Edmund and Jasper – Beaufort Brothers?

by Beverley Fairfoull

Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and his brother Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, are generally acknowledged to have been the two eldest sons of the liaison between Queen Katherine de Valois, widow of King Henry V, and her servant, Owen Tudor. In view of the many romantic tales that abound concerning the love affair between Katherine and Owen, the fact that they chose the name Edmund for their first born son and Jasper for their second strikes an odd note and invites further investigation.

Katherine de Valois was 21 years old and the mother of an 8 month old son at the time of Henry V’s premature death in 1422. A princess of France and youngest daughter of the mentally frail King Charles VI and his formidable Queen Isabeau, she was a pawn in Henry V’s plans for his conquest of her country. Factions in the French court and the murder of the Duke of Burgundy had resulted in Katherine’s brother, the Dauphin Charles, being disinherited, leaving the way open for Henry to push forward with his ambition to bring all France under his rule. By 1420, the year of their marriage, he was well on the way to achieving this, having already conquered almost one-third of the realm.

In 1422, the tide of English fortunes suddenly turned. With the crown of France just within his grasp, Henry’s health failed and he died at Vincennes at the age of 35. Katherine remained with her son until 1427, when he was removed to a male environment in order to be educated in the skills he would need when he attained his majority. Katherine was allowed no further influence and, other than her required appearance at state occasions, she was effectively ignored. There is no evidence that she ever sought to assert her rights, but she appears to have been very determined that she should not remain alone, nor be pressured to retire gracefully to a convent.

Katherine, as a young royal widow with a proven ability to produce a son, would certainly have been viewed as a very desirable marriage partner. Remarriage of a widowed queen was not unknown, although the mother of a king was viewed far differently to a childless second wife. Adela of Louvain, widow of Henry I, went on to marry William d’Albini, Earl of Arundel.¹ However, when Isabella of Angouleme, fiery widow of John and mother of Henry III, wed Hugh X de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, without the consent of the king’s council, the council threatened to confiscate her lands.² She retaliated by keeping hold of her daughter Princess Joan, who had been promised to King Alexander of Scotland. This was enough to ensure the agreement of the council, not wanting trouble across the border. She then went on to produce eleven Lusignan children, who later set sail for England in order to extract titles, power and money from their half brother.

With the possibility of a similar scenario in mind, Henry VI’s council, among them Katherine’s brother in law Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, now Lord Protector, were certainly not interested in encouraging Katherine to look for another husband, who would inevitably wield considerable power and influence over the young king.

During the mid-1420s Katherine formed a close relationship with her husband’s cousin, Lord Edmund Beaufort, Count of Mortain, and later Earl and 2nd Duke of Somerset. Beaufort was five years younger than Katherine; handsome, charismatic and very ambitious. The Beauforts were descended from Edward III’s fourth son John of Gaunt and his mistress and later wife, Katherine Swynford, but were legitimised during the reign of Richard II. Although barred from the succession, the family had reached dizzy heights in status and power. Both Katherine and Beaufort were keen to push their agendas forward, and in 1426, Katherine petitioned parliament for their help to allow her to remarry.³ The king’s council was immediately alarmed. Beaufort was viewed with considerable suspicion, and the possibility of him controlling the young king caused panic amongst the council. Certainly Humphrey, already in conflict with Beaufort’s uncle, Cardinal Henry Beaufort, did not want another member of the family in a position of power. The elevation of an ambitious man with very formidable relatives was not considered in the government’s best interests. As husband to the queen and stepfather to the young king, he would have been the most powerful man in the land.

In 1428 parliament passed a law on the remarriage of dowager queens. No man would be allowed to marry the queen without the permission of the king; and the king would not reach his majority for several years. Any man who defied this ruling would forfeit his lands and titles to the crown. However, any children of the relationship would be acknowledged as members of the royal family.⁴

This was a serious setback for Beaufort. Naively, Katherine may have hoped that attitudes would soften in time, but this did not happen, and the young king was not old enough to be able to help his mother. The proclamation appears to have cooled Beaufort’s ardour. Sometime during the years 1429-1431 he began negotiations to marry Eleanor Beauchamp, widowed daughter of the powerful Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. By 1429, Katherine discovered she was expecting a child. Pregnant and with no hope of marriage with Beaufort, she would be disgraced for tarnishing the memory of Henry V.

