Owen Tudor saw service in France in the retinue of Sir Walter Hungerford, who later became steward of Henry VI’s household. It may have been through him that Tudor acquired the post of Keeper of the Wardrobe to Queen Katherine. Hall describes him as ‘a goodly gentleman and a beautiful person, garnished with many gifts of nature’, though ‘Gregory’ calls him ‘no man of birth, neither of livelihood’. He was never knighted, and his income was at most £40 per annum. He was naturalised in 1432 and treated thereafter as an
English subject of Henry VI, but he did not adopt the anglicised version of his surname – Tudor – until 1459.
Many fanciful and unsubstantiated tales have attached themselves to the love affair between Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor. Most are romantic, some lurid, and nearly all are probably apocryphal, but what does emerge from them is that Katherine, who is said to have been stirred by carnal passion, took the initiative, ignoring all the warnings of her ladies that Tudor was no suitable match for her. It is impossible now to substantiate later tales that he fell into her lap while dancing, or she watched him swimming nude; the truth of their relationship is obscured by a veil of legend.
What is certain is that Katherine bore Tudor several children, and that those who survived infancy became staunch supporters of the House of Lancaster. The eldest child was Edmund, born around 1430 at Much Hadham Palace in Hertfordshire, a brick-built twelfth-century manor owned for eight hundred years by the bishops of London which still stands today. The second son was Jasper, born in approximately 1431 at the Bishop of Ely’s manor at Hatfield in Hertfordshire. In 1432, Katherine’s third pregnancy was near term when she visited the King at Westminster, but her labour began prematurely and she was obliged to seek the help of the monks of Westminster Abbey, where she was delivered of a son, Owen. The baby was taken from her at birth and reared by the brethren; Vergil says he became a Benedictine monk at the Abbey, where he seems to have been known as Edward Bridgewater. He died and was buried there in 1502. Vergil also mentions a daughter who became a nun, but no other source refers to her.
Throughout the 1420s the war with France had continued under Bedford’s direction. In 1423 the English were victorious at the Battle of Cravant, and again in 1424 at Verneuil. By the end of 1425 they were in control of Maine and Anjou.
In 1428, the Earl of Salisbury defied Bedford’s warning and took the offensive against the Dauphin’s forces, laying siege to the city of Orléans. Bedford was uneasy because he was aware that, despite government propaganda aimed at raising popular support for the war, fewer Englishmen than ever now wanted to fight against the French, and Parliament was refusing financial support for the war because resources were scarce.
Hitherto, the Dauphin had controlled that part of France which was south of the Loire and outside the English-owned duchy of Aquitaine. By 1428 his fortunes were at a very low ebb and his people were demoralised. At this moment there appeared at his court
a peasant girl, Joan of Arc, who claimed to have heard angelic voices instructing her to free France from English rule. At length, the Dauphin was persuaded to allow her to lead the defence of Orléans. What followed was a resounding victory for the French, which marked a turning point in their fortunes while, conversely, the English could date the decline of their hold on France from the appearance of Joan of Arc. Their defeat at Orléans in 1429 was the first major setback they had suffered since the death of Henry V. Worse was to follow.
After another victory at Patay in 1429, Joan led the Dauphin to Rheims. There, in the cathedral which had seen the hallowing of his royal ancestors, he was anointed and crowned King Charles VII on 18 June in her presence. Even now perhaps the English could have retrieved the situation. They did not, for the simple reason that their war effort was hampered by bitter squabbling between the nobles on the Council.
In England, too, there was a coronation, on 5 November, when Henry VI was crowned in Westminster Abbey. It was a long ordeal for a child not yet eight, but Henry bore it well and with gravity, for all that the crown was too heavy for him to wear with comfort. Few celebrations marked the event; in London, the conduits did not run with free wine, as was customary, because the Council was worried that the King might see drunken people in the streets. Instead, wine was distributed by the cup to each person. Despite this, there were such huge crowds lining the streets that several people were suffocated. Some pick-pockets ended the day in prison, and there was even alternative entertainment at Smithfield, where a heretic was burned at the stake.
