It wouldn’t have been unusual for Owen Tudor to have fought in the Battle of Agincourt as a teenager. Teenage boys fought alongside grown men. Henry V was just 16 when he fought at the Battle of Shrewsbury, where he received the arrow to the face that disfigured him, and lead to Dr John Bradmore to devise special tools in order to perform the groundbreaking surgery to remove the bodkin arrowhead that was just millimetres from piercing Henry’s brain.
I have never heard of Owen Tudor and the Welsh roots of the dynasty. How interesting. Shakespear’s Henry V has a Welsh character at Agincourt that provokes great laughter. The play is a masterpiece but it is nice to have context considering he had a Tudor Queen to respect.
Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke Castle in Wales which then belonged to Jasper Tudor, his uncle. I have read that Owen Tudor never met his grandson which seems unlikely as Henry was already five years old when Owen was executed. Henry was educated at Raglan near Abergavenny.When he was 14, his uncle Jasper feared that Edward iv would do away with him. Jasper and Henry hid out in Tenby until they managed to get a boat for Brittany where Henry was in exile for 14 years until Bosworth. Henry landed in Milford Haven with an army of Bretons, Frenchmen and Cornishmen. Since Henry iv had had trouble from Glendower, Wales had been under the Penal Code, which we would call apartheid now. Henry collected volunteers in Wales. His manifesto was that he would deliver Wales from its 'miserable servitude'. His sidekick, Rhys ap Thomas, is supposed to have finished Richard iii off with a battle axe.Alas, Henry's son, Henry viii, had a positively Freudian hatred for his father. He annexed Wales to England in 1536 and again in 1542, suppressing the language and culture. Yet Elizabeth i had a Welsh nursemaid, Blanche Parry who is supposed to have had conversations with her in Welsh when they didn't want the courtiers to understand. The Tudors had a complex love hate relationship with their original homeland, and Elizabeth would not have objected to Shakespeare taking the mickey out of Fluellen.
Read Alison Weir's "Wars of the Roses" years ago. Hard to follow all the warring factions and allegiances, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. A super interesting time in English dynastic history.
I've seen a plaque sunk in the pavement of Hereford city centre which commemorates 'Owen Tudor. Welsh husband of Queen Catherine, widow of Henry v, grandfather of Henry Tudor'. He had been beheaded near the spot.
If you want to do a segment on the WORST botched execution at the Tower, the victim was Lady Margaret Pole, ordered to die by Henry VIII. It took 11 swings of the ax. The second worst executioner was Jack Ketch. Do a segment on him as well. The worst executioner, though, is from the 20th century and too modern for your tastes. That was John C. Woods, the US hangman at Nuremberg, who couldn't be trusted to tie his own shoe laces. Ironically, he died of electrocution.
Tudor was a minor welsh knight ,with connections to past welsh insurgents,but had no status as a welshman ,due to the anti welsh laws,his marriage to Valois was illegal due to the laws regarding Dowager Queens so their rel was in secret ,he was later imprisoned after she dies for that offence ,Only thru an inept King was he recognised and not any of his sons had any English blood in their veins half French half welsh. His execution was well deserved esp after Richard of York was executed after the Battle of Wakefield.They had no right thru lineage to be anywere near the Crown,Henry Tudor thru his mother was a distant relative of the beauforts, so had no right to be a King thru blood relations,only thru an inept King ruling and a toxic civil war would he ne considered as a political and military leader this was a man who had never fought or ruled in any capacity So his accession was a fluke of politics and rem if the princes in the tower were alive Tudor would have to kill them to be King.