In 1430, Katherine travelled to the Bishop of London’s residence in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, and there quietly gave birth to a son. The fact that she named him Edmund can only indicate that he was Beaufort’s son. Cardinal Beaufort is known to have visited her after Christmas in 1430, very probably to see the child. His support in her relationship with his nephew is clear and there is evidence that she retained links with the Beaufort family for the rest of her life.⁵

After the failure of Katherine’s marriage plans with Beaufort, Owen Tudor is said to have taken up a prominent position in her life. Owen was a man in her household with connections to her first husband. Here was a man who was Welsh, not English, with few rights, no power and no extensive lands to lose if he married her. Katherine seems to have conceived again very shortly after Edmund’s birth, as Jasper was born in the manor of Hatfield, home of the Bishop of Ely, in 1431. Several more children followed from 1432 until 1437, the year of her death.

Although it is said that council members were shocked when it was discovered that Katherine had produced further children, this is somewhat difficult to believe. After ridding themselves of the threat of Edmund Beaufort, they would have realised that Katherine was capable of being a thorn in their collective side. Owen Tudor may, in fact, have presented an acceptable solution to their problem and a way to neutralise the embarrassment of a queen giving birth out of wedlock. He was a good looking political nonentity, who would keep the queen happy and maintain an effective lid on her romantic inclinations. And Owen Tudor had been Henry V’s man.

Katherine bore at least three traditionally named children to Owen: Owen, Margaret (named for Owen’s mother) and Katherine. Unlike Edmund and Jasper, these children seem to have disappeared into obscurity and were either despatched to a life of insignificance in the church or died young.

Only Edmund and Jasper were awarded lands, titles and prominence; Edmund being created Earl of Richmond and Jasper, Earl of Pembroke in 1452, a title previously held by the Duke of Suffolk. This raises another question. Could there have been some doubt as to the identity of Jasper’s father too? Edmund and  Jasper were very close in age, and there is the possibility that the Queen, still in love with Beaufort, may have continued contact with him and conceived a second child.

It is clear that neither Edmund nor Jasper were named for Owen or any member of his family. In fact, the name Jasper is not Welsh. It has Persian origins, deriving from Kaspar or Gaspar, who was said to have been the youngest of the three kings who visited Christ at his birth. Jasper’s birth may therefore have taken place at Epiphany in January 1431, which would indicate a date of conception within a few months of Edmund’s birth. With Beaufort probably married by this time, and with the final realisation that she would never have a future with him, she chose a royal name for her youngest royal son, but unlike her other sons, Henry, Edmund and later Owen, all named for their fathers, this child had an enigmatic name with no links to anyone.

Looking at this more closely, it is likely that Katherine would have been aware of the shrine of the three kings in Cologne through her mother, Isabeau, who was the daughter of Stephen III, Duke of Bavaria, and Taddea Visconti of Milan. St Helen, or Helena, of Constantinople, mother of the Emperor Constantine, is reputed to have brought the remains of the three kings to Milan from the Holy Land. Helena herself was repudiated for political reasons by her lover Constantius, who left her and their son to marry a woman he considered more befitting his rising status. Helena never remarried and lived for many years in obscurity. The parallel between the two women is intriguing. Like Helena, Katherine was a foreigner, also abandoned by a lover who put his own ambition before love. By naming her son Jasper, Katherine may have been covertly alluding to the secret behind the tragedy of her own personal circumstances. It is also interesting to note that, through her father, Katherine was descended from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius III. Alexius himself revered Constantine, having coins struck with both their images.⁶ It is possible that Jasper himself was aware not only of this ancestral link, but also with his link with a saint, as he named his illegitimate daughter Helen.⁷

Owen Tudor, no doubt realising the great benefits to his relationship with the queen, would willingly  have accepted her two children, giving her the stability of a commitment she would now never get from Beaufort. He was given the status and rights of an Englishman in 1432, which recognised his relationship with the queen. Given her history with Beaufort, and her knowledge of the council’s decree, it is possible that she decided not to take the step of formalising the relationship, particularly if she knew that Jasper was also Beaufort’s child. She may have felt that marriage to Owen would affect the status of Edmund and Jasper in the years ahead, and that it would be in their better interests to deliberately keep the matter vague.

