(From National Portrait Gallery)
Soon after Queen Katherine’s decease, Henry VI brought his Tudor brethren into the royal circle. When the eldest, Edmund of Hadham, grew to manhood, he created him Earl of Richmond (November 23, 1452), with precedence of all other earls. This stalwart nobleman married the dwarfish Princess Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Beaufort, great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his last wife Catherine Swynford, and daughter and heiress of the last Duke of Somerset of the first creation. He was one of the pillars of the Lancastrian party, lending great help at the temporary restoration of Henry VI; afterwards, under Edward IV, he was compelled, with other Lancastrians, to seek safety in Brittany. He died shortly after his return to England, within a year of his marriage, leaving a son, who succeeded to his father’s title of Earl of Richmond, and eventually became King Henry VII. Edmund’s next brother, Jasper of Hatfield, so called from the place of his birth, was raised at the same time to the rank of Earl of Pembroke. He was with his father at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross; but escaped, and later, at the accession of Henry VII, he was created Duke of Bedford in the place of George Nevill, elder brother of the famous “Kingmaker,” whose titles and lands were confirmed in his favour. He died young in 1456 and was buried in St. David’s Cathedral. He never married, but left an illegitimate daughter, who became the wife of William Gardiner, a citizen of London. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was reputed to be their son. Owen, third son of Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, embraced the religious life and lived a monk, at Westminster, into the first half of the sixteenth century. Their only daughter—who was blessed with the curious name of Tacina, and whose existence is ignored by most historians—married Lord Grey de Wilton, an ancestor of the ill-fated subjects of this book.
It is worthy of note that whereas most of the Tudor Princes were very tall, several of them, thanks to a well-known law of atavism, reverted to the tiny type of their ancestress, Margaret Plantagenet. Mary I was a small woman, and the three sisters Grey were not much above the height of average-sized dwarfs.
CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK
[CHAPTER I]
CLOTH OF FRIEZE