Henry Vii (Was: Psychologists analyze Richard)

Yahoo won't let me reply to Claire's post, so I'm trying again in a new message.

Claire wrote:

"He [Henry Tudor] was ripped away from his mother and sent abroad when he was two or three years old. And I remember reading (don't ask me where) that like Richard he had a girl he'd known when they were children and whom he was in love with, but she was a commoner so marrying her didn't suit France's plans for him.

Carol responds:

I'm no authority on Henry Tudor, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that it was Jasper Tudor who fled abroad in 1461. He would have no need to take the unimportant Henry with him since the Lancastrian king Henry VI and his son Edward were very much alive. Edward did later give Henry Tudor as a ward to the Welsh Yorkist William Herbert (who had taken an English name), who replaced Jasper Tudor as Earl of Pembroke. That was in 1468, so Henry would have been eleven. Herbert planned to marry Henry to his own daughter (who can't be the Maude Herbert that he later tried to marry since William's daughter Maud married Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, ca. 1473-76). William Herbert was illegally executed by Warwick and Clarence in July 1469, when Henry would have been twelve and a half. Where Henry went after that I don't know (maybe he briefly went back to his mother or maybe was sent to Eton?), but when Jasper Tudor returned from exile in 1470, he briefly took Henry to court with him. Only when Edward regained the throne in 1471 did Henry, aged fourteen, flee to Britanny as an exile. It seems to me that his hardships pale in comparison with Richard's at the same age. What's sad is that if Warwick hadn't murdered William Herbert, Tudor might have grown up Yorkist with no more thought than any other Beaufort, his mother aside, of claiming the throne.

Carol

From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2013 2:42 PM
Subject: Henry Vii (Was: Psychologists analyze
Richard)


> I'm no authority on Henry Tudor, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I
believe that it was Jasper Tudor who fled abroad in 1461.

Accto Kendall, Henry was taken from his mother when he was... age not given,
but it sounds like about 18 months, so even younger than I had remembered.
He was sent to Wales which was and is a separate country with separate
climate, culture and landscape. Somebody correct me if *I'm* wrong but I
think Wales was still a tribal society at that point (much of Scotland
certainly was) and certainly at that point almost the whole of the
population would have spoken Welsh and most would have spoken *only* Welsh.
Presumably Henry would have been insulated from the culture shock by having
some servants from home with him, but it would still have been a major
disturbance for such a young child.

After the execution of his grandfather Owen Tudor and the flight of his
uncle Japser, which happened when Henry was three or four, "For several
months young Henry Tudor was a fugitive, hiding in the bit of Welsh
territory still held by the Lancastrians. When Lord Herbert captured
Pemborke castle, in September of 1461, he found Henry within it." I don't
know what the capture of Pembroke castle involved - anybody? - but it can't
have been a soothing experience for a four-year-old to have his uncle run
off and leave him behind or to know his grandfather's head had just been
chopped off, any more than it was nice for seven-year-old Richard to know
the same thing of his father, and he was probably terrified of being
captured by the Yorkists. As it happened it turned out well for Henry
because the Herberts took him in and treated him well, but it still can't
have done his nerves much good.