King Henry VII and the case of the missing treaty: Anglo-Hungarian crusading diplomacy re-considered

Henry VII of England has never been considered a 'crusader king'; his monetary contributions towards anti-Ottoman crusading have been characterised by his biographers as little more than bribes designed to constrain the ambitions of would-be pretenders to the English throne. However, a recently discovered 1502 Anglo-Hungarian crusading treaty calls such simplistic explanations into question. This paper re-evaluates Henry VII's foreign policy in light of that treaty, demonstrating the centrality of the "Turkish question" to early sixteenth-century English diplomacy.

Charlotte is working on a thesis at RHUL under the supervision of Professor Jonathan Harris: ‘Crusading on the Eve of the Reformation: The Making of Church, State, and Society in Late-Medieval England.’

This thesis uses unpublished material from English and foreign archives to tell the oft-neglected story of crusading in late-medieval England, exploring how English people understood England's place and role within Christendom during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, how English monarchs used crusading in their diplomatic, financial, and personal dealings with the papacy and other European rulers, and the evolving role crusading played in English society during a time of social and religious upheaval, from the 1460s to the 1540s.