The Red Rose does not Wilt

Blanche I of Navarre
She was the second eldest daughter and heir of King Charles III of Navarre and infanta Eleanor of Castile. She became heiress on the death of her elder sister Joan.
Blanche married firstly Martin the Younger, King of Sicily and Prince of Aragon. They were married by proxy on 21 May 1402 in Catania. Blanche travelled to meet her new husband and they were married in person on 26 December 1402. The bride was about eleven years old and the groom twenty-eight.
Martin had survived his previous wife and former co-ruler, Queen Mary of Sicily, and their only son. He was in need of legitimate heirs. They both survived their only son. Martin died on 25 July 1409 and was succeeded by his own father, Martin I of Aragon.
Blanche remained a widow for a decade. On 6 November 1419, Blance married her second husband John, duke of Peñafiel by proxy in Olite, and the second son of Ferdinand I of Aragon and Eleanor of Alburquerque. Ferdinand had succeeded his maternal uncle Martin I in 1412.
John travelled to meet her. On 10 June 1420, they were married in person in Pamplona. Charles III died on 8 September 1425 and Blanche succeeded him as Queen regnant of Navarre. John became King of Navarre in her right as John II.
She lives up to 1460 and her husband survives her death until 1479.
Blanche and John II of Aragon had four children:
Charles (IV) of Navarre (1421-1461)
Joan of Aragon (1423-1425)[citation needed]
Blanche (II) of Navarre, married Henry IV of Castile. The marriage was never consummated. After 13 years of marriage, Henry sought and obtained a divorce. Blanca was sent home, where her family imprisoned her, and she was later killed by poison.
Eleanor (1426-1479) Queen of Navarre (1479)


Edward
Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster, London, the only son of King Henry VI of England and his consort, Margaret of Anjou. At the time, there was strife between Henry's supporters, and Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, who had a claim to the throne and challenged the authority of Henry's officers of state. Henry was suffering from mental illness, and there were widespread rumours that the prince was the result of an affair between his mother and one of her loyal supporters. Edmund Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire were both suspected of fathering Prince Edward, however, there is no firm evidence to support the rumours, and Henry himself never doubted the boy's legitimacy and publicly acknowledged paternity. Edward was invested as Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle in 1454.
In 1460, King Henry was captured by the supporters of the Duke of York at the Battle of Northampton, and carried to London. The Duke of York was dissuaded from claiming the throne immediately, but he induced Parliament to pass the Act of Accord, by which Henry was allowed to reign, but Edward was disinherited, as York or his heirs would become King on Henry's death.
Queen Margaret and Edward had meanwhile fled through Cheshire. By Margaret's later account, she induced outlaws and pillagers to aid her by pledging them to recognise the seven-year-old Edward as rightful heir to the crown. They subsequently reached safety in Wales, and journeyed to Scotland where Margaret raised support, while the Duke of York's enemies gathered in the north of England.
After York was killed at the Battle of Wakefield, the large army which Margaret had gathered advanced south. They defeated the army of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, one of York's most prominent supporters, at the Second Battle of St Albans. Warwick had brought the captive King Henry in the train of his army, and he was found abandoned on the battlefield. Two of Warwick's knights, William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville and Sir Thomas Kyriell, who had agreed to remain with Henry and see that he came to no harm, were captured. The day after the battle, Margaret asked Edward what death the two knights should suffer. Edward readily replied that their heads should be cut off.
Margaret hesitated to advance on London with her unruly army, and subsequently retreated. They were routed at the Battle of Towton a few weeks later. Margaret and Edward fled once again, to Scotland. For the next three years, Margaret inspired several revolts in the northernmost counties of England, but was eventually forced to sail to France, where she and Edward maintained a court in exile. (Henry had once again been captured, and was a prisoner in the Tower of London.)
Isabella.
