“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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8 responses to “The Squinting Usurper”

  1. As an optometrist, the terms for squint or tropia are esotropia (eyes turn in and cross) and exotropia (eyes turn out). Both mean that the brain uses one eye and forgets about the other image to prevent double vision, which confuses the brain. This sight loss is called amblyopia, when the brain learns to ignore one eye. Small children are more likely to develop esotropia. Adults who have lost the sight of one eye are more likely to develop exotropia as the eye is effectively blind, no image is going to the brain to let it “know” the eye us there so it drifts out to the position it occupies in the skull (pointing out) when you sleep.

    There is a picture of Perkin Warbeck showing a slight exotropia, and it was thought that this might be an inherited trait from his dad, Edward IV.

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  2. I have just heard from a medical professional:
    “Can I just say that it is known that the Tudor’s had failing eyesight and that he used a solution of ‘eyebright’ (Euphrasia) to bathe his eyes?”

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  3. […] with Polydore Vergil describing him as having ‘teeth few, poor and blackish’ (1).  His eye problems must have caused him dismay as he like nothing more than to pour over his account books to see […]

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  4. […] with Polydore Vergil describing him as having ‘teeth few, poor and blackish’ (1).  His eye problems must have caused him dismay as he liked nothing more than to pour over his account books to see […]

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  5. […] blue eyes? Well, yes…except that they looked in opposite directions. Which I suppose counts as striking! I’m not so sure about the blue, though. More a murky […]

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  6. […] of this article, you’ll find a very brief view of Henry VII moving in a lifelike way! Well, his eyes do! They even operate together! It’s […]

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  7. […] an extract from a short article you’ll find if you follow this link. The article concerns the way Henry set about promoting (read ‘doctoring’) his image as soon as Bosworth was over and done […]

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  8. […] handsome (see above left). His large nose rather gets in the way and we know that one of his eyes was disconcertingly slow to move with the other. Even with modern prettifying he looks as if he knows something we […]

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