Catherine of Valois's marriage to Henry V, the victor of Agincourt, sealed a treaty under which their future son, Henry VI, would become heir to the French crown.
Henry VI â King of France and England â was popularly acclaimed a saint after his murder in 1471, and devotional images appeared in churches from Devon to Northumberland, as well as several in East Anglian churches such as this one at Barton in Norfolk.
In exile in Brittany and France the young Henry Tudor took on the mantle of the âfair unknown', a stock character from romantic chivalric myth who returns from obscurity to reclaim his rightful crown, as the legendary King Arthur had done.
Henry Tudor's mother, Margaret Beaufort, a highly intelligent woman, has for centuries been a victim of religious and sexual prejudice. She has been condemned for doing her best to protect her only child and for conforming to the beliefs of her time.
Images of St Anne teaching her daughter the Virgin to read were commonplace in the Middle Ages. This variation, of St Anne and the Virgin teaching Christ to read, is in the Book of Hours Margaret Beaufort inherited from her mother.
In this famous portrait of Richard III he shows no sign of the idiopathic adolescent onset scoliosis which meant that although five foot eight, he stood as short as four foot eight.
This Victorian image gives a real sense of the violence with which Edward V and his little brother â the princes in the Tower â were rumoured to have died in 1483. All we know is that they vanished: it is this that lies at the heart of the many conspiracy theories concerning their fate.
The white boar badge found at Fen Hole, the likely spot where Richard III fell at Bosworth, âfighting manfully in the middle of his enemies'.
This twentieth-century stained glass at Southwark Cathedral depicts the seventeenth-century legend that Richard III's crown was caught in a hawthorn bush at Bosworth.
Allegorical miniature of a bush of the Tudor rose incorporating a Latin poem celebrating the House of Tudor, with daisies for Henry VIII's sister Margaret of Scotland, and marigolds for his other sister, Mary, and a pomegranate bush for his wife, Katherine of Aragon.
The round table that still hangs in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle was believed to be the actual round table used by King Arthur's knights at Camelot. It was painted as early as 1516 with the union rose of white for the House of York and red for the House of Lancaster.