Isabella was born in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Ávila to John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal on April 22, 1451. She was named "Isabella" after her mother which was a name that was uncommon then in Castille. She was the granddaughter of Henry III of Castile and Catherine of Lancaster. At the time of her birth, her older half brother Enrique was in line for the throne before her. Enrique, referred to as the English version of his name Henry, was twenty-six years old at that time and he was married but he was childless. Her younger brother Alfonso was born two years later in 1453 and displaced her in the line of succession. When her father, John II, died in 1454, Henry became King Henry IV. Her brother, mother, and she then moved to Arévalo. It was here that her mother began to gradually lose her sanity, a trait that would haunt the Spanish monarchy and the royal houses of Europe that descended from her.
These were times of turmoil for Isabella. Isabella lived with her brother and her mother in a castle in poor conditions. She also suffered from shortage of money, a fact she would later weave into the mythos and propaganda surrounding her rise to the throne. Even though her father arranged in his will for his children to be financially well taken care of, her half-brother Henry did not comply with their father's wishes, either from a desire to keep his half-siblings restricted or ineptitude. However her mother was able to give her a good education and Isabella often chased after rabbits in the fields, went horseback riding, hunted in the forest, and waded in streams with her brother Alfonso.
When King Henry's wife, Queen Joan of Portugal, was about to give birth, Isabella and her brother were summoned to court (Segovia) and taken away from their mother to be under more control and direct supervision by the king and finish their educations. Queen Joan was said[by whom?] to have had many lovers, and one of them, was rumored to be the father of the new-born infant.[citation needed] The truth of the matter has never been established, and it is possible that the child was actually the king's daughter. If so, it raises interesting questions about the legitimacy of Isabella's tremendously influential reign, as she and Ferdinand would then technically be usurpers.
Conditions of Isabella's life improved in Segovia. She always had food and clothing and lived in a castle that was adorned with gold and silver. Isabella's basic education consisted of reading, spelling, writing, grammar, mathematics, art, chess, dancing, embroidery, music, and religious instruction. She and her ladies-in-waiting entertained themselves with art, embroidery, and music. She lived a relaxed lifestyle, but she rarely left Segovia as Enrique forbade her from doing so. Enrique was keeping her from the political turmoils going on in the kingdom, though Isabella had full knowledge of what was going on and her role in the feuds.
The noblemen who were anxious for power confronted the King, demanding that his younger half-brother Infante Alfonso be named his successor. They even went as far as to ask Alfonso to seize the throne. The nobles, now in control of Alfonso and claiming him to be the true heir, clashed with Henry's forces at the Second Battle of Olmedo in 1467. The battle was a draw. Henry agreed to make Alfonso his heir, provided Alfonso would marry his daughter, Joanna. A few days later, he changed his mind as Henry wanted to protect the interest of his daughter and his name since by this time he was being called Henry the Impotent. Soon after Alfonso was created Prince of Asturias, the title given to the heir of Castile and Leon, he died, likely of the plague after this Isabella was married to Edward of Westminister in 1468.
 
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The New Plantagenet Empire
Immediately after the marriage between Edward of Westminister to Isabella of Castille they have a son named Edward in September 16, 1469 who was married to Anne of Brittany via an arrangement with Francis of Brittany and later on in January 6, 1472, a daughter named Anne was born.
Edward the Duke of York becomes the King of England and his son named Edward V was married to Anne of Lancaster in 1489 to end the Lancastrian claims to the throne of England now it is the Yorkists that won.
Charles VIII was betrothed in 1482 to Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Emperor Maximilian I and Mary, Duchess of Burgundy; the marriage had been arranged by Louis XI, Maximilian, and the Estates of the Low Countries, as part of the Peace of Arras between France and Burgundy. Margaret brought the Counties of Artois and Burgundy to France as her dowry, and she was raised in the French court as prospective Queen consort, he later marries her in 1486 and have a son named Charles born in May 6, 1487.
