stylistic:style_transfer
Tudor

When Henry VII, of England seized the throne there were eighteen Plantagenet descendants who might today be thought to have a stronger hereditary claim, and by 1510 this number had been increased further by the birth of sixteen Yorkist children. Henry mitigated this situation with his marriage to Elizabeth of York. She was the eldest daughter of Edward IV, and all their children were his cognatic heirs. Indeed, Polydore Vergil noted Henry VIII's pronounced resemblance to his grandfather Edward: "For just as Edward was the most warmly thought of by the English people amongst all English kings, so this successor of his, Henry, was very much like him in general appearance, in greatness of mind and generosity and for that reason was the most acclaimed and approved of all."

This did not deter Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy — Edward's sister and Elizabeth's aunt — and members of the de la Pole family — children of Edward's sister and John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk — from frequent attempts to destabilise Henry's regime. Henry imprisoned Margaret's nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick, the son of her brother George, in the Tower of London, but in 1487 Margaret financed a rebellion led by Lambert Simnel whose true identity remains uncertain, though he himself presented himself as 'Edward VI'. John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln, joined the revolt, probably anticipating that it would further his own ambitions to the throne, but he was killed in the suppression of the uprising at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487. Warwick was implicated by two further failed invasions supported by Margaret by the so called Perkin Warbeck claiming to be Edward IV's son Richard of Shrewsbury, and supposedly Warbeck's later planned escape for them both; Warwick was executed in 1499; with his death the House of Plantagenet went extinct in the legitimate male line. Edward's execution may simply have been a precondition for the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales to Katherine of Aragon in 1501.