by Linda Porter
He was the grandson of Shakespeare’s ‘Fair Kate’, Catherine de Valois, the wife of Henry V. This gave him royal French blood. On his father’s side, however, the antecedents were much less illustrious, for Catherine, left a widow after her husband’s early death in 1421, had, by the start of the next decade, married again. Her second marriage, to Owen Tudor, a Welshman in her household, was kept secret until she died in 1437. By that time, she had borne Owen four children and inadvertently complicated the politics of England during the long minority of Henry VI. The regency government for the young king was uneasy about the existence of half-brothers, especially ones linked to the French royal family at a time when England was in the process of losing its extensive empire in France. The two eldest sons of the unlikely alliance of a French queen and a Welsh squire, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, were removed from their father and brought up together at Barking Abbey in Essex. They did, though, find favour with King Henry VI, who seems to have been fond of his half-brothers, and as he began to make his own decisions, their fortunes rose. In 1452, shortly before England’s descent into the beginnings of the Wars of the Roses, Edmund was made earl of Richmond and Jasper earl of Pembroke. The lands and prestige that went with these titles meant that the Tudors became persons of significance. Just one year later their position was further enhanced when they were granted joint wardship of the heiress of another great landed family with a doubtful past – Margaret Beaufort, the ten-year-old daughter of the late John, duke of Somerset, who had died in disgrace after a costly and disastrous expedition to France. But it was her surname, rather than her father’s failure, that made Margaret important. Aside from her wealth, her desirability lay in the fact that she was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt and had a potential claim to the throne of England herself. Not that this claim was without impediment, since the Beauforts were the offspring of John of Gaunt’s initially adulterous liaison with Katherine Swynford. Though eventually regularized, the relationship cast a long shadow over fifteenth-century England, since this ‘bastard’ branch of John of Gaunt’s line was not considered to have a rightful claim to the throne and Henry IV had expressly excluded his half-kindred from the succession.
Henry VI, a king not otherwise noted for his decisiveness, took a keen interest in the fortunes of his little cousin. Just a year after her birth he gave her wardship and marriage to his chief minister, the duke of Suffolk. This was probably intended to bolster Suffolk’s wealth and status but as the duke’s political fortunes took a dramatic turn for the worse in 1450, he saw an opportunity to salvage the prospects of his heir, seven-year-old John de la Pole, by marrying the boy to Margaret Beaufort, who was then six. Such marriages seem to us now to be both ludicrous and shocking, but they were common at the time and viewed as sensible business arrangements that could be, and indeed often were, revoked at a later date. This is exactly what happened to the first marriage of Lady Margaret. Summoned to court with her mother on Valentine’s Day 1453, Margaret now faced the considerable ordeal of making public her decision, since the law required she must do so in front of witnesses, including a bishop. There was no lovers’ romance for her.
The initiative for this public dissolution of her marriage contract with Suffolk’s son was not, however, Margaret’s. At nine years old, she was directed by others. The king was bringing pressure on her to choose his half-brother, Edmund Tudor, over John de la Pole. She later remembered that Henry ‘did make means for Edmund, his brother, then the earl of Richmond’. Uncertain what to do, but no doubt mindful of the king’s own preferences, Margaret agonized over her decision. It was then suggested that she pray overnight to St Nicholas, who would guide her choice. By the morning her mind was made up. She would put aside the boy she scarcely knew for a much older man who was also a stranger. Thus she had made her own choice (or so she thought) and also pleased the king. But there were much greater political and dynastic considerations involved, for Henry, though married for some years, had no children and was faced with growing discontent among his fractious nobility. It is possible that, without an heir himself, Henry intended to nominate his brother Edmund in Margaret Beaufort’s right.
He did not, however, do so and in fact his wife, Margaret of Anjou, was already pregnant, though at too early a stage for it to have been known at the time Margaret Beaufort and her mother came to court. The visit made a great impression on the child, who was enchanted by the magnificence of the spectacle, the opulent jewels and dresses of the queen and her ladies, and the warmth of the welcome from the king, whom she seems to have genuinely revered and liked. He also brought home to her the importance of her position and instilled in her a sense of who she was. There was no resentment of the role he had played in severing her from her child-husband. Perhaps she remembered him afterwards with fondness because of his attention to her and the contrast with the dark times that followed for England. Only a few months later, Henry suffered a severe mental collapse and the country slid towards civil war.
Despite her proximity to the throne and the attractions of her wealth, Margaret grew up in a happy environment, among the children of her mother’s first marriage, the St John family, to whom she would remain close. But her childhood ended prematurely when Edmund Tudor married her as soon as she was twelve years old, in May 1455. This was the legal age of marriage for females and Edmund clearly saw no reason for delay, though another year was to elapse before Margaret conceived. This may have had more to do with the point at which his very young bride reached puberty than any early abstention on Edmund’s part from marital relations. He was clearly keen to make his wife pregnant as soon as possible, so that he could secure a permanent interest in her estates through their offspring. It was not uncommon for girls of noble birth to be married at a very young age and to go to live with their frequently much older husbands (Edmund, then in his mid-twenties, was actually a younger spouse than was often the case in such marriages) but it was very unusual for such wives to bear children before their mid-teens.
