An Unknown Welshman Read online

  AN UNKNOWN WELSHMAN

  Jean Stubbs

  To the memory of my father JOSEPH HIGHAM (1889-1956) with my love

  An unknown Welshman, whose father I never knew, nor hym personally sawe!

  King Richard III speaking of the Earl of Richmond

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD

  PART ONE: THE STAR OF OWEN, 1457-71

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PART TWO: KINGS’ GAMES

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PART THREE: THE LONG YELLOW SUMMER

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  PART FOUR: WHITE ROSE AND RED

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FOREWORD

  Catherine of Valois, the young widow of King Henry V, fell in love with and secretly married her courtier, Owen Tudor of Anglesey, descendant of the Welsh King Cadwaladr. Of that union came four children, Edmund of Richmond, Jasper of Pembroke, Owen, and Margaret who lived but a brief time.

  After Catherine’s death, the English summoned Owen Tudor and imprisoned him. His only fault was to have won the heart of a queen of England.

  But King Henry VI, son of Queen Catherine’s first marriage, pardoned Owen Tudor and gave him money from his privy purse, watching over his children and saying that these were his half brothers. And he put them in the charge of discreet persons to be raised according to their rank.

  PART ONE: THE STAR OF OWEN

  1457-71

  Beware of Walys, Criste Jhesu must us kepe

  That it make not oure childeis childe to wepe

  The Libell of English Policye c. 1436

  CHAPTER ONE

  A fire has been kindled in the land from Cynan,

  a yellow-tipped flickering flame to Owen of the blood of the South.

  Under a cloak comes a leader,

  And he that we name is the second Harry…

  Secure for us is the star of Owen.

  The Patrick Ode, Dafydd Llwyd, fifteenth century

  They had built the walls of Pembroke Castle to a mighty thickness so that they could not be battered down; and set them on forty feet of sheer rock that could not be scaled. They had used the sea as their defender, to compass three sides of the fortress at high water and protect it with a marsh of slime and ooze at the ebb. On the fourth side they had dug a dry ditch and planted it with stakes. They had set three iron gates in the walls and flanked them with six projecting towers, in one of which ran a spring of fresh water. They had stretched two bridges, like frail arms, from the promontory to the land, where they could be watched. And this watching was built into the castle and the town, so that they were as one great eye from which nothing on sea or land was hidden for many miles. And within the embracing walls the gatehouse stood on a fair green sward between its drum-towers, and guarded the inner ward. And within this ward the cylindrical keep reared its seventy-five foot column of limestone, which even in the weakest part was seven feet thick and in other parts up to twenty feet thick, and had four storeys — and each storey full of eyes — and a domed roof of stone.

  So Arnolfe of Montgomery, second son of the first Earl of Shropshire and Arundell, had begun its building in the reign of William Rufus, when the Christian world was almost eleven hundred years old. Here had the valiant Strongbow ruled as Earl of Pembroke for over three decades, and others after him. Earls in name and deed, answerable to no man but themselves in their own territory, sprigs of royalty, mighty lords. And the castle stood through blasts of tempest and sudden lightning and storm, and the weathercock turns of fate and state: impregnable upon the rock’s back. Cold and grey and steadfast as the sea that broke upon the wild coast. Barbarous as the country that surrounded it. Wild and desolate as the gulls that cried and wheeled above its walls. Stood in the mailed grip of the Normans, in the flowering revival of Wales, through the dream of Llewelyn the Great and its shattering, through the rise of Owain Glyndwr and the destruction that followed it; and three and a half centuries old still stood in readiness, on the Eve of St Agnes. The twenty-eighth day of January, 1457.

  Wind whipped across the creek of Pennar, clawing and buffeting the battlements, sending icy shafts whistling through every aperture, and howling like a thousand warriors. It rattled the drawbridge chains, tore out the flames of torches, and brought the blood to the watchmen’s cheeks so that they muttered ‘Jesu have mercy on an honest soldier this winter night!’ and were not answered. While within the walls of a little room in the outer ward another siege of nature neared its conclusion, for good or ill, as Margaret Tudor, Countess of Richmond, laboured over her first child.

  Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, sat in his high carved chair on one side of the hearth, and the Welsh bard Robin Ddu sat on a stool on the other side. The one had ceased to sing and the other to listen, as the feast of St Agnes dragged on and they awaited the birth. The soldiers were as silent as they could be, and the servants as noiseless, but the logs in the brazier crackled and spat as the tempest reached long fingers down the chimney and harried the flames into curious shapes.

  ‘Strange portents, my lord,’ said Robin Ddu, seeing people struggle and form in the fire.

  He bent his thin dark face over the strings of his harp and sang softly to himself, trying out words. He was older by many years than the young earl opposite, and versed in misfortune. A true Welshman, he forgot and forgave nothing, neither an insult to himself nor an injury to his country. And having the gift of prophecy, a certain wild courage — though he was no fighting man — and the ability to reach the hearts of his audience, he was welcomed by the great lords in their halls from Anglesey to Pembroke. There he sang of old glories and the coming of the new Arthur foretold by Merlin. Gifted and tender, fanciful and proud, scholarly, bitter, and inclined to finger his hurts lest they be forgotten or overlooked.

  ‘Hard times, my lord,’ he said suddenly, as a log cascaded into the hearth and diverted his thoughts. ‘Hard times when a Welsh bard is served by his patron as I was served by Griffith ap Nicholas. For when I sang to him scarce a year ago, and prophesied that a scion of the house of Owen would wear the crown of England, he gave me a jewel from his cap. For your elder brother, Edmund Earl of Richmond, had taken a fair and goodly maid to wife. And I foresaw the time when the red dragon should triumph over the Saxons, and the red rose rule in splendour.

  ‘But your brother was captured three short months after, in the castle of Carmarthen, and he at war until then so that his wife’s arms offered him brief solace. Then spake the great Griffith from a proud stomach. “Why, Robin, dark Robin,” he quoth, “you are a flickering fellow and over-busy with your tongue! What is your prophecy worth now? For Owen Tudor has but three sons, and the third that bears his name embraces the Holy Church, Jasper of Pembroke is wedded to his sword and shield, and now Edmund of Richmond is taken.”

  ‘“Mercy, my lord,’ says I. “Perchance the Lady Margaret is yet with child.”

  ‘But he cast me into his dungeon, which, my lord, stinks worse than any sty and lodges more rats than straw — and the straw is damp!

  ‘“Christ keep me,” says I, for no man says other, and for a time
I languished.

  ‘And then, my lord, my patron came to me smiling and saying, “Why, good Robin, now is the Countess of Richmond indeed heavy with child, and she may yet bear a son that shall be scion of the house of Owen, and mayhap he shall one day rule upon the throne of England!” “God save you, my good lord,” quoth I, taking leave of the rats. “Get you to Pembroke!” says he. “And sing to the lady that she may give safe birth in right goodwill, upheld by the vision that has been vouchsafed you, Robin.” And so, my lord, I came. Only, one matter puzzles me,’ and he grinned up at the earl.

  ‘And what may that be, good Robin?’

  ‘If the lady bear a daughter must I be cast in prison for that offence also?’

  ‘Nay, Robin. For I am a soldier, and a plain man that knows nothing of prophecy. If the child be a son then I shall spend my life in his service, for love of that brother who is slain. And if it shall be a daughter then shall I find a husband for her. And if the child be not born alive — which God forbear,’ and they crossed themselves, ‘why then, Robin, you shall comfort us as best you can and sing of another that shall release Wales from her bondage.’

