The New Murrey and Blue blog

We all know by now that the usurper Henry Tudor, aka Henry VII, was born in Pembroke. The town even boasts a statue of him. Not that he ever did much for the Welsh. He was entirely self-seeking, and had his diminutive mother cracking the whip behind him. Well, we always imagine her being the power behind his stolen throne, and maybe she was, but she didn’t have an exactly wondrous early life, considering she was a very important heiress.

We’ve all seen her portraits, and heard how anxious she always was to protect young brides from too-early marriage consummation. It is the one thing about her that I really admire. She knew what she was talking about because she gave birth to Henry when she was still only thirteen and very small. The experience almost killed her and she never had another child, perhaps because her poor little body was so bad damaged.

This early birth paints a very dark picture of her 25-year-old husband, Edmund Tudor , who bedded her asap simply to be sure of getting his hands on her inheritance. I often wonder what she thought of him. It’s known that she specified in her will that she wanted to be buried alongside him (see  https://europeanroyalhistory.wordpress.com/tag/lady-margaret-beaufort/) Instead she was lain to rest in the extravagant Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey.

Maybe she’d been persuaded by her late son to lie forever at his side, not his father’s? Perhaps Henry himself didn’t think much of his father’s marital actions. Who knows? But the fact that she’d at first wanted to lie beside Edmund raises two points. Firstly, did she love him after all, more than her other husbands? In spite of being bedded by Edmund at the age of only twelve, had he actually been really kind about it? Had he persuaded her that she was loved and cherished?

He died before his child bride’s child was born, so we have no idea what sort of father Edmund would have been. We’d condemn him today, but when it came to child marriages attitudes were different back in the 15th century . Edmund would probably have been frowned upon even then, but not to the extent he would be now. The practicality of making sure he could control Margaret’s inheritance would have carried a lot of weight. Land, fortunes and influence were everything, so if the bride happened to be a little younger than convention was comfortable with, well, sometimes these things had to be done regardless….

Secondly, did Margaret want to be buried with Edmund simply to honour her usurper son’s father? Margaret adored and venerated her son. Everything she did, she did for Henry. Without Edmund Tudor, there wouldn’t have been a Weasel (Oh, yippee! How I wish!)

Well, the ins and outs of Margaret’s marriage (if you’ll excuse the phrase) are beside the point, because it isn’t the point of the Sunday Telegraph article (see https://tinyurl.com/44xae4bn) that has prompted me to write today. The article concerns how the excessive heat waves of 2026 have shrivelled the grass and ground at Pembroke Castle and revealed the footprints of long-gone buildings, including the manor house that is believed to be where the birth took place. The buildings had been known about before, but never seen in such detail. See the image at the top of this page.

There has been another important archaeological discovery at Pembroke Castle as well, as you can see here https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cddqpz02381o. A “huge” cavern under the castle, known as known as Wogan Cavern ….is believed to have been “….dug out by the Victorians and is accessed via a spiral staircase from the castle….” The cave measures 23 metres in length and 10 metres high and is “enormous”! And it has given up amazing evidence of “….‘extremely rare’ evidence of early humans and animals – including the bones of a hippopotamus which roamed Wales 120,000 years ago….”

So it’s all happening at Pembroke Castle, but I think the cave far outranks the birth of the usurper who inflicted the House of Tudor upon the realm.

The wrong man died at Bosworth. Bring back Richard III, a REAL king! A GREAT KING!

by viscountessw