“The wooden bust is all that’s left of the effigy that graced his
coffin on procession. So I suppose you’re right — the effigy is based
on the death mask. But if you Google for desk mask Henry VII, the bit
of effigy is what comes up. Sorry for not being more exact.
To me, the effigy has Henry’s left eye looking outward slightly — not
inward. So not cross-eyed. Perhaps there are other sources that can
clarify if this is correct. I’ve seen his vision described as “cast
eye” and “a squint”.
Henry seems to have had an eye condition called strabismus which
prevents the eyes from aiming at the same point in space. It’s also
known as heterotropia and includes three variants: cross-eye, lazy-eye
and walleye. This condition includes horizontal tropias exotropia and
esotropia which are outward and inward horizontal deviations and
hypertropia and hypotropia which are when one eye is set higher or
lower than the other eye. Exotropia and esotropia are also known as
divergent or convergent squint respectively.
But hey, he can be crosseyed if you like. Or perfect-visioned and
slanty-charactered. St Henry, patron saint to the greedy.”
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