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They say the crown flew off Richard’s head in the heat of battle and landed in a gorse bush and that Father took it from there and placed it upon his own head amidst cries of “King Henry! King Henry!” I doubt the truth of this, but it is just the sort of story that is repeated and eventually believed. People like simple stories and will twist even the profound into something plain and reassuring. They like to believe that one becomes king by a Sign, and not by anything as inconclusive or confusing as a mêlée. Hence, the crown in the bush.

In fact, it was not simple at all. Despite the battle and the crown in the divinely placed bush, there remained many recalcitrant people who simply would not accept Henry Tudor as King. True it was that he had royal blood, and had made the late Yorkist King’s daughter his wife, but diehard Yorkists were not so easily placated. They wanted a genuine Yorkist on the throne, or no one. Thus the treasons began.

There were no Yorkists left, but the traitors would resurrect the smothered sons of Edward IV (my mother’s brothers). They did not dare to “discover” the eldest, Edward; even they were not that bold. Richard, the younger, was their choice. Each coterie of traitors found a ready supply of yellow-haired boys willing to impersonate him.

The first was Lambert Simnel. The Irish crowned him as Richard IV. Father was amused and tolerant. After crushing the uprising in the Battle of Stoke in 1487, he appointed the erstwhile King a cook in the royal kitchens. Working before the hot ovens rapidly deflated his royal demeanour.

The next, Perkin Warbeck, was less amusing. The Scots hailed him and provided him with a highborn wife. Father executed him.

And yet the uprisings went on. There was a bottomless well of traitors and malcontents. No matter what Father did, there were always dissatisfied groups somewhere, plotting for his overthrow.

In the end it made him bitter. I can see that now, and understnext;Ever since I was five years old I have been either a prisoner or a fugitive,” he once said), and even after he had supposedly won his right to peace, they would not let him be. They meant to drive him from the throne, or into his grave.

Father married his archenemy’s daughter. He hated Edward IV, yet he had made a solemn vow in Rennes Cathedral that should his invasion of England be successful, he would wed Elizabeth, Edward’s daughter.

Why? Simply because she was the heiress to the Yorkist claims, as he was of the Lancastrian. He had never even seen her and knew nothing about her person. She could have been crook-backed or squint-eyed or pockmarked. Yet marrying her would end the wars. That was all he cared about.

As I said, he despised Edward IV. And why not? Edward had tried to have him assassinated. Edward had killed his grandfather Owen. Yet he would marry his daughter.... He understood the times. You murdered people, and it was like cultivating a garden: you nipped tender shoots, or the whole trunk, of whatever plant you perceived might be a threat later in the growing season.

I put a stop to all that. No one is put to death surreptitiously in England now. There are no more pillow-murders or poisonings or midnight stabbings. I count as one of the great achievements of my reign that this barbarism has passed forever.

But I was speaking of Father’s marriage. Elizabeth, Edward’s daughter, was brought out of sanctuary (where she and her mother had hidden from the ravages of Richard III) and given to him as part of the spoils of war.

Thus Elizabeth of York married Henry Tudor. Royal artists created an especial emblem for them: the so-called Tudor rose, combining the red of Lancaster with the white of York. Less than a year later they had their sought-for heir: Arthur. They named him thus to avoid all “claimed” names (Henry was Lancastrian, Edward and Richard Yorkist), and to hark back to the legendary King Arthur. That would offend no one while promising fine things.

Then followed other children. After Arthur,