History of England
With Henry VII's accession to the throne in 1485, the Wars of the Roses came to an end, and Tudors would continue to rule England for 118 years. Traditionally, the Battle of Bosworth Field is considered to mark the end of the Middle Ages in England, although Henry did not introduce any new concept of monarchy, and for most of his reign his hold on power was tenuous. He claimed the throne by conquest and God's judgement in battle. Parliament quickly recognized him as king, but the Yorkists were far from defeated. Nonetheless, he married Edward IV's eldest daughter Elizabeth in January 1486, thereby uniting the houses of York and Lancaster.
Royal Gold Cup
The cup first appears in the records of the new Tudor dynasty under Henry VIII in 1521. By now the cover had lost the finial "garnished with four sapphires, three balas rubies and fifteen pearls" described in Charles VI's inventory and had a new one of gold in the form of a closed, or "imperial" crown. This matches a propaganda drive at this time by Henry to assert England as an "empire", a contemporary sense meaning a state recognising no superior, though the Great Seal of England had already used a closed crown since 1471. Other uses had probably been found for the jewels of the old finial; it is assumed that the lower band with the Tudor roses was added in Henry's reign, as part of a programme of adding Tudor badges to possessions inherited from earlier dynasties, which covered tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and buildings such as King's College Chapel in Cambridge. The cup is described in inventories in 1532 and after Henry's death in 1547, and then under Elizabeth I it was inventoried in 1574 and 1596.
When James I succeeded to the English throne in 1603, one of his first priorities was to end the Anglo-Spanish War, which had been dragging on since 1585. A Spanish delegation arrived for the Somerset House Conference, which concluded with a treaty signed in 1604. The leader of the Habsburg diplomats was Juan Fernández de Velasco, 5th Duke of Frías and Constable of Castile. The upper extension to the stem of the cup has a Latin inscription that translates as:
This cup of solid gold, a relic of the sacred treasure of England and a memorial to the peace made between the kings, the Constable Juan de Velasco, returning thence after successfully accomplishing his mission, presented as an offering to Christ the Peacemaker.