The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [50]
Many later chroniclers claimed that Katherine had actually married Tudor in secret; indeed, it was not until the seventeenth century that the legitimacy of their union was questioned, and then on spurious grounds. What is likely is that the wedding had to be kept private because in marrying a man so far below her in rank the Queen had ‘followed more her own appetite than her open honour’, according to the Tudor chronicler Edward Hall. The earliest reference to the marriage appears in ‘Gregory’s Chronicle’ for 1438, where it is stated that the common people knew nothing of it. The Council and the King were almost certainly aware of the union but left the couple unmolested so as to avoid scandal attaching itself to the royal house.
The Tewdwrs, or Tudors, as they later became known, were a prosperous gentry family from Anglesey, north Wales. They had supported Glendower’s rebellion and had consequently been dispossessed of all their lands. A senior branch of the family eventually had the estate at Penmynydd restored to them and, taking the name Theodore, lived there in obscurity until the seventeenth century, ignored by their more famous relatives.
Owen Tudor saw service in France in the retinue of Sir Walter Hungerford, who later became steward of Henry VI’s household. It may have been through him that Tudor acquired the post of Keeper of the Wardrobe to Queen Katherine. Hall describes him as ‘a goodly gentleman and a beautiful person, garnished with many gifts of nature’, though ‘Gregory’ calls him ‘no man of birth, neither of livelihood’. He was never knighted, and his income was at most £40 per annum. He was naturalised in 1432 and treated thereafter as an English subject of Henry VI, but he did not adopt the anglicised version of his surname – Tudor – until 1459.
Many fanciful and unsubstantiated tales have attached themselves to the love affair between Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor. Most are romantic, some lurid, and nearly all are probably apocryphal, but what does emerge from them is that Katherine, who is said to have been stirred by carnal passion, took the initiative, ignoring all the warnings of her ladies that Tudor was no suitable match for her. It is impossible now to substantiate later tales that he fell into her lap while dancing, or she watched him swimming nude; the truth of their relationship is obscured by a veil of legend.
What is certain is that Katherine bore Tudor several children, and that those who survived infancy became staunch supporters of the House of Lancaster. The eldest child was Edmund, born around 1430 at Much Hadham Palace in Hertfordshire, a brick-built twelfth-century manor owned for eight hundred years by the bishops of London which still stands today. The second son was Jasper, born in approximately 1431 at the Bishop of Ely’s manor at Hatfield in Hertfordshire. In 1432, Katherine’s third pregnancy was near term when she visited the King at Westminster, but her labour began prematurely and she was obliged to seek the help of the monks of Westminster Abbey, where she was delivered of a son, Owen. The baby was taken from her at birth and reared by the brethren; Vergil says he became a Benedictine monk at the Abbey, where he seems to have been known as Edward Bridgewater. He died and was buried there in 1502. Vergil also mentions a daughter who became a nun, but no other source refers to her.
Throughout the 1420s the war with France had continued under Bedford’s direction. In 1423 the English were victorious at the Battle of Cravant, and again in 1424 at Verneuil. By the end of 1425 they were in control of Maine and Anjou.
In 1428, the Earl of Salisbury defied Bedford’s warning and took the offensive against the Dauphin’s forces, laying siege to the city of Orléans. Bedford was uneasy because he was aware that, despite government propaganda aimed at raising popular support for the war, fewer Englishmen than ever now