The New Murrey and Blue blog

Tenby seems quite determined to brag that it provided a safe escape route for the 14-year-old future Henry VII in 1471, see https://shorturl.at/5VvpW. The story goes that after the Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury in that year, he was fleeing from Richard III! Not in 1471 he wasn’t! There was no Richard III at that time, and as I’ve written in a previous post “….as far as I know, Richard did not go hurtling off to Tenby [in pursuit of anything], even with his bucket and spade….”

But then, it’s always great to drag Richard’s name into everything because it bumps up interest. Never mind if it isn’t in the least true, as witness here: “….Jasper [Henry’s uncle] and Henry were smuggled into Tenby from Pembroke Castle after it was besieged by men loyal to King Richard III….” Eh? EH? Oh, for pity’s sake! The Siege of Pembroke (and Tenby) took place in May 1648, see (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Pembroke). As Richard was killed by traitors at Bosworth in 1485, he must have come back in spirit for the siege!

Mention of this secret escape route (beneath Boots the Chemist) has appeared before on this blog, at https://murreyandblue.co.uk/2021/02/15/tenby-house-with-a-dubious-tudor-record/ (with a much better photograph of the escape tunnel) and https://murreyandblue.co.uk/2018/10/04/henry-tudor-lurked-in-a-tenby-cellar/. Incidentally, the link in the latter article has now been blocked. To me at least, but the book is available at Amazon: https://shorturl.at/lV3GD.

To be fair, the article mentioned at the beginning of this post does use words like “myth” and “legend”, but nevertheless my comments remain. Pembrokeshire may be very proud of its connection to Henry Tudor, so good luck to it. But he didn’t do much for it when he was alive, and if it weren’t for always mentioning the magic name Richard III, he wouldn’t be doing much for the county now either.