Margaret had moved with Edmund Tudor to south Wales a few months after their wedding, where he was essentially acting as the king’s lieutenant. It was a traditionally restless area, resistant to rule from London even before the outbreak of more widespread strife in Henry VI’s realm in the 1450s. Local grievances and the fact that the Tudor brothers had briefly flirted with the Yorkists before reverting to full support of their half-brother made Edmund a target for the disaffected. Margaret was not with him at Carmarthen Castle in the summer of 1456 when he was attacked by two thousand troops under the leadership of the duke of York’s men, Sir William Herbert and Sir Walter Devereux, and captured. Briefly imprisoned in the castle, Edmund was released but fell ill, probably with the plague, and never recovered. By the beginning of November he was dead, leaving Margaret, who was six months pregnant, a widow at the age of thirteen. His insensitivity and callousness in impregnating her at such a tender age have often been criticized but we know nothing of their relationship. It is unlikely that affection played much part in it and Edmund clearly felt that the risks to his wife’s health, and that of any child she might bear, made it worthwhile ignoring convention. He obviously had not calculated on dying himself.
This may seem like a sort of rough justice but it left Margaret in danger. With winter setting in and the political situation in Wales so uncertain, she could not return to her mother in England. Her own safety and that of her unborn child were at stake. She needed to be somewhere secure and as free as possible from the threat of disease. It was now that Jasper Tudor, her brother-in-law, a man who would play a vital role in her future, came to the rescue. Margaret took refuge with him in Pembroke Castle and it was there, on 28 January 1457, that her child was born. He was named Henry, presumably as a sign of his Lancastrian birthright. His mother was still four months short of her fourteenth birthday.
It had been an extremely difficult birth which imperilled the lives of both mother and child. Margaret was small for her age and should never have co
nceived so early. The price she paid was that she was subsequently unable to have children. Yet the bond with the son born when she was scarcely more than a child herself was strong and unshakeable. She was committed to supporting him from the moment of his birth. Margaret Beaufort would grow into a clever and ambitious woman, able to manipulate, to adapt and, above all, to bide her time. Henry VI had made her conscious of who she was. It was an awareness that she was determined to inculcate in her son, no matter what vicissitudes might befall them both.
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IF SHE HAD been unlucky in her husband, Margaret Beaufort was fortunate in his brother. Jasper Tudor, by now completely committed to the Lancastrian cause, took an active interest in the well-being of Edmund’s widow and her child. Later, he would share exile, hardship and uncertainty with his nephew, acting as mentor at a crucial stage in Henry Tudor’s life. The ties that bound them were strong. But his immediate concern, once it was clear that Margaret had survived her ordeal, was to help her find a new husband. Single himself, he could offer her neither the domestic peace nor personal security that could be hoped for in a new marriage. And they both knew that Pembroke Castle, despite Jasper’s attempts to increase its comforts, was still more of a fortress than a home. It was not an appropriate place for Margaret and her baby to remain permanently. By March 1457, Margaret was with Jasper in eastern Wales, at a manor belonging to the duke of Buckingham, one of the few nobles in the realm who could rival the duke of York in power. There, apparently with her full support, a marriage was arranged with Buckingham’s second son, Henry Stafford. The precise timing of this, the third marriage in Margaret’s young life, is not known, but it was probably at the beginning of 1458.
Relieved that she was now able to influence her affairs with some dignity, Margaret approached her life with Henry Stafford with renewed confidence. Theirs appears to have been a happy relationship, made easier by a financial settlement from Stafford’s father when he died in 1460 and by Margaret’s sizeable income from her own estates. The couple were wealthy enough to live in considerable style, though there is little information on their whereabouts in the years immediately after their marriage, or whether the infant Henry Tudor always stayed with them. Given the concern of both his mother and new stepfather to protect his interests, it is probable that Margaret did not want him too far distant, though his day-to-day routine would have been the responsibility of his nursery staff. The stability of Henry’s early childhood was not, however, to last long. By the time he was four years old, he had been removed from his mother’s care.
The year 1461 saw the fortunes and allegiances of Henry’s uncle and stepfather diverge, in ways that had a direct impact on the child himself. Both Jasper Tudor and Henry Stafford had maintained their support for Henry VI but they had picked the losing side. In February 1461, Jasper and his father, Owen Tudor, widower of Catherine of Valois, confronted a Yorkist force at Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire. They were vanquished and Owen summarily executed. Jasper, his hatred of the Yorkists even stronger now, escaped back into south Wales, where he vowed to avenge his father ‘with the might of Our Lord and the assistance of … our kinsmen and friends, within short time’.2 The threat, though heartfelt, could not be realized. Yorkist power was firmly established within months. Jasper, skilled in the arts of disguise and evading capture, fled into exile, first in Scotland and then in France. So began his long life as a fugitive in the courts of France (where he was well received as a blood relative by Louis XI) and Brittany, constantly striving for the restoration of the House of Lancaster, for the recovery of his own lands in Wales and, as time went by, the rights of his nephew, Henry Tudor. Jasper’s misfortune, his life as a ‘diplomatic beggar’, as it has been called, would not, ultimately, be in vain.3 He could not have foreseen, in 1461, that all the Lancastrian hopes might one day rest on Margaret Beaufort’s son.
