ABSTRACT
John of Gaunt, ironically, was a major figure in European politics in the second half of the fourteenth century. John of Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, before he usurped the throne, had even assisted in person in the conversion of Lithuania, the last European country to be Christianized. This was one further example of the extent to which 'Britain' fitted into a wider 'Christendom'. Henry VII seemed confident in handling power. It remained to be seen whether he would be excessively concerned with piety. These fifteenth-century English monarchs, and their Scottish counterparts, were all most Christian kings, ruling over countries which conceived themselves to be Christian in faith and order, life and work. Henry VII not only called his own son Arthur but went to further lengths to express his homage to that elusive early 'King Arthur', one-time King of England, whose career, by the end of the fifteenth century, had been given so many different twists.
