Edmund Tudor 1ST EARL OF RICHMOND (1430-1456)

Individual Events and Attributes

Marriage

Individual Note

Edmund was the father of king Henry VII who won the crown of England at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. The partial Welsh ancestry of the Tudor monarchs was ultimately responsible for better relations between England and Wales.

Edmund's own father Owen Tudor, from the Isle of Anglesey in north Wales, had followed king Henry V and gained glory in the wars against the French. He became a courtier and after the death of Henry V became the lover of his widow Katherine of Valois, known as "Katherine the Fair". The couple had three sons and seem to have married in secret.

Before their marriage Katherine, a daughter of the queen of France, had asked about Owen's pedigree. He was asked to produce some relatives for inspection at Windsor Castle. Sir John Wynne writes: "Whereupon he brought into her presence John ap Meredith and Howell ap Llewellyn, his near cousins, men of the goodliest stature and personage, but wholly destitute of bringing-up and nurture; for when the Queen had spoken to them in divers languages, and they were not able to answer her, she said 'they were the goodliest dumb creatures she ever saw'; a proof that Katherine knew several languages, but had no skill in Welsh".