9/22/2023 0 Comments Margaret jasper tudorHis Earldom of Pembroke was given in 1468 to William, Lord Herbert, who had, however, to fight for his new honours until Jasper was forced to leave the country. After the Yorkist victories in 1461, when Edward IV assumed the Crown, Jasper had to 'take to the mountains', out lawed and attainted, while his father's head was exposed on the Market Cross at Hereford. Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, whom she loved, she said, as a brother by birth, was a valiant and restless fighter, heart and soul in the Lancastrian cause he went dashing about the country, now raising forces in Wales for the Queen's army, then appearing in Scotland at one time in France, and back again to England, 'not alwaies at his hartes ease, nor in securitie of life, or suretie of living'. Many of her own connexions were killed the Duke of Buckingham and his eldest son, her step-father Lord Welles, and her three young Beaufort cousins all fought on King Henry's side and all lost their lives before the wars 'of the Roses' were over. ![]() The chief anxiety of her life in those dangerous years must have been to protect her son, while heads were falling on every side. He was a third cousin of her own, and probably an old acquaintance, for the duke had been a great friend and 'sworn brother' to her father. She never forgot to pray for her first husband, and all through her life she signed her name 'Margaret Richmond' - but however faithful her memory, it was then practically impossible for a rich young woman to remain a widow, and some time before her eighteenth birthday in 1459 she married Lord Henry Stafford, younger son of the first Duke of Buckingham. The war shut down like a fog over the lives of peaceable people, and there is no consecutive record of her doings in the years that followed. Albans in 1455, when Edmund, Duke of Somerset, the most powerful of all her relatives, was killed. ![]() A girl of not quite sixteen, she had the responsibility of bringing up a delicate child, and one who had many possible enemies, in a country ravaged by pestilence and distracted by civil war, which had begun definitely with the first battle of St. Had she not possessed a strong character and most steadfast faith, she might have found the difficulty of her position overwhelming. Many years later she wrote him a letter on his birthday, in which she alluded to 'thys day of Seynt Annes (Agnes) that y dyd bryng ynto thys world my good and gracyous prynce, kynge and only beloved son' and prayed that he might receive 'as herty blessyngs as y can axe of God '. His brother Jasper at once took the young widow under his chivalrous protection she stayed for some time at his Castle of Pembroke, which as Leland described it, 'standith hard by the Waul on a hard Rokke and is veri larg and strong' - and there her son was born in the following January, on the 28th of the month. ![]() In the summer of 1456, Edmund, with all the ardour of his race, was 'greatly at war' with a fellow country man in Wales, but in the autumn, in the full strength of his manhood, he was struck down by the plague, and in November 'on the morrow of All Souls' he died, at the age of 25. It must have been a tremendous adventure to the primly brought-up little girl, to ride away with her gallant young bridegroom through the wild Welsh country to her new and unknown home, but her happiness - if such it was - ended soon in sorrow. Margaret was still almost a child-certainly no more than fourteen-when she was married to the hero of her very youthful dreams, and became Countess of Richmond in 1454 or 1455. ![]() In January 1553 he created Edmund, Earl of Richmond, and Jasper, Earl of Pembroke. Henry VI seems to have been very fond of the two energetic young Welshmen he had them well educated in their boyhood and when they grew up he knighted them and kept them with him at Court. S OON after the tragic death of the Duke of Suffolk, the King appointed his own half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, to be joint guardians of the little Lady Margaret.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |