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

Abstract

Henry VII of England has never been considered a ‘crusader king’; his monetary contributions towards anti-Ottoman crusading have been characterized by his biographers as little more than bribes designed to constrain the ambitions of would-be pretenders to the English throne. However, an unpublished Anglo-Hungarian treaty of alliance calls such simplistic explanations into question, showing that after the death of his son Arthur, prince of Wales, in spring 1502, Henry VII attempted to insert England into a pan-European platform of anti-Ottoman alliances using the provision of crusade financing as a diplomatic lever. This article shows just how Henry VII’s ‘crusade diplomacy’ worked in practice, arguing for a reassessment of what has long appeared to be the settled question of Henry VII’s foreign policy aims and demonstrating the centrality of the ‘Turkish question’ to early sixteenth-century European diplomacy.