The old Rene of Anjou assigns Edward of Westminister as the heir of his claims to Aragon once Nicolas of Anjou died before the deaths of Rene of Anjou and John of Aragon they sign a pact to recognize Edward of Westminister as the King of Aragon, Francis Phoebus of Foix and Joanna of Castille were married in 1477 but they died in a horse accident after they were married which made Isabella and Edward of Westminister the only heir to the throne in castile mean while Catherine of Navarre and her Husband, John of Albret become the King and Queen of Navarre who had a daughter named Anne of Navarre who was born in 19 May 1492, she was later married to On 26 June 1515, Anne of Navarre was married to Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, her entry to Nancy was described in a chronicle.
The reign of Queen Isabella and King Edward of Spain after King Henry of Castille died and both Aragon and Castille were inherited by Isabella and Edward in 1480.
Because of the Empire that Edward and Isabella(Eduardo y Isabel) inherited they became very powerful.
Catherine Plantagenet was born at the Archbishop's Palace in Alcalá de Henares near Madrid, on the night of 16 December 1485. She was the youngest surviving child of King Edward I and Queen Isabella I of Castile and Aragon. Catherine was quite short in stature with long golden auburn hair, wide blue eyes, a round face, and a fair complexion. She was descended, on her maternal side, from the English royal house as her great-grandmother Catherine of Lancaster, after whom she was named, and her great-great-grandmother Philippa of Lancaster, were both daughters of John of Gaunt and granddaughters of Edward III of England and directly descended from the Lancastrian Kings. Consequently she was third cousin of her father-in-law, Henry VII and second cousin because of their common relationship with their ancestor Catherine Valois, and fourth cousin of her mother-in-law Elizabeth of York.
The Battle of Granada was a siege of the city of Granada fought over a period of months leading up to its surrender on January 2, 1492. The city was captured by the combined forces of Aragon and Castile from the armies of the Muslim Emirate of Granada. Granada's Moorish forces were led by Emir Muhammad XII of Granada (King Boabdil).
Since the spring of 1491, Granada had been all that was left of the former Moorish Kingdom of al-Andalus when the Spanish forces of King Edward I of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile laid siege to the walled city. After several attempts to disperse the besiegers had been defeated, Boabdil attempted to raise support from the Islamic Marinid state in Morocco. He negotiated a four month truce with the Spanish whereby he would surrender if no help was received by the expiry of the truce. Following the development of Nasrid-Ottoman relations, only limited help came from the Ottomans, who dispatched admiral Kemal Reis to raid the Spanish coast.
Significant support failed to materialise and, on the agreed date the city capitulated. The Ottoman fleet was used to rescue refugees and ferry them to the coast of North Africa.
This relatively small campaign was of momentous consequences as Granada was the last outpost of Al-Andalus in Spain and its fall brought to an end 780 years of Muslim control in the Iberian peninsula. It also marked the final act in the Reconquista, the campaign by the medieval Christian states of Spain to drive out the Moorish invaders.
Granada still celebrates the 2nd of January. The Fall of Granada would soon be followed by a wave of Spanish expansion into Northern Africa, starting with the Conquest of Melilla on the coast of Morocco in 1497.


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Colombus
After continually lobbying at the Spanish court and two years of negotiations, Colombus finally had success in 1492. Edward and Isabella had just conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, and they received Columbus in Córdoba, in the Alcázar castle. Isabella turned Columbus down on the advice of her confessor, and he was leaving town by mule in despair, when Edward intervened. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch him and Edward later claimed credit for being "the principal cause why those islands were discovered".
About half of the financing was to come from private Italian investors, whom Columbus had already lined up. Financially broke after the Granada campaign, the monarchs left it to the royal treasurer to shift funds among various royal accounts on behalf of the enterprise. Columbus was to be made "Admiral of the Seas" and would receive a portion of all profits. The terms were unusually generous, but as his son later wrote, the monarchs did not really expect him to return.
According to the contract that Columbus made with King Edward and Queen Isabella, if Columbus discovered any new islands or mainland, he would receive many high rewards. In terms of power, he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands. He had the right to nominate three persons, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. He would be entitled to 10% of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity; this part was denied to him in the contract, although it was one of his demands. Additionally, he would also have the option of buying one-eighth interest in any commercial venture with the new lands and receive one-eighth of the profits.
Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and the Americas, all of them under the sponsorship of the Crown of Castile. These voyages marked the beginning of the European exploration and colonization of the American continents, and are thus of enormous significance in Western history. Columbus himself always insisted, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that the lands that he visited during those voyages were part of the Asian continent, as previously described by Marco Polo and other European travelers. Columbus' refusal to accept that the lands he had visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia might explain, in part, why the American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci and not after Columbus.
On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships; one larger carrack, Santa María, nicknamed Gallega (the Galician), and two smaller caravels, Pinta (the Painted) and Santa Clara, nicknamed Niña after her owner Juan Niño of Moguer.[35] They were property of Juan de la Cosa and the Pinzón brothers (Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez), but the monarchs forced the Palos inhabitants to contribute to the expedition. Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, which were owned by Castile, where he restocked the provisions and made repairs. On 6 September he departed San Sebastián de La Gomera for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean.
A lookout on the Pinta, Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodriguez Bermeo), spotted land about 2 a.m. on the morning of October 12, and immediately alerted the rest of the crew with a shout. Thereupon, the captain of the Pinta, Juan Alonso Pinzón, verified the discovery and alerted Columbus by firing a lombard. Columbus later maintained that he himself had already seen a light on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first person to sight land.
Columbus called the island (in what is now The Bahamas) San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani. Exactly which island in the Bahamas this corresponds to is an unresolved topic; prime candidates are Samana Cay, Plana Cays, or San Salvador Island (so named in 1925 in the belief that it was Columbus's San Salvador). The indigenous people he encountered, the Lucayan, Taíno or Arawak, were peaceful and friendly. From the 12 October 1492 entry in his journal he wrote of them, "Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language." He remarked that their lack of modern weaponry and even metal-forged swords or pikes was a tactical vulnerability, writing, "I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased."[39]
Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba (landed on 28 October) and the northern coast of Hispaniola, by 5 December. Here, the Santa Maria ran aground on Christmas morning 1492 and had to be abandoned. He was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men and founded the settlement of La Navidad at the site of present-day Môle-Saint-Nicolas, Haiti. On 13 January 1493 Columbus made his last stop in the New World. He landed on the Samaná Peninsula where he met the hostile Ciguayos who presented him with his only violent resistance during his first voyage to the Americas. Because of this, and the Ciguayos' use of arrows, he called the inlet where he met them the Bay of Arrows (or Gulf of Arrows). Today the place is called the Bay of Rincon, in Samaná, the Dominican Republic. Columbus kidnapped about 10 to 25 natives and took them back with him (only seven or eight of the native Indians arrived in Spain alive, but they made quite an impression on Seville).
Columbus headed for Spain, but another storm forced him into Lisbon. He anchored next to the King's harbor patrol ship on 4 March 1493 in Portugal. After spending more than one week in Portugal, he set sail for Spain. He crossed the bar of Saltes and entered the harbor of Palos on 15 March 1493. Word of his finding new lands rapidly spread throughout Europe.
Columbus left Cadiz on 24 September 1493 to find new territories, with 17 ships carrying supplies, and about 1,200 men to colonize the region. The colonists included priests, farmers, and soldiers. This was part of a new policy — not just "colonies of exploitation", but "colonies of settlement" and conversion of the natives to Christianity. The crew members may have included free black Africans who arrived in the New World about a decade before the slave trade began. On 13 October the ships left the Canary Islands as they had on the first voyage, following a more southerly course.
On 3 November 1493, Columbus sighted a rugged island that he named Dominica (Latin for Sunday); later that day, he landed at Marie-Galante, which he named Santa Maria la Galante. After sailing past Les Saintes (Los Santos, The Saints), he arrived at Guadeloupe Santa María de Guadalupe de Extremadura, after the image of the Virgin Mary venerated at the Spanish monastery of Villuercas, in Guadalupe (Spain), which he explored between 4 November and 10 November 1493.
