Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond

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Edmund's coat of arms
Tomb of Edmund Tudor in St. David's Cathedral

Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond (* around 1430, † November 1, 1456 in Carmarthen ) was the father of King Henry VII of England .

Tudor was born at Much Hadham Palace in Hertfordshire to Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois , widow of King Henry V of England . Since it cannot be precisely proven whether his parents married before he was born, it is controversial whether he was a legitimate child. His mother retired to Bermondsey Convent in 1436 and died the following year. Edmund and his brother Jasper were given to Catherine de la Pole, the abbess of Barking Abbey , in whose care they remained until 1440. Then they were at the court of their half-brother King Henry VI. behaved. Edmund was made Knight of the Bath on December 15, 1449 . His half-brother gave him numerous goods, appointed him to the Privy Council and raised him to the Earl of Richmond on November 23, 1452 . In February 1453, Margaret Beauchamp , the widow of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, brought her ten-year-old daughter Margaret Beaufort to the royal court. The king made Edmund and his brother Jasper guardian of Margaret and eventually advocated Edmund's marriage to Margaret, which took place on November 1, 1455. The bride was twelve at the time and became pregnant the following year.

At the beginning of the Wars of the Roses , Edmund went to South Wales to consolidate the position of the House of Lancaster . With the previous royal deputy in South Wales, Gruffudd ap Nicolas , he got into a dispute about his competencies. In August 1456 he became Constable of Carmarthen Castle , the most important royal castle in South West Wales. Thereupon William Herbert and Walter Devereux , two leading supporters of the House of York , marched with an army of 2,000 men from Herefordshire to Carmarthen, captured the castle and took Edmund prisoner. Edmund died on November 1, 1456, a year after his marriage, as a prisoner of the plague in Carmarthen . His wife had fled to her brother-in-law Jasper in Pembroke , where their son Heinrich Tudor, who later became King Henry VII, was born on January 28, 1457.

Edmund was buried in the Franciscan Church of Carmarthen. After the church was destroyed during the Reformation in 1536, his body was transferred to St David's Cathedral .

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 1, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 132.
predecessor Office successor
New title created Earl of Richmond
1452-1456
Henry Tudor