The House of Tudor Read Free Page B

Earl of Richmond, did not live to see its outcome. Nor did he live to see his son. He died at Carmarthen in November 1456, leaving his young wife six months pregnant. Jasper at once came to the rescue, taking his brother’s widow under his protection, and Margaret Beaufort’s child was born at Pembroke Castle on 28 January 1457. There is an interesting tradition that the baby was to have been christened Owen (which sounds like Jasper’s choice), but that his mother insisted he should be given the royal and English name of Henry. Although the Countess of Richmond was herself little more than a child - she was probably only twelve years old at the time of her marriage - this sort of determination would have been perfectly in character. An intelligent, serious-minded, deeply religious girl, she later developed into a formidable personality, exercising a profound influence on the dynasty she had founded.
    In the general turmoil of the 1450s the arrival of a fatherless infant in a wintry and uncertain world attracted no particular attention, and for the first five years of his life Henry Tudor stayed with his mother, snug in his uncle Jasper’s stronghold of Pembroke. Not that he saw much of his uncle Jasper. The fortunes of the Tudor family were now inextricably involved with those of the Lancastrian cause and as the deadly power-game of York and Lancaster unfolded, the Earl of Pembroke was proving himself one of Henry VI’s most useful supporters.
    At first things went relatively well but early in 1461 came disaster, when the Lancastrians were heavily defeated at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross. One casualty of this reversal was Owen Tudor, quite an old man by now but who had nevertheless been present fighting under Jasper’s banner. Owen was among those captured by the Yorkists and taken to Hereford to be executed in the market place. It is ironical, but not untypical of his whole story, that it is not until the moment of his death that we get our only authentic personal glimpse of the man who sired a line of kings and whose remote descendants sit on the English throne today. It seems that the gentleman of Wales could not bring himself to believe that his luck had turned at last, for William Gregory’s chronicle says that he trusted ‘all away that he should not be headed till he saw the axe and the block, and when that he was in his doublet he trusted on pardon and grace till the collar of his red velvet doublet was ripped off. Then he said “that head shall lie on the stock that was wont to lie on Queen Katherine’s lap” and put his heart and mind wholly unto God and full meekly took his death.’ His head was displayed on the highest step of the market cross and there followed a gruesome incident when ‘a mad woman combed his hair and washed away the blood of his face, and she got candles and set about him burning more than a hundred’.
    Jasper, tough, energetic and resourceful, escaped from Mortimer’s Cross with his life - though that was about all he escaped with. Some six weeks later the Yorkist Earl of March was proclaimed King as Edward IV and another Lancastrian defeat, at Towton, soon confirmed his position. Henry vi’s indomitable Queen, Margaret of Anjou, managed to keep the fight alive for a time, but eventually she and her son were forced to take refuge in France. Henry himself, reduced to a wandering fugitive, was betrayed to his enemies and deposited in the Tower. The eclipse of the Lancastrians seemed complete.
    It was not long, of course, before the misfortunes of his relatives rebounded on the little boy at Pembroke. Jasper Tudor, wanted for treason by the new regime and stripped of his lands and title, was reported ‘flown and taken to the mountains’. With the best will in the world he no longer had any power to protect his nephew and his sister-in-law. Pembroke Castle surrendered to the Yorkists in November 1461, and Henry Tudor was separated from his mother and transferred to the