Michele da Cuneo, Columbus’s childhood friend from Savona, sailed with Columbus during the second voyage and wrote: "In my opinion, since Genoa was Genoa, there was never born a man so well equipped and expert in the art of navigation as the said lord Admiral."Columbus named the small island of "Saona ... to honor Michele da Cuneo, his friend from Savona." The father of Bartholomé de Las Casas also accompanied Colombus on this voyage.
The exact course of his voyage through the Lesser Antilles is debated, but it seems likely that he turned north, sighting and naming several islands, including:
Montserrat (for Santa Maria de Montserrate, after the Blessed Virgin of the Monastery of Montserrat, which is located on the Mountain of Montserrat, in Catalonia, Spain),
Antigua (after a church in Seville, Spain, called Santa Maria la Antigua, meaning "Old St. Mary's"),
Redonda (for Santa Maria la Redonda, Spanish for "round", owing to the island's shape),
Nevis (derived from the Spanish, Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, meaning "Our Lady of the Snows", because Columbus thought the clouds over Nevis Peak made the island resemble a snow-capped mountain),
Saint Kitts (for St. Christopher, patron of sailors and travelers),
Saint Eustatius (for the early Roman martyr, St. Eustachius),
Saba (also for St. Christopher?),
Saint Martin (San Martin), and
Saint Croix (from the Spanish Santa Cruz, meaning "Holy Cross"). He also sighted the island chain of the Virgin Islands (and named them Islas de Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Virgenes, Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins, a cumbersome name that was usually shortened, both on maps of the time and in common parlance, to Islas Virgenes), and he also named the islands of Virgin Gorda (the fat virgin), Tortola, and Peter Island (San Pedro).
He continued to the Greater Antilles, and landed at Puerto Rico (originally San Juan Bautista, in honor of Saint John the Baptist, a name that was later supplanted by Puerto Rico (English: Rich Port) while the capital retained the name, San Juan) on 19 November 1493. One of the first skirmishes between native Americans and Europeans since the time of the Vikings took place when Columbus's men rescued two boys who had just been castrated by their captors.
On 22 November Columbus returned to Hispaniola, where he intended to visit Fuerte de la Navidad (Christmas Fort), built during his first voyage, and located on the northern coast of Haiti. Columbus found Fuerte de la Navidad in ruins, destroyed by the native Taino people. Among the ruins were the corpses of 11 of the first 39 Spanish to have attempted New World colonization. Columbus then moved more than 100 kilometers eastwards, establishing a new settlement, which he called La Isabela, likewise on the northern coast of Hispaniola, in the present-day Dominican Republic. However, La Isabela proved to be a poorly chosen location, and the settlement was short-lived.
He left Hispaniola on 24 April 1494, arrived at Cuba (naming it Juana) on 30 April. He explored the southern coast of Cuba, which he believed to be a peninsula rather than an island, and several nearby islands, including the Isle of Pines (Isla de las Pinas, later known as La Evangelista, The Evangelist). He reached Jamaica on 5 May. He retraced his route to Hispaniola, arriving on 20 August, before he finally returned to Spain.
On 30 May 1498, Columbus left with six ships from Sanlúcar, Spain, for his third trip to the New World.
Columbus led the fleet to the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, his wife's native land. He then sailed to Madeira and spent some time there with the Portuguese captain João Gonçalves da Camara before sailing to the Canary Islands and Cape Verde. Columbus landed on the south coast of the island of Trinidad on 31 July. From 4 August through 12 August he explored the Gulf of Paria which separates Trinidad from Venezuela. He explored the mainland of South America, including the Orinoco River. He also sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita Island and sighted and named Tobago (Bella Forma) and Grenada (Concepcion).
Columbus returned to Hispaniola on 19 August to find that many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were discontented, having been misled by Columbus about the supposedly bountiful riches of the new world. An entry in his journal from September 1498 reads, "From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold..." Since Columbus supported the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives for economic reasons, he ultimately refused to baptize them, as Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians.
He had some of his crew hanged for disobeying him. A number of returning settlers and sailors lobbied against Columbus at the Spanish court, accusing him and his brothers of gross mismanagement. On his return he was arrested for a period (see Governorship and arrest section below).