It is worth noting that the title Earl of Richmond was originally granted by Edward III to John of Gaunt, Beaufort’s ancestor, who held it until 1372. Gaunt later surrendered it in order to pursue is claim to the crown of Castile. From 1414 to 1435 this title was held by John, Duke of Bedford, brother of Henry V. The title was an important one and kept within the immediate royal family.

Edmund’s child-wife Margaret Beaufort was Henry VI’s heir before the birth of his son Edward. She was the greatest heiress in England. For Henry to have given a girl of such status in marriage to the son of a servant would have been unthinkable. In doing so, it would seem to indicate that Henry VI knew that Beaufort was Edmund’s father and thus of royal blood. Such a match would then have made sense, and would make Margaret and Edmund first cousins. Interestingly, no such glorious match was found for Jasper until his nephew Henry VII married him to Katherine Woodville. sister of Elizabeth in 1485, when he was well into middle age. Perhaps there was still uncertainty over the identity of his father and the reason Henry VI hesitated at arranging a high status marriage for him.

Katherine’s life ended at Bermondsey Abbey in January 1437. She was 36 and had been a young queen and widow of a hero who had hooked her glittering star to a servant then faded into a life of secrecy and obscurity. Her difficult childhood, emotional rejection by her husband and her lover’s eventual marriage to another woman may all have contributed to the twilight life she later lived – a life she struggled to control but ultimately blighted by the choices she tried to make for herself.

In her will, Katherine did not refer to Owen Tudor or their children. She nominated Henry VI as her executor and asked him to ensure ‘the tender and favourable fulfilling of my intent’ which was not specified, but which Henry must have been aware of.⁸

Katherine’s grandson, Henry VII, showed a shockingly callous disrespect for her remains. She was initially buried in the old Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, but Henry demolished it shortly after his accession to erect his new chapel. He uprooted her body and left it above ground in an open coffin where it remained for 200 years. Her body was eventually reburied in the Buckingham vault in 1778 and 100 years later removed to its present resting place under the altar in Henry V’s Chantry Chapel.

Owen Tudor was executed in 1461 and buried in the church of the Grey Friars in Hereford. Henry VII made no effort to reinter the remains of his alleged grandfather in a more fitting environment and they were destroyed by his son Henry VIII during the dissolution of the monasteries. If Owen was no blood relation to them, their indifference would clearly make sense.

Edmund’s remains did survive the dissolution but were reinterred well away from his kingly descendants. In 1536 they were transferred from the Grey Friars church in Carmarthen to St David’s Cathedral on the remote Pembrokeshire coast. Jasper, who died in 1495, chose to be buried in Keynsham Abbey, Somerset, bequeathed to him by Lady Agnes Cheyne. His resting place was another casualty of his great-nephew’s greed.

Beaufort became a major player in the Wars of the Roses, and enemy of the Duke of York. He was killed at the battle of St Albans in 1455. A robust father of a further ten children, even in older age, his charm continued to tantalise and his closeness to another queen, Margaret of Anjou, encouraged rumours that he had also fathered her son, Edward. Clearly, memories of his conduct with an earlier queen were still fresh to many.

Although a lot of my theory may be seen as supposition, I believe the key to the parentage of Katherine’s children is simply to be found in their names. She outmanoeuvred the council, but at great cost to her personal happiness and dignity of her status. Her son, Henry VI ensured that by creating Edmund and Jasper earls in 1452, the final part of the law passed by parliament and her own wishes were fulfilled. Any children of such a relationship would be treated as members of the royal family, which appears to have been the case. It is my conclusion, therefore, that both Edmund and Jasper were in fact fathered by Edmund Beaufort.

References

1. Weir, A, Britain’s Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy, p 48.

2. Weir, p 68.

3. Norton, E, Margaret Beaufort, p 38.

4. Hilton, L, Queen’s Consort, p 330.

5. Norton, p 38.

6. God’s Regents on Earth: A Thousand Years of Byzantine Imperial Seals, Dumbarton Oaks.

7. Weir, p 132.

8. Weir, A, Lancaster and York: The Wars of the Roses, p 87.

This article first appeared in The Ricardian Bulletin, June 2014.