![]() He assumed his title after his grandfather’s death in 1460 (his father had already died) and became a ward of the King. Buckingham was only about four years older than Katherine and both were well-below the canonical age of consent. (Usually I refer to people by their Christian names, but because of all the Henrys, I’ll use his title). A lofty marriage was arranged for her within months of her sister’s marriage to Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. Only a child when this all went down, Katherine was raised in her sister’s household amidst considerable luxury. Three years later, Katherine’s elder sister, Elizabeth, married Edward IV, to the great surprise of Western Europe, not to mention the King’s court and government. When Edward IV ascended the throne 1461, her parents, Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford, switched sides to the pledge allegiance to the House of York. Born in 1458, she was considerably younger than her future husband (25+ years). ![]() Most importantly, though, she was as Yorkist as Jasper was Lancastrian. Katherine’s trajectory was understandably a bit different. ![]() Eventually Henry made it to France where the government of Louis XI’s son, Charles VIII, helped finance his 1485 invasion, toppling Richard III and establishing the House of Tudor. There they essentially lived as honored hostages while Francis dangled them as bait before Edward IV and then Richard III, though he never gave them up to the English. Headed for France (Jasper was first cousins with Louis XI thanks to his mother), the two ended up in Brittany at the court of Francis II. When Edward IV took back the throne in the spring of 1471, executing Henry VI and his son, Prince Edward, Jasper spirited Henry Tudor out of the country. Reunited with Margaret and Henry Tudor, he was there for the legendary meeting of the two Henrys, though it’s unknown what exactly went down. He was a constant nuisance to Edward IV on the Welsh border and was pivotal to the Lancastrian resurrection of 1470-1471. Throughout the 1460s, once Henry VI was deposed, Jasper worked tirelessly to topple the Yorkist regime and reinstate his half-brother. Jasper quickly took his sister-in-law and nephew under his wing, arranging a speedy remarriage for Margaret with a son of the Duke of Buckingham. Jasper, now the Earl of Pembroke, served for a few years as a mediator between Henry and his rival, the Duke of York, before finally casting his lot in whole-heartedly as a member of the House of Lancaster.Įdmund, meanwhile, married the royal-adjacent heiress Lady Margaret Beaufort and quickly died, but not before fathering a son, Henry. Unfortunately for both young men, England was veering right into civil war and it wasn’t a particularly fun time to be at the epicenter of political power. In the early 1450s he brought them to court, invested them in the peerage and relied on them as trusted members of his council. ![]() In the early 1440s, Henry brought his brothers out from the religious house and funded a secular education. He and Edmund spent the next few years at Barking Abbey under the protection of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk (later duke) via his sister, who was Abbess. Katherine died in early 1437 when Jasper was still a child. Jasper is generally presumed to be the second son of that marriage, born about a year after his elder brother, Edmund. The two shared a mother, Katherine of Valois, though Henry was a result of her first marriage of Henry V and Jasper was the product of her secret second marriage to Owen Tudor, a Welshman far below her station. And yet! They existed.įor the uninitiated, Jasper Tudor was a younger half-brother of Henry VI. They literally make zero sense to the point that I honestly sometimes forget about them. Of all the rather memorable personalities and (borderline) incestuous pairings during the Wars of the Roses, the one that I find the strangest is without a doubt Jasper Tudor and Katherine Woodville. ![]()
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