Less than two months after his grandfather’s death, young Henry’s stepfather fought for the cause of King Henry VI at the battle of Towton, in Yorkshire. But unlike many who were massacred as they fled one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on English soil, Stafford survived. The victory at Towton was decisive for the Yorkists, bringing Edward IV to the throne and precipitating the flight of the Lancastrian royal family to Scotland. This might well have been enough in itself to cause the Staffords to rethink their allegiances, but events much closer to home gave them no alternative. In September 1461, Pembroke Castle fell to a Yorkist force led by Sir William Herbert, an old adversary of the Tudors and a diehard supporter of the new king. It is often said that Margaret, her son and second husband were in the castle when it capitulated but there does not seem to be any firm proof of their whereabouts. Whether personally humiliated or not, they were bound to acknowledge that Herbert was now the representative of royal authority in south Wales. Keen to protect their estates, the Staffords accepted that they could not oppose the new regime. A year later, Herbert, newly ennobled, acquired the wardship and marriage of Margaret’s son. It cost him £1,000, the equivalent of half a million pounds today, an indication of Herbert’s wealth and also of Henry Tudor’s perceived worth. Henry was removed from his mother and taken to live at Raglan Castle. He saw her occasionally during the years that followed, though it would be more than two decades before they spent much time in each other’s company again. He was a child with prospects but in 1461, with his uncle in exile and his mother treading cautiously in her reappraisal of the family fortunes, the most she and her husband felt they could do for him was to become loyal subjects of Edward IV and watch and wait.
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AT RAGLAN, Henry was brought up in what was probably the greatest fortress-palace of its day. Defended by a moat and its formidable ‘Yellow Tower’, the stronghold also boasted a luxurious palace, built in the latest French style with superb masonry work and a double courtyard. Even a child parted from his mother at such a tender age must have come to appreciate its grandeur. Henry seems also to have been grateful for the care and attention shown him by Herbert’s wife, Anne Devereux, the daughter of another prominent Welsh family. There were two other boys, both slightly older than him, in the family circle: Herbert’s heir (also called William) and Henry Percy, who became earl of Northumberland in 1470. Percy was, like Henry Tudor, Herbert’s ward. In addition, there were the daughters of the Herbert family, one of whom, Maud, was intended by Herbert as Henry’s bride. So it was not an isolated childhood and though Henry’s lands had been reassigned by Edward IV, he was still styled, even by his guardian, as the earl of Richmond. Little is known of his education except what was written years later by Bernard André, the Frenchman appointed by Henry as his official historian. There were two priests who acted as tutors: Edward Haseley and Andrew Scot. Haseley became dean of Warwick and was later given an annuity by Henry for his services; Scot was an Oxford man. Henry appears to have been an apt pupil and his attainments must have pleased his mother when she learned about them on her rare visits or, more frequently, by messages that passed between her household and that of the Herberts.
The education of fifteenth-century aristocrats encompassed more than scholarly learning (overemphasis on the schoolroom was viewed with disapproval) and Henry also learned the vital physical skills of a gentleman of his class: archery, swordsmanship, riding and hunting. By the time he was twelve, such attributes were well enough developed for Lord Herbert to introduce his ward to the reality of political strife in England. It was to be an unforgettable baptism. Henry Tudor had spent eight years in a Yorkist household and, whatever the allegiances of his kindred, was being raised as a loyal subject of Edward IV. But by the end of the 1460s, Edward was losing his grip on England. His marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had insulted the French king, whose sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy, was spurned as a bride when the marriage negotiations were well-advanced. The Woodville match also divided Edward’s supporters at home. Meanwhile, the Lancastrians were recovering their strength and Jasper Tudor, their main hope if they could gain back Wales,
was raiding in the north of that country. His success was only temporary but the connection between uncle and nephew was not lost on Henry Tudor’s guardian. In 1469, Herbert took the boy with him on campaign, perhaps thinking to ensure his loyalty to Edward IV as well as continue his practical training for warfare. If so, it was a disastrous miscalculation. At the battle of Edgecote, near Banbury, troops loyal to the turncoat earl of Warwick defeated Lord Herbert, who had quarrelled with his fellow commander, the earl of Devon, the night before and as a result had been deprived of his archers. As the day turned against Herbert and Welsh losses began to mount, Henry Tudor was led from the field by Sir Richard Corbet. He never saw his guardian again. Herbert was executed on the orders of Warwick and Henry was taken to Herbert’s brother-in-law, Lord Ferrers, at Weobley in Herefordshire. He was joined by Herbert’s widow, who assumed responsibility for his safety during the uncertain summer months of 1469. He remained with her for a year but his time in the Herberts’ care was effectively over.
