History of the Reign of King Henry VII on a follow-up account of the reign of Henry VIII, but only completed a brief introduction. Bacon's portrayal of Henry was extremely influential for the following three centuries. History of the Reign of King Henry VII History of the Reign of King Henry VII is a 1622 work by the English writer Francis Bacon. It charts the reign of the first Tudor monarch Henry VII who took the throne from his rival Richard III in 1485. At the time of writing Bacon had recently fallen from political power, and completed the work in late 1621 and sent a copy to
Richard III of England his views in 1793 after the Terror, stating he now believed that Richard could have committed the crimes he was charged with, although Pollard observes that this retraction is frequently overlooked by later admirers of Richard. Other defenders of Richard include the noted explorer Clements Markham, whose "Richard III: His Life and Character" (1905) replied to the work of Gairdner. He argued that Henry VII killed the princes and that evidence of other "crimes" was nothing more than rumour and propaganda. An intermediate view was provided by Alfred Legge in "The Unpopular King" (1885). Legge argued that Richard's "greatness of