The ritual of coronation should have marked Henry’s assumption of personal rule, but clearly he was still too young to exercise sovereign power. The Council would continue to exercise it for him for several more years, under the authority of Gloucester and Beaufort, who were still at each other’s throats. The coronation seems to have turned young Henry’s head, for soon afterwards Warwick was complaining to the Council that he was growing far too aware of his royal estate, ‘the which cause him to grudge with chastising’. The Council had Henry before them and warned him that, king or not, he had to obey his governor. But Warwick was not always the stern disciplinarian, and he seems to have had a deep affection for his charge. In 1430 he had made a little harness trimmed with gold for the King’s horse, and procured for him some toy swords, ‘for to learn the King to play in his tender age’.
In 1430, much to the gratification of the English, Joan of Arc was
captured by the Duke of Burgundy, who sold her to his ally, Bedford. In May 1431, after being convicted of witchcraft, she was handed over by the Church to the secular authorities and burned at the stake at Rouen in the presence of Cardinal Beaufort. However, her death did not herald a revival of English fortunes in France.
Henry VI was in Rouen at the time of Joan’s trial, but he was not present at her execution. Soon afterwards he went with the Cardinal to Paris. Bedford was desperate to retrieve the situation in France before it was too late, and had decided that Henry should be crowned King of France in Paris to counter the effect of Charles VII’s coronation the year before. Accordingly, Henry’s took place at the cathedral of Notre Dame on 16 December 1431.
The French did not want an English king. Fired by a new and vibrant spirit of nationalism, they were determined to oust the invaders and have Charles VII as their ruler. Even as Henry was being crowned in Paris, crowds were rioting in the streets and some of the nobility were hastening to Charles’s aid. The coronation was one of Bedford’s few failures, and he knew it. Judging the mood of the French people to be dangerous, he sent Henry home to England almost immediately, thus ending the King’s first and only visit overseas.
After a joyful welcome back home, Henry settled down to his studies again. He was progressing well, having read many chronicles of English history and become particularly interested in Alfred the Great, whom he was later to try, unsuccessfully, to have canonised. In 1432, at eleven, Henry was still headstrong, and so rebellious at times that his hard-pressed governor again complained to the Council of the boy’s wilfulness. The lords assured him of their support. It seems that Henry greatly resented his royal person being beaten for misdemeanours, and was fond of threatening Warwick with dire retribution when he came of age. The Council, however, made it plain to the King that Warwick’s disciplinary measures were enforced with its full approval. It also empowered the Earl to dismiss any of the King’s companions who distracted him from his studies and exerted a subversive influence over him.
Richard, Duke of York, came of age in 1432, when he was twenty-one. Two years earlier he had been given the important office of Constable of England, which carried responsibility for England’s military defences, and in 1431 had attended Henry VI, in France. Now, on 12 May, York was recognised as Earl of March, Ulster and Cambridge by hereditary right, notwithstanding the attainder against his father. However, he was only allowed to take possession of his estates after agreeing to pay the King, within five years, the
sum of £1646.0s.6d (£1646.02½p) for the privilege of doing so. In 1433 he was made a Knight of the Garter.
Despite his vast wealth and his nearness in blood to the throne – and probably because of it – York was not given a place on the King’s Council nor involved in the government of the kingdom. There were those about the King who feared he might make a bid for the throne if he were allowed too much power, and it was decided to employ him in a strictly military capacity.
York was now the owner of great tracts of land in Wales, Ireland and thirteen English counties. The greatest concentration of his estates was along the northern Welsh Marches. From his uncle, March, he had inherited the fabulous wealth of the Mortimers, making him the richest magnate and greatest landowner in England. He also owned the great castles at Ludlow and Fotheringhay, and Baynard’s Castle in London. In 1436, his income was at least £3231, possibly twice as much, and by 1443–4 his income from his Welsh Marcher lordships alone had risen to £3430 net. Despite his loyalty to the King, this wealth, and his powerful family connections, made him potentially a force to be reckoned with.
