To many, the year 1485, when Henry Tudor defeated Richard Plantagenet on Bosworth Field, marks the close of the Middle Ages. Henry is regarded as a Renaissance prince, a 'modern' monarch. Williams, however, reminds us that Henry Tudor was bornin 1456, in the very middle of the upheaval of the Wars of the Roses, that he spent his formative years in exile at the twilight Court of Brittany, and that his opponent at Bosworth Field was only four years his senior. It was these factors which moulded the conservative and cautious side to Henry's character, so that he tended to retain rather than to innovate in his methods of rule and administration. Yet Henry's reign coincided with the High Renaissance of Michelangelo, Raphael, and da Vinci in Italy, with the voyages of discovery of Columbus and Vespucci, and with the spread of the New Learning throughout Europe. Henry's Court became a centre of culture and great splendour, a hope for the future which was never properly fulfilled by his successor. This curious dichotomy in Henry's life and reign is perhaps best expressed by his Chapel in Westminster Abbey, where he and his Queen lie in a splendid Renaissance tomb carved by Michelangelo's fellow student, Torrigiano, surrounded by the last flourishing of pure Gothic architecture...