When the King came of age, Owen Tudor was allowed to return, and was presented with a pension of £40 a year. It is remarkable, however, that he received no promotion or rank; that he was never knighted; and that the title of Esquire was the only one by which he was known. It certainly seems as if the claim of Owen Tudor to be called a gentleman was not recognised by the King or the heralds. Perhaps Welsh gentility was as little understood by these Normans as Irish royalty—yet, so far as length of pedigree goes, both Welsh and Irish were very superior to Normans.
The two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were placed under the charge of Katherine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, and sister of the Earl of Suffolk. When the King came of age, he remembered his half-brothers; Edmund was made Earl of Richmond, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke; both ranked before all other English Earls. Edmund was afterwards married to Margaret Beaufort, who, as Countess of Richmond, was the foundress of Christ’s and St. John’s Colleges, Cambridge. Her son, as everybody knows, was Henry the Seventh.
As for Owen Tudor, that gallant adventurer, who began so well on the field of battle, ended as well, fighting, as he should, for his stepson and King, under the badge of the Red Rose. When the Civil Wars began, he joined the King’s forces, though he was then nearer seventy than sixty. He fought at Wakefield; he pursued the Yorkists to Mortimer’s Cross, where another fight took place. The Lancastrians were defeated. Owen was taken prisoner, and was cruelly beheaded on the field. It was right and just that he should so fight and should so die. He survived his Queen twenty-four years.
Katherine lived no more than a year after her imprisonment. She made a will shortly before her death, in which there is not one word about her second husband or her children by Owen Tudor. She says in the preamble: “I trustfully,” addressing her son the King, “and am quite sure, that among all creatures earthly ye best may and will best tender and favour my will, in ordaining for my soul and body, in seeing that my debts be paid and my servants guerdoned, and in tender and favourable fulfilment of mine intent.”
The second Queen, who died at Bermondsey Abbey, was Elizabeth Woodville. Her imprisonment in the Abbey was regarded with great surprise. It was in the year 1486, when the insurrection broke out in Ireland in favour of the pretended Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence: a council was held, after which, without any cause assigned, or the bringing of any charge, the widowed Queen was carried to Bermondsey, where she remained for the rest of her life. The reason commonly accepted was that she knew Edward Plantagenet, and so could prompt and instruct the Pretender in his personation of the prince. Bacon says, “That which is most probable out of the precedent and subsequent acts is that it was the Queen Dowager from whom this action had had the principal source and motive; certain it is she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing chamber had the fortunate conspiracy of the King against Richard the Third been hatched, which the King knew and remembered but too well; and she was at the time extremely discontent with the King, thinking her daughter, as the King handled the matter, not advanced but depressed.”
BERMONDSEY ABBEY
It is not easy to find much sympathy with this unfortunate woman, yet there are few scenes in history more full of pathos and mournfulness than that in which her boy Richard was torn from her arms; and she knew—all knew—even the Archbishops, when they gave their consent, knew—that the boy was to be done to death. When one talks of Queens and their misfortunes, it may be remembered that few Queens have suffered more than Elizabeth Woodville. In misfortune she sits apart from other Queens, her only companions being Mary Queen of Scots and Marie Antoinette. Her record is full of woe. But in that long war it seems impossible to find one single character, man or woman—unless it is King Henry—who is true and loyal. All—all are perjured, treacherous, cruel, self-seeking. All are as proud as Lucifer. Murder is the friend and companion of the noblest lord, perjury walks on the other side of him, treachery stalks behind him, all are his henchmen. Elizabeth met perjury and treachery with intrigue and plot and counter-plot; she was the daughter of her time. She was accused of being privy to the plots of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck; she was more Yorkist than her husband; she hated the Red Rose long after the Red and the White were united in her daughter and Henry the Seventh. That she was suspected of these intrigues shows the character she bore. We must make allowance; she was always in a false position; Edward ought not to have married her; she was hated by her own party; she was compelled, in the interests of her children, to be always on the defensive; and in her conduct of defence she was the daughter of her age. These things, however, deprive her, somewhat, of the pity which we ought to feel for so many misfortunes.
She, too, had to retire to the seclusion of Bermondsey, where she could sit and watch the ships go up and down, and so feel that the world, with which she had no more concern, still continued. It has been suggested that she retired voluntarily to the Abbey. Such a retreat was not in the character of Elizabeth Woodville, so long as there was a daughter or a kinsman left to fight for. Like Katherine of Valois, she made an end not without dignity. Witness the following clauses in her will:—