Henry VII Seals: signet of eagle (missing at transfer) great seal (imperfect) privy...

Henry VII Seals: signet of eagle (missing at transfer) great seal (imperfect) privy seal (imperfect) obverse: signet seal (imperfect)

Henry VII's will is dated 31 March 1509, three weeks before the King's death which occurred late in the night of 21 April.

Henry VII had begun preparations for a suitably regal mausoleum by about 1494; by 1500 the first of twenty-nine sumptuous copes (only one of which is now extant) intended 'for a perpetual memory...while the world shall endure...' had been worked by Antonio Corsi of Florence; by the following year works had begun on a tomb at Windsor, the site initially chosen for the King's burial; and by 1502 Henry had begun the process that would set up a perpetual chantry at Westminster, to which he had now transferred the focus of his intentions, and where he was eventually to be buried.

In 1504 he sealed the foundation documents of one of his two great works of piety, the almshouses at Westminster, and had begun to formulate the magnificence and munificence of the second, the Savoy Hospital. In both his badges and symbols were to have prominence, intended as a perpetual testimony both of Henry's royal imperium and of his Lancastrian heritage and presumed legitimacy.

In August 1504 he issued a proclamation for redress of complaints against the Crown - loans, debts, and other, unspecified, wrongs: a pattern that would be repeated in the will of 1509. By the end of the year twenty-five indentures, bipartite, septipartite and quadripartite, ninety-five instruments in all, had been written, illuminated and sealed as a guarantee of perpetual intercession for himself and his dynasty. Their imagery proclaimed the twin strands of his ancestry, Beaufort and Tudor, and the kingship realised in 1485.

In 1505, 'for certain causes' the convocation of York passed an ordinance including the King in all spiritual benefits arising from all forms of worship and good works within the province, and ordained also that at high masses concelebrated with a minimum of thirteen clerics, and conducted at the main altar of not only the cathedral but also of other churches, certain prayers and suffrages were to be offered for the King both in life and in perpetuity after his death. This pietistic morbidity, with its strongly secular and regal undertones, is the moving spirit of the will itself.

Henry VII's will is written on parchment in a good chancery hand. It can be assumed to be substantially the text of 1507, with minor amendments to allow for the anticipated marriage of Mary Tudor, the King's younger daughter, which had finally been agreed by treaty December 1507, and for which formal espousals were celebrated by proxy 17 December 1508.

The dating clause is incorporated in the preamble to the will text: and the day. The document is signed at the head and at the end by the King's sign manual of HR, the latter serving as the authority for sealing in the manner specified in the text: that is, with the privy seal and signet, with the King's own personal signet of the eagle, and with the great seal. The latter was in the keeping of the Chancellor, William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was also appointed supervisor of the will. Warham was away from court at the crucial moment, so that the final clauses of the will contain a revised dating at Canterbury, on [10] April 1509, the whole being 'signed' in conventional Chancery fashion by John Yonge, Henry's Master of the Rolls.

The opening phrases of the main will text begin with an appeal for the interecession of the Virgin Mary, and to her Son; to the King's accustomed avowries (named saints to whom he frequently prayed); and to all the saints. The will confirms the arrangements already made for the completion of the King's chapel and of his tomb, and his intention, never realised, to transfer the body of Henry VI from Windsor to Westminster, thought to be that King's preferred resting place. 10,000 masses, at a cost of 6d each, and dedicated specifically to the Trinity, to the Five Wounds, and other avowries, were to be said after the King's death, and £2,000 given in alms.

Instructions for payments of debt are conventional; less so is the commission appointed for the payment of debts and the redress of proven wrongs, whether debt owed by the King or for his household, or land withheld by the Crown; although similar, if less precise, arrangements had been made by, for example, both Henry IV and Edward IV.

Grants already made to Westminster and other bodies for a perpetual chantry, and for the almshouse at Westminster, were confirmed, as was the foundation of the Savoy Hospital - although a reference to the deposit of 10,000 marks in ready money with the Dean and Chapter of St Pauls in trust for this purpose remains incomplete; indeed, the money was deposited, temporarily, in the Mint 16 April 1509 and finally transferred, a year after the King's death, not to St Paul's but to the abbot and convent of Westminster.

The King further charged his executors to make similar provision for hospitals to be built in Coventry and York. All those religious houses and bodies corporate with whom the King had indented in 1504 for perpetual obits were to receive a particular grant for masses to be said after his decease. Two thousand pounds were to be bestowed on the repair of highways. The text shows substantial amendment at this point, since the actual roads were specified, and the inserted text required more space than had been allowed in anticipation.

Henry had won and retained his Crown by force of arms. At this awesome hour he did not forget the manner in which he had won the realm, or the blood shed to sustain his throne. Solemn charge was given to his son to respect the grants, whether of land or office, which the King had made in specific recompense for loyal service. Similar provision had been made by Edward IV in 1475. An image of the King, armed and kneeling, and holding the Crown he had won at Bosworth, was to be worked in silver and gold and to be placed on St Edward's shrine; another votary image was given to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury; and an image of St George to Windsor.

The King recited his inward regret and displeasure at the use in many places of the realm of base vessels to hold the sacrament, and made specific legacy, set in motion before his death, for pixes and chalices of silver gilt to be made and distributed, the pixes to be of silver gilt, and garnished with roses and portcullises, and to be distributed within a year of the King's decease.

Bequests were made, on a scale that could be termed prodigal, to sustain the marriage of the King's daughter, Mary, to Charles, prince of Spain, the will making specific reference to the proxy marriage, which took place at Richmond in December 1508. It is this reference which, although incomplete in the will itself, suggests a date of 1509 for the will text: whereas other late references could have been achieved by erasure or insertion in an earlier text, the reference to the marriage appears to be written continuously within the main text, and is likely to be the only major alteration to the text of 1507.