Before leaving for his fourth voyage, Columbus wrote a letter to the Governors of the Bank of St. George, Genoa, dated at Seville, 2 April 1502. He wrote "Although my body is here my heart is always near you."
Columbus made a fourth voyage nominally in search of the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean. Accompanied by his brother Bartolomeo and his 13-year-old son Fernando, he left Cadiz, (modern Spain), on 11 May 1502, with the ships Capitana, Gallega, Vizcaína and Santiago de Palos. He sailed to Arzila on the Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers whom he had heard were under siege by the Moors. On 15 June they landed at Carbet on the island of Martinique (Martinica). A hurricane was brewing, so he continued on, hoping to find shelter on Hispaniola. He arrived at Santo Domingo on 29 June but was denied port, and the new governor refused to listen to his storm prediction. Instead, while Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio Jaina, the first Spanish treasure fleet sailed into the hurricane. Columbus's ships survived with only minor damage, while 29 of the 30 ships in the governor's fleet were lost to the 1 July storm. In addition to the ships, 500 lives (including that of the governor, Francisco de Bobadilla) and an immense cargo of gold were surrendered to the sea.
After a brief stop at Jamaica, Columbus sailed to Central America, arriving at Guanaja (Isla de Pinos) in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras on 30 July. Here Bartolomeo found native merchants and a large canoe, which was described as "long as a galley" and was filled with cargo. On 14 August he landed on the continental mainland at Puerto Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, before arriving in Almirante Bay, Panama on 16 October.
On 5 December 1502, Columbus and his crew found themselves in a storm unlike any they had ever experienced. In his journal Columbus writes,
For nine days I was as one lost, without hope of life. Eyes never beheld the sea so angry, so high, so covered with foam. The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like a furnace, and the lightning broke with such violence that each time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought that the ship would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I do not say it rained, for it was like another deluge. The men were so worn out that they longed for death to end their dreadful suffering.
In Panama, Columbus learned from the natives of gold and a strait to another ocean. After much exploration, in January 1503 he established a garrison at the mouth of the Rio Belen. On 6 April one of the ships became stranded in the river. At the same time, the garrison was attacked, and the other ships were damaged (Shipworms also damaged the ships in tropical waters.[55]). Columbus left for Hispaniola on 16 April heading north. On 10 May he sighted the Cayman Islands, naming them "Las Tortugas" after the numerous sea turtles there. His ships next sustained more damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba. Unable to travel farther, on 25 June 1503 they were beached in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica.
For a year Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. That island's governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. In the meantime Columbus, in a desperate effort to induce the natives to continue provisioning him and his hungry men, successfully won the favor of the natives by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse for 29 February 1504, using the Ephemeris of the German astronomer Regiomontanus. Help finally arrived, no thanks to the governor, on 29 June 1504, and Columbus and his men arrived in Sanlúcar, Spain, on 7 November.
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The reign of Henry VII
By 1483, Henry VII’s mother, despite being married to a Yorkist (Lord Stanley), was actively promoting Henry as an alternative to Richard III.
At Rennes Cathedral on Christmas Day 1483, Henry pledged to marry Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who was also Edward's heir since the presumed death of her brothers, the Princes in the Tower. Henry then received the homage of his supporters.
With money and supplies borrowed from his host Francis II, Duke of Brittany, Henry tried to land in England, but his conspiracy unravelled, resulting in the execution of his primary co-conspirator, the Duke of Buckingham. Now supported by Francis II's prime-minister Pierre Landais, Richard III attempted to extradite Henry from Brittany, but Henry escaped to France. He was welcomed by the French, who readily supplied him with troops and equipment for a second invasion.
Having gained the support of the Woodvilles, in-laws of the late Edward IV, he sailed with a small French and Scottish force. Henry landed in Mill Bay, Pembrokeshire, close to his birthplace. He marched towards England accompanied by his uncle Jasper and the Earl of Oxford. Wales was traditionally a Lancastrian stronghold, and Henry owed the support he gathered to his Welsh birth and ancestry, being directly descended, through his father, from Rhys ap Gruffydd.