  A child herself, not yet fourteen years old, Lady Margaret Beaufort — now Countess of Richmond — had been wedded and widowed in a few short months. Hardly had she become accustomed to her married dignity before she entered the twin contests of bereavement and birth. Her women shook their heads privately over her narrow hips, held up their hands and looked meaningfully across the big bed, and whispered as they made a posset. Their efforts to assist the girl redoubled. They poured hot milk on ale, flavoured it with sugar, thickened it with eggs and grated biscuit, to tempt her and keep up her strength. They kept a fire raging up the throat of the chimney, and the tempest raged down to meet it. They rubbed her swollen belly with sweet oils, and as fast as she brought up the posset they persuaded her to another spoonful, to keep the bowels open and free the body of poisons. So what with their ministrations, and their prayers to a Christian God, and their incantations to older deities, the lady and the child had to tussle as best they could and hope for a good end.

  She had been born a Beaufort: great-grand-daughter of John of Gaunt and Lancaster and his paramour Katharine Swynford, whose line was legitimized by King Richard II: a representative of the senior line of her house. All these things she repeated feverishly to uphold her against the pain, and the midwife — seeing her uncertain between living and dying — wondered whether they should send for the chaplain.

  But the phantom of a king’s son stood in the shadows of the room to sustain her. She saw Gaunt’s long face beneath the helm and his long hands folded on the sword’s hilt, and remembered that the soothsayers had said that though he should never rule England his descendants would. She remembered the joy on the face of her brother-in-law, Jasper of Pembroke, when he heard she was with child. The bard had sung that evening of how the red dragon should swallow the white. So though she was only a girl she gathered strength from Gaunt’s obstinacy and would not die; bearing this child in whose veins ran the blood of King Edward III. Fire, wind and sword became as one. With a final shriek she gave birth to a son and lay still.

  Her ladies hastened to bathe and dry him, raising her in their arms as they made her easy, so that she should see him and take heart. His objections did not cease until they had swaddled him and wrapped him in a velvet robe, lined with fur against the cold, and laid him beside her. Tears of weakness and joy ran down her cheeks as she cradled him, but she recollected the courtesy that was due from her and asked if the Earl of Pembroke had been told of the birth.

  When they assured her that this had been done, and even now he was waiting on both mother and child, she bent over the baby and held him closer, whispering for his red crumpled ears alone. Then her ladies smiled and began to chatter quietly among themselves as they set the chamber right, and thanked God for a safe arrival. And they hung fresh sprigs of rosemary to ward off the evil spirits.

  ‘Be glad and rejoice!’ ran like flame through Pembroke. ‘A son is born to the house of Owen!’

  January, held in a fist of ice, became as summer. Oxen were roasted whole and the poor came forward to warm their bodies and claim their strip of flesh; while the children crawled surreptitiously round the legs of their elders, and soaked their bits of rough bread in the beasts’ drippings of fat and blood. Bonfires blazed into the bitter air, throwing up soft flakes of ash, melting the snow. And in the castle, Robin Ddu poured forth a paean of praise that transported his listeners into a golden age when Wales should be one nation. He sang of the God of battle, of a mighty host clad in armour without price, mounted upon princely steeds, of pennants and standards and ten thousand marching men. He sang of one who should lead them, of the mark of wisdom on his brow and the words of justice in his mouth, of the healing in his hands and the paths of truth where his feet trod. Until the men of Pembroke, from the earl the meanest servitor, felt themselves for a brief time to be members of a race with a noble destiny.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Let not the feminine pity of your wives destroy your children; pomp them not at home in furred coats, and their shirts to be warmed against their uprising, and suffer them not to lie in their beds till ten of the clock, and then a warm breakfast ere their hands be washed. Handle them not too dearly, lest folly fasten upon them, for oftentimes all that you leave they spend in an unthrifty manner.