The year 1433 saw the emergence of two disastrous trends in Lancastrian history. The first was the decline of Burgundy’s friendliness towards England. After Anne of Burgundy, Bedford’s wife, died in childbirth in 1432, Bedford married Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the beautiful daughter of the Count of St Pol. Burgundy was against the marriage for various political reasons, and from then on relations between England and her greatest ally began to cool.
By now, it was obvious that England no longer had the resources to support the war. Bedford was ill, and his chief desire was to negotiate an honourable peace with the French before England was ignominiously defeated. Predictably, Gloucester blocked every attempt he made to persuade the Council that this was the best course of action, knowing that if the war ended Bedford would return to England and oust him from power. By 1434 Burgundy was already negotiating his own peace with Charles VII, and before the year was out had written to Henry VI formally breaking their alliance. The young King cried when he saw that Burgundy had not addressed him as King of France, and when the news of the Duke’s disaffection broke in London there were riots, and Flemish aliens, subjects of Burgundy, were lynched. It was clear, however, that without Burgundy’s support the English cause in France was lost.
Cardinal Beaufort and many others on the Council agreed with Bedford that peace with France was the only solution, but Gloucester
was adamant: Henry V’s policies must be carried out until their final objective was achieved. Deadlock had been reached.
The second trend was illustrated by the emergence of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, as the dominant influence over the royal household. Suffolk was appointed its steward in 1433, thanks to his avuncular friendship with the young King. But he was a greedy, ambitious, self-seeking man, and saw his appointment as the ideal opportunity to feather his own nest.
The de la Poles were descended from a Hull merchant who had gained royal favour after lending money to Edward III. Suffolk’s grandfather, Michael de la Pole, had been a favourite of Richard II, who had conferred upon him the earldom of Suffolk. His son, the 2nd Earl, had supported Bolingbroke in 1399 and been rewarded with substantial lands in East Anglia. He died at Harfleur in 1415, and his son, the 3rd Earl, fell at Agincourt.
William de la Pole was uncle of the 3rd Earl. For seventeen years he had served the House of Lancaster loyally in France, where he had cultivated a friendship with the Earl of Salisbury. Salisbury was a supporter of Cardinal Beaufort, and in 1430, after Salisbury’s death, Suffolk married his widow, Alice Chaucer, granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey, and aligned himself with the Beaufort faction. By 1434 he was an enthusiastic advocate of peace with France.
He was a man of pleasant appearance and manner, and a competent soldier imbued with high chivalric ideals. Like many magnates, he frequently placed his own interests before those of the realm, although he did sincerely believe in the necessity for peace, the only policy he ever consistently supported. His enthusiasm for any other policies depended upon how popular they were among his supporters and the public, for he would do nothing to jeopardise his own position.
Suffolk was not well-endowed with lands, which was why he was so anxious to acquire wealth, and he now began to exert considerable influence over the King. The boy was completely won over by his charm, and responded by enriching Suffolk with a steady stream of grants of lands and lucrative appointments.
Thanks to Warwick’s thorough training, Henry now had a precocious interest in politics, much to the Council’s dismay. The lords were not prepared to have a twelve-year-old boy interfering in government, even if he were the King. Moreover, it was becoming apparent that he was easily led, and the Council, perceiving this, warned him in 1434 to avoid becoming entangled in court intrigues and swayed by persons who were trying to influence him. Occasionally he attended meetings of the Council, and on one
occasion acted as mediator between Gloucester and Beaufort. Like everyone else he was weary of the enmity between his uncles, and once he imperiously commanded them to stop quarrelling over the limits of each other’s authority.
By the autumn of 1435 it was obvious that the French had rejected the Treaty of Troyes, and there were further heated debates on policy in England, Gloucester wanting to sustain the treaty by intimidation, while Beaufort, more realistic, was insisting on peace. The European powers held a peace conference at Arras in northern France, and the English sent an embassy. However, their ambassadors made unreasonable demands and proved obdurate when it came to surrendering Henry VI’s claim to the French throne. Walking out in high dudgeon, they left Burgundy free to negotiate a peace treaty with France, and undermined the credibility of the peace party in England, leaving Gloucester temporarily in control.