He amassed an army of around 5,000 soldiers.
Henry was aware that his best chance to seize the throne was to engage Richard quickly and defeat him immediately, as Richard had reinforcements in Nottingham and Leicester. Richard only needed to avoid being killed in order to keep his throne. Though outnumbered, Henry's Lancastrian forces decisively defeated Richard's Yorkist army at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485. Several of Richard's key allies, such as the Earl of Northumberland and William and Thomas Stanley, crucially switched sides or left the battlefield. Richard III's death at Bosworth Field effectively ended the Wars of the Roses, although it was not the last battle Henry had to fight.
The first concern Henry had was to secure his hold on the throne. His claim to the throne was that he was the last reasonably legitimate male descendant of Edward III.
He honoured his pledge of December 1483 to marry Elizabeth of York. They were third cousins, as both were great-great-grandchildren of John of Gaunt. The marriage took place on 18 January 1486 at Westminster. The marriage unified the warring houses and gave his children a strong claim to the throne. The unification of the houses of York and Lancaster by this marriage is symbolized by the heraldic emblem of the Tudor rose, a combination of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster. It also ended future discussion as to whether the descendants of the fourth son of Edward III, Edmund, Duke of York, through marriage to Phillipa, heiress of the second son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, had a superior or inferior claim to those of the third son John of Gaunt, who had held the throne for three generations. In addition, Henry had Parliament repeal Titulus Regius, the statute that declared Edward IV's marriage as invalid and his children illegitimate, thus legitimizing his wife. Amateur historians Bertram Fields and Sir Clements Markham have claimed that he may have been involved in the murder of the Princes in the Tower, as the repeal of Titulus Regius gave the Princes a stronger claim to the throne than his own. Alison Weir, however, points out that the Rennes ceremony, two years earlier, was possible only if Henry and his supporters were certain that the Princes were already dead.
Henry's second action was to declare himself king retroactively from the day before Bosworth Field. This meant that anyone who had fought for Richard against him would be guilty of treason. Thus, Henry could legally confiscate the lands and property of Richard III while restoring his own. However, he spared Richard's nephew and designated heir, the Earl of Lincoln. He also created Margaret Plantagenet, a Yorkist heiress, Countess of Salisbury sui juris. He took great care not to address the baronage, or summon Parliament, until after his coronation. At the same time, he almost immediately afterwards issued an edict that any gentleman who swore fealty to him would, notwithstanding any previous attainder, be secure in his property and person.
Henry secured his crown principally by dividing and undermining the power of the nobility, especially through the aggressive use of bonds and recognisances to secure loyalty. He also enacted laws against livery and maintenance, the great lords' practice of having large numbers of "retainers" who wore their lord's badge or uniform and formed a potential private army.
Henry was threatened by several rebellions in the next few years. The first was the Stafford and Lovell Rebellion of 1486, which collapsed without fighting.
In 1487, Yorkists led by Lincoln rebelled in support of Lambert Simnel, a boy who was claimed to be the Earl of Warwick, son of Edward IV's brother Clarence (who was actually a prisoner in the Tower). The rebellion was defeated and Lincoln killed at the Battle of Stoke. Henry made the boy Simnel a servant in the royal kitchen.
In 1490, a young Fleming, Perkin Warbeck, appeared and claimed to be Richard, the younger of the "Princes in the Tower". Warbeck won the support of Edward IV's sister Margaret of Burgundy. He led attempted invasions of Ireland in 1491 and England in 1495, and persuaded James IV of Scotland to invade England in 1496. In 1497 Warbeck landed in Cornwall with a few thousand troops, but was soon captured and executed.
In 1499, Henry had the Earl of Warwick executed. However, he spared Warwick's elder sister Margaret. She survived till 1541, when she was executed by Henry VIII.
Henry married Elizabeth of York with the hope of uniting the Yorkist and Lancastrian sides of the Plantagenet dynastic disputes. In this he was largely successful. However, a level of paranoia continued, so much that anyone with blood ties to the Plantagenets was suspected of coveting the throne.


