Tudor rose Tudor rose The Tudor rose (sometimes called the Union rose) is the traditional floral heraldic emblem of England and takes its name and origins from the House of Tudor, which united the House of York and House of Lancaster. The Tudor rose consists of five white inner petals, representing the House of York, and five red outer petals to represent the House of Lancaster. When Henry VII took the crown of England from Richard III in battle (1485), he brought the end of the retrospectively dubbed "Wars of the Roses" between the House of Lancaster (one monarch of which had
House of Tudor Medici, was suspected of ordering the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of tens of thousands of French Protestant Huguenots in 1572. Elizabeth bowed to public feeling against the marriage, learning from the mistake her sister made when she married Philip II of Spain, and sent the Duke of Anjou away. Elizabeth knew that the continuation of the Tudor line was now impossible; she was forty-eight in 1581, and too old to bear children. By far the most dangerous threat to the Tudor line during Elizabeth's reign was the Spanish Armada of 1588, launched by Elizabeth's old suitor Philip II of Spain