Henry VIII. | Page 5

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. (p.
006) 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.
[Footnote 22: Archæologia Cambrensis, 1st ser., iv., 267; 3rd ser., xv.,
278, 379.]
The Beauforts were descended from Edward III., but a bar sinister
marred their royal pedigree. John of Gaunt had three sons by Catherine
Swynford before she became his wife. That marriage would, by canon
law, have made legitimate the children, but the barons had, on a famous
occasion, refused to assimilate in this respect the laws of England to the
canons of the Church; and it required a special Act of Parliament to
confer on the Beauforts the status of legitimacy. When Henry IV.

confirmed this Act, he introduced a clause specifically barring their
contingent claim to the English throne. This limitation could not legally
abate the force of a statute; but it sufficed to cast a doubt upon the
Beaufort title, and has been considered a sufficient explanation of
Henry VII.'s reluctance to base his claim upon hereditary right.
However that may be, the Beauforts played no little part in the English
history of the fifteenth century; their influence was potent for peace or
war in the councils of their royal half-brother, Henry IV., and of the
later sovereigns of the House of Lancaster. One was Cardinal-Bishop of
Winchester, another was Duke of Exeter, and a third was Earl of
Somerset. Two of the sons of the Earl became Dukes of Somerset; the
younger fell at St. Albans, the (p. 007) earliest victim of the Wars of
the Roses, which proved so fatal to his House; and the male line of the
Beauforts failed in the third generation. The sole heir to their claims
was the daughter of the first Duke of Somerset, Margaret, now widow
of Edmund Tudor; for, after a year of wedded life, Edmund had died in
November, 1456. Two months later his widow gave birth to a boy, the
future Henry VII.; and, incredible as the fact may seem, the youthful
mother was not quite fourteen years old. When fifteen more years had
passed, the murder of Henry VI. and his son left Margaret Beaufort and
Henry Tudor in undisputed possession of the Lancastrian title. A barren
honour it seemed. Edward IV. was firmly seated on the English throne.
His right to it, by every test, was immeasurably superior to the Tudor
claim, and Henry showed no inclination and possessed not the means to
dispute it. The usurpation by Richard III., and the crimes which
polluted his reign, put a different aspect on the situation, and set men
seeking for an alternative to the blood-stained tyrant. The battle of
Bosworth followed, and the last of the Plantagenets gave way to the
first of the Tudors.
For the first time, since the Norman Conquest, a king of decisively
British blood sat on the English throne. His lineage was, indeed,
English in only a minor degree; but England might seem to have lost