The war about The War of the Roses

[Carol]

> > Carol, wishing that history could be altered and Richard III
restored to the throne, with Henry Tudor soundly and permanently defeated

Catlady: 
> I learned from Josephine Tey that Richard III was a good man and a
good king, but what would be different NOW if he had kept his throne?
> The only good thing I ever hear anyone say about Henry VII (7) was
that he wrote 'Greensleeves', but without Henry VIII (8) would England
still be Catholic, with an Inquisition? 
> 
> Elizabeth I is said to have been a genius at getting her country's
economy up and growing prosperous - without her, would it be like
Spain or Italy was before the European Economic Community started
subsidizing them? How would that have affected the colonization of the
Americas - would there now be only Spanish speaking, Portuguese
speaking, French speaking countries in the Americas, or would the
Dutch colonies have grown?
> 
> Without Elizabeth I, I imagine there wouldn't have been James I, and
while he personally would be good riddance, would England and Scotland
still be separate countries, with Scotland allying with France against
England? That would have made the twentieth century's two Great Wars
rather different.
>
Carol responds:

Henry VII wrote "Greensleeves"? I seriously doubt it. He was not a
musical or a romantically inclined man. He was very serious, very
practical, and very concerned about his own reputation and power. he
did, however, once give some money to "a demosel who daunceth"--more
than he gave to John Cabot for discovering Newfoundland. Henry VIII is
a much more likely composer of the song. *He* loved his pleasures (as
did his Yorkist grandfather, Edward IV).

England never had an inquisition that I know of (though the
Lancastrian* Henry V's brother John, Duke of Bedford, took part in the
burning of Joan of Arc in France), and Richard III was remarkably
tolerant of proto-Protestantism for a late-medieval Catholic monarch.
He even had his own Wycliffe Bible in English in addition to the usual
Catholic Bible in Latin.

I wouldn't credit Henry VIII with any form of religious tolerance. He
just wanted to be the head of the Church of England so that he could
divorce Catherine of Aragon.

As for colonization of the Americas, Columbus went to the cheapskate
Henry VII for funding and didn't receive it. Richard III, I'm quite
sure, would have given it to him. So the English might actually have
settled the New world before the Spanish. Sure, we might all be
Catholic, but we'd be speaking English.

The development of Protestantism in England, it would have been
different, but it would have happened. But England wouldn't have had
Catholic monarchs killing Anglican subjects (Mary I) and vice versa
(Henry VIII, Elizabeth I). The Puritan overthrow of an English monarch
might have taken place just as it did, but the monarch would have been
a Catholic Plantagenet instead of an ostensibly Anglican Stuart with
Catholic sympathies. Or, maybe, without the Stuarts and their belief
in their own divine right to rule, the Commonwealth wouldn't have
happened. Impossible to say. Maybe we wouldn't have had Puritans
fleeing to North America for religious freedom only to deny it to
others, but one way or another, the English would have settled the New
World--and probably the same northern latitudes given the climate of
their homeland.

At any rate, I can't imagine England not being influenced in some way
or other by the Protestant Reformation. It might have become
Presbyterian, like Scotland, rather than Anglican--or some other
monarch besides Henry VIII might have had Protestant leanings and
broken away from the Catholic Church--for better reasons than a desire
to divorce one woman and marry another (whom he later had beheaded).

Carol, whose allergies are very annoying today and whose posts
consequently may be unintelligible

* I didn't list Henry V and his father Henry IV as Lancastrian kings
yesterday because they predate the Wars of the Roses. Henry IV deposed
and imprisoned his childless cousin Richard II and may have had him
killed.