Parliament in December to take the princess to wife, to which petition he
graciously assented, and the union of the red and white roses was
accomplished in January. Any son born of this marriage would in his own
person unite the claims of the House of Lancaster with those of the senior
branch of the House of York.

[Sidenote: The King and his advisers]

It is difficult to think of the first Tudor monarch as a young man; for his
policy and conduct bore at all times the signs of a cautious and
experienced statesmanship. Nevertheless, he was but eight and twenty when
he wrested the kingdom from Richard. His life, however, had been passed in
the midst of perpetual plots and schemes, and in his day men developed
early--whereof an even more striking example was his son's contemporary,
the great Emperor Charles V. Young as Henry was, there was no youthful
hot-headedness in his policy, which was moreover his own. But he selected
his advisers with a skill inherited by his son; and the most notable
members of the new King's Council were Reginald Bray; Morton, Bishop of
Ely, who soon after became Archbishop of Canterbury and was later raised to
the Cardinalate; and Fox, afterwards Bishop of Durham and then of
Winchester, whose services were continued through the early years of the
next reign. Warham, afterwards Archbishop, was another of the great
ecclesiastics whom he promoted, and before his death he had discovered the
abilities of his son's great minister Thomas Wolsey. For two thirds of his
reign, however, Bray and Morton were the men on whom he placed chief
reliance.

[Sidenote: Henry's enemies]

Difficult as it was after Henry's union with Elizabeth to name any