Central to all social change in the 15th century was change in the economy. Although plague remained endemic in England, there was little change in the level of population. Villein labour service largely disappeared, to be replaced by copyhold tenure (tenure by copy of the record of the manorial court). The period has been considered a golden age for the English labourer, but individual prosperity varied widely. There was a well-developed land market among peasants, some of whom managed to rise above their neighbours and began to constitute a class called yeomen. Large landlords entirely abandoned direct management of their estates in favour of a leasehold system. In many cases they faced growing arrears of rent and found it difficult to maintain their income levels. Because many landholders solved the problem of labour shortage by converting their holdings to sheep pasture, much land enclosure took place. As a result a great many villages were abandoned by their inhabitants.

Though England remained a predominantly agrarian society, significant development and change occurred in the towns. London continued to grow, dominating the southeast. Elsewhere the development of the woolen industry brought major changes. Halifax and Leeds grew at the expense of York, and the West Riding at the expense of the eastern part of Yorkshire. Suffolk and the Cotswold region became important in the national economy. As the cloth trade grew in importance, so did the association of the Merchant Adventurers. The merchants of the Staple, who had a monopoly on the export of raw wool, did less well. Italian merchants prospered in 15th-century England, and important privileges were accorded to the German Hanseatic merchants by Edward IV.

Culturally the 15th century was a period of sterility. Monastic chronicles came to an end, and the writing of history declined. Thomas Walsingham (died c. 1422) was the last of a distinguished line of St. Albans chroniclers. Although there were some chronicles written by citizens of London as well as two lives of Henry V, distinguished works of history did not come until later. Neither were there any superior works of philosophy or theology. Reginald Pecock, an arid Scholastic philosopher, wrote an English treatise against the Lollards and various other works emphasizing the rational element in the Christian faith; he was judged guilty of heresy for his pains. No noteworthy poets succeeded Chaucer, though a considerable quantity of English poetry was written in this period. John Lydgate produced much verse in the Lancastrian interest. The printer William Caxton set up his press in 1476 to publish English works for the growing reading public. The first great collections of family correspondence, those of the Pastons, Stonors, and Celys, survive from this period.

The 15th century, however, was an important age in the foundation of schools and colleges. Some schools were set up as adjuncts to chantries, some by guilds, and some by collegiate churches. Henry VI founded Eton College in 1440 and King’s College, Cambridge, in 1441. Other colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were also founded in this period. The Inns of Court expanded their membership and systematized their teaching of law. Many gentlemen’s sons became members of the Inns, though not necessarily lawyers: they needed the rudiments of law to be able to defend and extend their estates. The influence of the Italian Renaissance in learning and culture was very limited before 1485, although there were some notable patrons, such as Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who collected books and supported scholars interested in the new learning.

Only in architecture did England show great originality. Large churches were built in English Perpendicular style, especially in regions made rich by the woolen industry. The tomb of Richard Beauchamp at Warwick and King’s College Chapel in Cambridge show the quality of English architecture and sculpture in the period.

Henry VII (1485–1509)

When Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, seized the throne on August 22, 1485, leaving the Yorkist Richard III dead upon the field of battle, few Englishmen would have predicted that 118 years of Tudor rule had begun. Six sovereigns had come and gone, and at least 15 major battles had been fought between rival contenders to the throne since that moment in 1399 when the divinity that “doth hedge a king” was violated and Richard II was forced to abdicate. Simple arithmetic forecast that Henry VII would last no more than a decade and that the Battle of Bosworth Field was nothing more than another of the erratic swings of the military pendulum in the struggle between the house of York and the house of Lancaster. What gave Henry Tudor victory in 1485 was not so much personal charisma as the fact that key noblemen deserted Richard III at the moment of his greatest need, that Thomas Stanley (2nd Baron Stanley) and his brother Sir William stood aside during most of the battle in order to be on the winning team, and that Louis XI of France supplied the Lancastrian forces with 1,000 mercenary troops.

The desperateness of the new monarch’s gamble was equalled only by the doubtfulness of his claim. Henry VII’s Lancastrian blood was tainted by illegitimacy twice over. He was descended on his mother’s side from the Beaufort family, the offspring of John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford, and, though their children had been legitimized by act of Parliament, they had been specifically barred from the succession. His father’s genealogy was equally suspect: Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, was born to Catherine of Valois, widowed queen of Henry V, by her clerk of the wardrobe, Owen Tudor, and the precise marital status of their relationship has never been established. Had quality of Plantagenet blood, not military conquest, been the essential condition of monarchy, Edward, earl of Warwick, the 10-year-old nephew of Edward IV, would have sat upon the throne. Might, not soiled right, had won out on the high ground at Bosworth Field, and Henry VII claimed his title by conquest. The new king wisely sought to fortify his doubtful genealogical pretension, however, first by parliamentary acclamation and then by royal marriage. The Parliament of November 1485 did not confer regal power on the first Tudor monarch—victory in war had already done that—but it did acknowledge Henry as “our new sovereign lord.” Then, on January 18, 1486, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV, thereby uniting “the white rose and the red” and launching England upon a century of “smooth-fac’d peace with smiling plenty.”

“God’s fair ordinance,” which Shakespeare and later generations so clearly observed in the events of 1485–86, was not limited to military victory, parliamentary sanction, and a fruitful marriage; the hidden hand of economic, social, and intellectual change was also on Henry’s side. The day was coming when the successful prince would be more praised than the heroic monarch and the solvent sovereign more admired than the pious one. Henry Tudor was probably no better or worse than the first Lancastrian, Henry IV; they both worked diligently at their royal craft and had to fight hard to keep their crowns, but the seventh Henry achieved what the fourth had not—a secure and permanent dynasty—because England in 1485 was moving into a period of unprecedented economic growth and social change.