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The Reign of Henry VIII
In the meantime, Edward the son of Isabella of Castille and Edward of Westminister bear a son with Anne of Brittany named William on 14 February 1500 after they got married.


In 1502, Arthur, the son of Henry VII died at the age of 15, after only 20 weeks of marriage to Catherine Plantagenet. Arthur's death thrust all his duties upon his younger brother, the 10-year-old Henry, who then became Prince of Wales. Henry VII renewed his efforts to seal a marital alliance between England and Spain, by offering his second son in marriage to Prince Arthur's widow, Catherine Plantagenet, youngest surviving child of King Edward and Queen Isabella I of Castile. For the new Prince of Wales to marry his brother's widow, a dispensation from the Pope was normally required to overrule the impediment of affinity because, as told in the book of Leviticus, "If a brother is to marry the wife of a brother they will remain childless." Catherine swore that her marriage to Prince Arthur had not been consummated. Still, both the English and Spanish parties agreed that an additional papal dispensation of affinity would be prudent to remove all doubt regarding the legitimacy of the marriage.
The impatience of Catherine's mother, Queen Isabella I, induced Pope Julius II to grant dispensation in the form of a Papal bull. So, 14 months after her young husband's death, Catherine was betrothed to his even younger brother, Henry. Yet by 1505, Henry VII lost interest in a Spanish alliance and the younger Henry declared that his betrothal had been arranged without his consent.
Continued diplomatic manoeuvring over the fate of the proposed marriage lingered until the death of Henry VII in 1509. Only 17 years old, Henry married Catherine on 11 June 1509 and, on 24 June 1509, the two were crowned at Westminster Abbey.
Two days after his coronation he arrested his father's two most unpopular ministers, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. They were charged with high treason and were executed in 1510. This was to become Henry's primary tactic for dealing with those who stood in his way, as believed by historians such as Crofton. On the other hand, Henry also returned to the public some of the money, supposedly extorted by the two.
Henry cultivated the image of a Renaissance Man and his court was a centre of scholarly and artistic innovation and glamorous excess, epitomised by The Field of Cloth of Gold. He was an accomplished musician, author, and poet. His best known musical composition is "Pastime with Good Company" or "The Kynges Ballade". He was an avid gambler and dice player, and excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was known for his strong defence of conventional Christian piety. Meeting Francis I on 7 June 1520 near Calais, he entertained the French king with a fortnight of lavish entertainment to establish a closer diplomatic relationship after the military conflicts of the previous decade.
In 1511, Pope Julius II proclaimed a Holy League against France, this new alliance rapidly grew to include not only Spain and the Holy Roman Empire but England as well. Henry decided to use the occasion to expand his holdings in northern France. He concluded the Treaty of Westminster, a pledge of mutual aid with Spain against France, in November 1511 and prepared for involvement in the War of the League of Cambrai.
A son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, had been born in 1511 to Catherine Plantagenet and Henry VIII.
In 1513, Henry invaded France and his troops defeated a French army at the Battle of the Spurs. His brother-in-law, James IV of Scotland, invaded England at the behest of Louis XII of France, but failed to draw Henry's attention away from France. The Scots were defeated at the Battle of Flodden Field on 9 September 1513. Among the dead was the Scottish King, which ended Scotland's brief involvement in the war.
On 18 February 1516, Queen Catherine bore Princess Mary.
The son of Anne of Navarre, John of Lorraine and Navarre(b. 26 January 1516) was bethroted to Mary, the daughter of Catherine Plantagenet and Henry VIII knowing that they still have a son, Henry of Cornwall, Mary was sent to Navarre to be raised as a Navarran Princess.
Both Catherine Plantagenet and her son Henry would die in 1517, Catherine dies of cancer while Henry dies of a mysterious sickness.
Henry VIII would later marry Anne Boleyn in 28 May 1533 after which they had a son named Henry who was born in 7 September 1533


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