Owen Tudor
gigatos | February 19, 2022
Summary
Owain ap Mredydd (c. 1385 – February 2, 1461) was a Welsh military man and courtier.
Descendant of the Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffydd (The Lord Rhys), Owen Tudor is remembered above all as an ascendant of the royal branch of the Tudors and for his relationship and probable secret marriage with Catherine of Valois, widow of King Henry V of England. He is in fact the grandfather of Henry VII of England, the first Tudor sovereign, and his ancestry can probably be traced back to Anglesey where the Tudors of Penmynydd resided, whose patriarch could be traced in Ednyfed Fychan (1170 ca.-1246) Siniscalco for the Kingdom of Gwynedd. One of Owen”s aunts became the mother of Owain Glyndŵr, the last Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales. His father and uncles played prominent roles both at his court and during the Glyndŵr Revolts.
Owen Tudor was born in Anglesey around 1392 to Maredudd ap Tudur (died 1406) and Margaret ferch Dafydd. Historians are fairly unanimous in tracing Owen”s ancestry back to the military man and Siniscalco for the Kingdom of Gwynedd Ednyfed Fychan who had taken in wife one of Rhys ap Gruffydd”s daughters allowing him and his family to gain access to leadership positions in Gwynedd and to attempt, along with them, to make Wales a united kingdom. Even after Edward I”s Conquest of Wales, the ruling family of Gwynedd continued to rule, albeit in the name of the English king. However, this did not prevent them from feeling a sense of belonging to the Welsh people, and their loyalty to their heritage led them to participate in the Glyndŵr Revolts. Of the early years of Owen”s life in fact nothing is known probably because of the family”s participation in the rebellions, from time to time it was said that he was the bastard son of a brewery owner, that his father was a murderer who had gone into hiding, that Owen had fought at the Battle of Azincourt, that he was a member of the household of Catherine of Valois as her cloakroom attendant, that he was a knight in the service of her husband Henry V of England, that their relationship had begun when he had ended up in the queen”s lap while they were dancing, or even that the beginning was due to the fact that Catherine had seen him while swimming. The Welsh historian of the sixteenth century Elis Gruffydd wrote that Owen was in the service of Catherine, what is certain is that after the suppression of the revolt many Welsh sought and obtained a safe place at court and, in May 1421, such Owen Meredith joined the retinue of Walter Hungerford, I Baron Hungerford one of the leaders of the court of Henry in office from 1415 until 1421.
Henry V died on August 31, 1422 leaving Catherine a widow, at the beginning she lived with her son Henry VI of England before going to live at Wallingford Castle. A few years later, in 1427, it was rumored that Catherine had started an affair with a cousin of her husband, Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, which was far from certain, but it was enough for them to feel the need to regulate the second marriage of the queen. Some historians believe that the relationship was not only true, but that Edmund Tudor was born from it and that, in order not to break the laws enacted at that time, Catherine had then quickly married Owen.Owen and Catherine had six officially recognized children:
To these must be added at least one illegitimate child that Owen had by an unknown woman:
At the death of Catherine, in 1437, Owen found himself without her protection and was imprisoned at Newgate Prison, escaped the following year was captured and put under the custody of the Constable of Windsor Castle. In 1439 Henry VI pardoned him giving him back all his properties and goods, he also gave him an annual pension of 40£ and he gave him a position at court as custodian of the King”s Park near Denbigh. In 1442 Henry welcomed his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor to court and ten years later they were created Earl of Richmond and Earl of Pembroke respectively, which made public Henry”s recognition of his own half-brothers. In 1459 Owen”s pension was increased to £100 and he and his younger son were commissioned to arrest a sympathiser of the House of York, John Dwnn of Kidwelly and a year later Owen expressed an interest in property confiscated from another Yorkist John, Lord Clinton. On the 5th of February 1460 he and Owen were appointed, for life, in the Lordship of Denbigh, then prerogative of the Duke of York, a sign that in the future it could have been theirs. Owen found his death during the War of the Two Roses, obviously sided with the House of Lancaster, Owen and Jasper participated in February 1461 in the Battle of Mortimer”s Cross where they were soundly defeated by the men of Edward of York. Two days after the battle he was executed and buried in a church in Hereford, it was February 4, 1461.
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