  Dudley’s Tree of the Commonwealth

  Henry Tudor passed quickly through the stages of his infancy, hushed with lullabies, smothered in kisses and praises: his cries a summons of alarm, his laughter a cause for rejoicing. And the girl, his mother, played with him and cradled him in her arms as often as they would let her. For a noble widow should not be too concerned in her baby’s upbringing, but be looking about her for another husband. So the Lady Margaret bound her childish breasts with bands of linen, to curb the rise of milk, and watched her son’s mouth fasten on the big nipples of Joan Howell the wet-nurse.

  On the day of thanksgiving she was dressed richly and taken to church with her friends and company; and later sat doll-like at the feast in the great hall and heard the minstrels sing praises. Her natural high spirits had not yet recovered from the shock of birth. She ate little and was seen to smile only once, when a dwarf imported from France pretended to stumble at the sight of her beauty. Jasper, noting her involuntary pleasure at the compliment and the foolery, bestowed the dwarf on her as a gift. And he, hump-backed and ugly, made his obeisance with some devotion and then tripped up a servitor who was carrying out dirty plates. Had he been so unwise as to humiliate the butler, or to cause good wine or food to fall, a stripping and whipping would have rewarded him. But the churl was clumsy and the dwarf malicious, capering and whooping about him; and the company rocked with delight at the muddle of fallen pewter and gnawed bones. The Lady Margaret laughed out loud, showing small white teeth, and spoke to the dwarf prettily in his own tongue, so that he stood by her for the rest of the supper, and would let no one serve her but himself: his eyes, above the hideous hump, were unused to kindness.

  Henry Tudor was three years old when the Lady Margaret underlined a Lancastrian tie by marrying the younger son of the Duke of Buckingham: a descendant of Gaunt’s youngest brother, Thomas of Woodstock. She was seventeen and ripe for matrimony. And though the match had not been made for love — which could only be a peasant’s portion — the Lord Stafford was well-favoured and a gallant soldier, and the connection seemed good. Since Jasper’s claim on the boy was greater than hers she left Henry in his keeping. But she parted from her son with bitter tears, because this was the only love she had known: an orphan at one year old, a valuable ward in the hands of successive guardians, and an important piece in the game of politics.

  Henry wept as hard as she did. It was the end of his brief security, the beginning of what he was to know as his life — which he said, years later, became that of either a prisoner or a fugitive. It was the first change and the first partin
g, and none would be as poignant ever again.

  From the battlements of Pembroke Castle, held in the vice of Joan Howell’s arms, the child watched Lady Margaret ride away: very small and fine in her scarlet velvet mantle, lined and trimmed with grey squirrel fur.

  ‘Your lady mother has a thousand pearls embroidered on the collar and sleeves of her gown,’ Joan whispered for his comfort, ‘and jewelled rings on every finger, and silver gilt upon her girdle.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Henry Tudor asked, of the gentleman who rode at her side.

  ‘That is my lord Stafford, your lady mother’s husband. See how fine, in green and white and gold, and his hand doubled on his hip, and the other reining in his horse so that he does not ride too fast for the lady. What a goodly gentleman! And his sword so long and keen that no robbers dare come nigh.’

  The little company picked its way into the wild stretches of heather and moorland, and were lost to sight.

  The boy woke and cried and would not be comforted, and though the thick candle was lit by the side of his pallet he could not sleep, until at last Joan Howell sent a message to the earl who sat late over the fire in the great hall. Jasper stood by his nephew’s bed and called to the sorry lump beneath its fustian blankets.

  ‘Why, Harry, Harry! What? Weeping like a girl? Then must I take this wolfskin from you and give you velvet in its stead. For no warrior wets his cheeks with tears.’

  ‘I am — no — warrior, uncle.’

  ‘Not yet awhile, but shall be,’ said Jasper gently. ‘Come sit by the fire, lad, and I’ll tell you tales of war and dark Robin shall sing to us. And we shall bide like two soldiers together before the eve of battle.’

  The child’s face was smeared and swollen as he came from under the bedclothes, but he looked hopeful and rubbed his eyes with his fists.