Actebus hæc nituit: larga benigna fuit.
Regum sanguis erat: morum probitate vigebat,
Compatiens in opi: vivit in arce Poli.”
Also Matilda, daughter of Guy, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1368; Margaret de la Pole; Anne, widow of Lord Audley, and the murdered Duke of Gloucester, before the removal of his body to Westminster.
But the most illustrious residents of the House were the two Queens who died within its walls.
The first of them was Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry the Fifth, who married secretly Owen Tudor, and was the grandmother of Henry the Seventh. The marriage was not found out for some years. The Queen must have been most faithfully and loyally served, because children cannot be born without observation. Owen Tudor must have conducted matters with a discretion beyond all praise. No doubt the ordinary members of the household knew nothing, and suspected nothing, because several years passed before any suspicion was awakened. Three sons and one daughter, in all, were born. The eldest, Edmund of Hadham, was so called because he was born there; the second, Jasper, was of Hatfield; the third, Owen, of Westminster; the youngest, Margaret, died in infancy.
Suspicions were aroused about the time of the birth of Owen, which took place apparently before it was expected, and without all the precautions necessary, in the King’s House at Westminster. The infant was taken as soon as born to the monastery of St. Peter’s secretly. It is not likely that the Abbot received the child without full knowledge of his parents. He did take the child, however; and here little Owen remained, growing up in a monastery, and taking vows in due time. Here he lived and here he died, a Benedictine of Westminster.
It would seem as if Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, heard some whisper or rumour concerning this birth, or was told something about the true nature of the Queen’s illness, for he issued a very singular proclamation, warning the world, generally, against marrying Queen-dowagers, as if these ladies grew on every hedge. When, however, a year or so afterwards, the fourth child, Margaret, was born, Humphrey learned the whole truth: the degradation, as he thought it, of the Queen, who had stooped to such an alliance with a man of humble rank, and the audacity of the Welshman. He took steps promptly. He sent Katherine with some of her ladies to Bermondsey Abbey, there to remain in honourable confinement: he arrested Owen Tudor, also a priest—probably the priest who had performed the marriage—and his servant, and sent all three to Newgate.
All three succeeded in breaking prison and escaping. At this point the story gets mixed. The King himself, we are told, then a lad of fifteen, sent to Owen commanding his attendance before the Council. Why did they not arrest him again? Owen, however, refused to trust himself to the Council—was not Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, one of them? He asked for a safe-conduct. They promised him one by a verbal message. Where was he, then, that all these messages should be sent backwards and forwards? I think he must have been in Sanctuary. He refused a verbal message, and demanded a written safe-conduct. This was granted him, and he returned to London. But he mistrusted even the written promise; he would not face the Council; he took refuge in the Sanctuary of Westminster, where they were afraid to seize him. And here for a while he remained. It is said that they tried to draw him out by sending old friends, who invited him to the taverns outside the Abbey Precinct. But Owen would not be so drawn. He knew that Duke Humphrey would make an end of him if he could. He therefore remained where he was. I think that he must have had some secret understanding with the King; for one day, learning that Henry himself was with the Council, he suddenly presented himself and pleaded his own cause. The mild young King, tender on account of his mother, would not allow the case to be pursued, but bade him go free.
He departed, and made all haste to get out of such unwholesome air; he made for Wales. Here the hostility of Duke Humphrey pursued him still; he was once more arrested, taken to Wallingford, and placed in the Castle there a prisoner. From Wallingford he was transferred again to Newgate, he and his priest and his servant. Once more they all three broke prison, “foully” wounding a warder in the achievement of liberty, and got back to Wales, choosing for their residence the mountainous parts, into which the English garrisons never penetrated.