CHAPTER 26
So far, we have looked at what I now call the Welsh Renaissance through the eyes of two important families, both of whom were Yorkists. This, however, gives a rather distorted view, for during the Wars of the Roses, the majority of the Welsh were on the side of the Lancastrians. The reasons for this are manifold, but at the core they boil down to the simple fact that Wales then had its own cadet branch of the Royal family, the Tudors, and they were Lancastrians. How this came about and how Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, eventually took the throne of England, is one of the most extraordinary yet underexplored stories in the whole history of Britain. For in doing so, he not only brought the brutal Wars of the Roses to an end, but, perhaps unwittingly, laid the foundations for the English Reformation and the birth of a Protestant England. This, as I have written in my book London: A New Jerusalem , was the unnoticed legacy of the real Rosicrucians.
The full story of the Tudors begins many generations before Henry with the rise of Llewellyn the Great (1172–1240) as ‘Prince of Wales’. Among his supporters was a powerful warrior named Ednyfed Fychan (1170–1246). He came to Llewellyn’s notice after a battle fought against the forces of the Earl of Chester. Ednyfed personally defeated and killed three knights, cutting off their heads and bringing them back to Llewellyn. after this, Llewellyn ordered that his family’s arms be changed to reflect this victory; accordingly, Ednyfed’s shield became gules (red), a chevron of ermin, three helmeted heads argent, two above and one below.
Llywellyn also appointed Ednyfed as his Seneschal or chief Steward – effectively his right-hand man. In part, this was due to his proven prowess on the battlefield, but it was also a reflection of something else: the royal blood of his wife. Ednyfed’s own pedigree seems a bit vague, but he married twice, and his second wife was Gwenllian, the daughter of the Lord Rhys of Dyved. The latter was a grandson of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the King of Dyfed, who died at the time of the invasion of Glamorgan by Sir Robert Fitzhammon. Through Rhys ap Tudor, the Lord Rhys was able to trace his ancestry back to Hywel Dda (AD 880–950), King of Deheubarth (southwest Wales) and grandson of Rodri the Great. As we have seen, to mark the occasion of Howell’s son Owen getting married, he published 32 pedigree lists celebrating the family’s ancestry. Included in the lists, which can today be read in the Harley 3859 MS in the British Library, are Roman Emperors, Kings of Britain and numerous saints. Thus, because she was descended from Howell and Owen, Gwenllian, the wife of Ednyfed, was able to claim this blue blood as her own. This claim then extended to all their proven off spring.*
A sixth-generation descendant of theirs was another Owen – Owen Tudor (c.1400–61). Born the year that Richard II died, he was too young to take part in the Glendower rebellion. However, because older members of his family were closely involved in this insurrection, much of the Tudors’ land was confiscated by the Crown. Consequently, Owen’s father, Meredith Tudor, found it necessary to leave Wales and seek a new life in London. To help his son progress, the boy was put under the guardianship of a second cousin, Lord Rees. As a result of this connection, young Owen found himself enrolled as a pageboy at the court of Henry V and, in 1415, went with the English army to France. Still only 15 at the Battle of Agincourt, he seems to have acquitted himself well. As a result, he was promoted from page to squire and was given the right to bear his family’s arms in England (the three helmeted heads of Ednyfed Fychan).
What happened after that is not at all clear. In 1420, Henry V married Catherine de Valois, the daughter of the King of France, with the understanding that on her father’s death, Henry would succeed him. In the event, in 1422, Henry predeceased his father-in-law. Queen Catherine was left on her own with a baby boy, the young Henry VI. By this time, Squire Owen Tudor was around 22 years of age, handsome and available. How and when it happened we cannot say for sure, but the young widow of Henry V fell hopelessly in love with the Welsh squire and they became lovers. This was one of the greatest romances of the late Middle Ages, for although no documentation survives to prove it, they claimed they were married in secret in 1429. If it actually happened, this was in contravention of an Act of Parliament of 1428, which made it illegal for the widow of a king to marry without the permission of the king’s regents. This was done because the King himself, her son Henry VI, was only six years old at the time.
Between then and her death in 1437, Catherine and Owen had at least six children, including four boys. Two of these became monks, but the other two, Edmund Tudor (b.1430) and his younger brother Jasper (b.1431), were to be important figures in the Wars of the Roses. Both were, of course, half-brothers of Henry VI, who, far from disowning them gave Edmund the title of Earl of Richmond and Jasper the title of Earl of Pembroke, thereby silencing all dissent about their legitimacy. He also arranged for Edmund to marry Lady Margaret Beaufort. She was the daughter of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, and therefore, like Kings Henry IV, V and VI, was descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
It was natural that such an important heiress, with the royal blood of Edward III in her veins, should be married off to someone important. Her family, however, were barred from the Royal succession because they were from Gaunt’s second wife who was not married to him at the time his children by her were born. The assumption, therefore, was that the Tudors and Beauforts, as cadet branches of the Royal family, would buttress the main line of the Lancastrian Plantagenets, but have no personal claim to the throne. Needless to say, when the Wars of the Roses did break out, the Tudors supported Henry VI and remained loyal to the Lancastrian cause throughout.
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* See Chart 12: The Welsh descent of King Henry VII, page 235