Building Royally: Expressions of Magnificence in the Palaces of Henry VII (1485–1509)

The early Tudor period (1485–1558) witnessed the establishment of the Tudor dynasty and a political, social, and cultural revolution. It was an age of architectural developments as medieval traditions were gradually abandoned and numerous royal palaces and their gardens were constructed or reconstructed corresponding to new trends, the current fashion, and the personal taste of the reigning monarch. Royal palaces and their adjoining gardens served as representations of the power and wealth of the dynasty by conveying magnificence. The paper discusses early Tudor textual records and the ways these documents give evidence of the magnificence of royal residences, together with presenting a possible typology based on the way of expression for the categorisation of the historical textual records.