Note (back) — Chapter I

It is a singular circumstance that the king who raised the personal power of English monarchy to a height to which it had never before attained, should have come of humble race and belonged to an upstart dynasty. For three centuries and a half before the battle of Bosworth one family had occupied the English throne. Even the usurpers, Henry of Bolingbroke and Richard of York, were directly descended in unbroken male line from Henry II., and from 1154 to 1485 all the sovereigns of England were Plantagenets. But who were the Tudors? They were a Welsh family of modest means and doubtful antecedents.[22] They claimed, it is true, descent from Cadwallader, and their pedigree was as long and quite as veracious as most Welsh genealogies; but Henry VII.'s great-grandfather was steward or butler to the Bishop of Bangor. His son, Owen Tudor, came as a young man to seek his fortune at the Court of Henry V., and obtained a clerkship of the wardrobe to Henry's Queen, Catherine of France. So skilfully did he use or abuse this position of trust, that he won the heart of his mistress; and within a few years of Henry's death his widowed Queen and her clerk of the wardrobe were secretly, and possibly without legal sanction, living together as man and wife. The discovery of their relations resulted in Catherine's retirement to Bermondsey Abbey, and Owen's to Newgate prison. The Queen died in the following year, but Owen survived many romantic adventures. Twice he escaped from prison, twice he was recaptured. Once he took sanctuary in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, and various attempts to entrap him were made by enticing him to revels in a neighbouring tavern. Finally, on the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, he espoused the Lancastrian cause, and was beheaded by order of Edward IV. after the battle of Mortimer's Cross. Two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were born of this singular match between Queen and clerk of her wardrobe. Both enjoyed the favour of their royal half-brother, Henry VI. Edmund, the elder, was first knighted and then created Earl of Richmond. In the Parliament of 1453, he was formally declared legitimate; he was enriched by the grant of broad estates and enrolled among the members of Henry's council. But the climax of his fortunes was reached when, in 1455, he married the Lady Margaret Beaufort. Owen Tudor had taken the first step which led to his family's greatness; Edmund took the second. The blood-royal of France flowed in his veins, the blood-royal of England was to flow in his children's; and the union between Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort gave Henry VII. such claim as he had by descent to the English throne.