if his body was ever moved to the Abbey at all. Certainly no monument was raised to his memory. However, the building of the Lady Chapel went on apace, only its purpose was changed. It was no longer to be the chantry of Henry VI., but the chapel of Henry VII., the burying-place of the Tudor kings and queens of his race.
Henry was a curious mixture of a desire to hoard up money, and a desire to build what he undertook on a very lavish scale. He saved more money than any other English king, and he certainly spent less, for he was simple in all his tastes, a silent, gloomy man. But he has left behind him in Westminster Abbey a piece of work as beautiful as wealth and art could make it, a building "stately and surprising, which brought this church to her highest pitch of glory," and though his original ideas as to its purpose were frustrated, his longings that here "three chantry monks should say prayers for his soul so long as the world endured," being ruthlessly disregarded by his own son, Henry VIII., his chapel still stands, so that with Edward the Confessor and Henry III. he ranks among the three great royal builders of the Abbey.
Before you go into this chapel stand for a minute in King Edward's shrine, with its stately simplicity; then pass under the chantry of Henry V., simple too, but telling of strength, of life, and vigour; walk up the steps of Henry's Chapel into the dark entrance, and then stay still in the doorway to drink in the matchless beauty before your eyes. Here, simplicity is a word unknown; everywhere, inside and out, is a wealth of carving; no spot or corner was deemed too hidden away to be ornamented; roof and walls alike are covered with delicate lacework and rich embroidery made out of stone.
"They dreamed not of a perishable house who thus could build."
The foundation-stone was laid one afternoon in the January of 1502 by Islip, "that wise and holy man who was Abbot of the Westminster monks," and the building was solemnly dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary by order of Henry VII., king of England and France and Lord of Ireland. The work went on quickly, for money was not lacking. Abbot Islip was a man of action, and Henry was feverishly anxious that the building should be completed in his lifetime. Here it was that he meant to be buried, for just because his claim to the throne was not a very good one, he was doubly anxious to link himself on by many different ways to the kings of the past. Everywhere in his chapel, round his tomb, on the roof, and on the doorways, you will find his different badges set up, as if to say, "Each one of these badges gave me the right to be king of England." You will see over and over again the York and Lancaster roses; the portcullis and the greyhound, both of them Beaufort badges, which had come to him through his mother, Margaret Beaufort, the direct descendant of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; the red dragon of Cadwallader of Wales, the last British king, whom Henry alone of all the English kings proudly claimed as his ancestor, through Owen Tudor, his father; and the lion, which always figured in the royal arms of England. These badges, everywhere carved, were Henry's challenge to any one who might dispute his claim.