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Browse all Genealogy Gold Podcast EpisodesBorn in November of 1431, Jasper Tudor was the son of a queen and played one of the most intriguing behind-the-scenes roles in the Wars of the Roses… one that eventually led to the 30-plus year Yorkist dynasty’s defeat at Bosworth Field. But before he became a political mastermind, manipulator, and spy on behalf of his nephew, Henry Tudor, he was a secret child of an illicit and scandalous love affair that would eventually change the entire monarchy of England and bring about the beginning of the Tudor dynasty of English monarchs.
Jasper Tudor’s Royal Family Connections
Jasper’s story really begins before his birth, during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. King Henry V was on the throne, with his young French queen, Katherine of Valois, by his side. They had one son together, also named Henry. Henry V was considered England’s last great warrior king, and plenty of future kings tried to emulate him (most notably his distant cousin and later king, Henry VIII), but none came close to his success at making war and fighting on the battlefield. Henry V wasn’t immune to the other hazards of the times, though, and died, probably of dysentery, while on campaign at only 35 years old, leaving his 21-year-old queen a widow, and their nine-month-old son the new King Henry VI.
While the infant king had his late father’s many brothers to govern the country for him, and advise him as he got older, his young mother was left largely on her own. At some point early in her widowhood, she began a love affair with her Welsh squire, Owen Tudor. He was far below her station, and the union was kept secret for many years because of its wild unsuitability for the times.
It is unclear to historians whether Owen Tudor and Queen Katherine of Valois married, but whether they did or didn’t, they did have children together. Some historians believe they had as many as six, while others go with three. There are only three children between Owen and Katherine that are definitively historically documented… Edmund, Jasper, and Owen. The personal historian of the later King Henry VII mentions a daughter who became a nun, but nothing more is known of her, or if she was even really a daughter of Owen Tudor and the dowager queen.
The details of Catherine’s relationship with Owen Tudor are incompletely documented. Their sons Edmund and Jasper were acknowledged as Henry VI’s maternal half-brothers. The dramatic story of a concealed pregnancy being exposed at court should be treated as tradition, not an established account.
Childhood and Life at Court
However, after Katherine died in 1437, Owen was arrested for fraternizing with a queen, and imprisoned, while Edmund and Jasper were sent to live with the sister of the 1st Duke of Suffolk, who raised them. Henry VI, their half-brother, was old enough at this time to make some of his own decisions as king, and he decided to accept and embrace his illicit half-siblings, even giving them their own servants as befitted relatives of royalty.
Henry VI took an interest in his half-brothers’ upbringing and publicly recognized their relationship. In 1452–1453 he granted them titles of nobility, making Jasper Earl of Pembroke and Edmund Earl of Richmond.
King Henry VI also released Owen Tudor from prison when he was old enough to rule the kingdom on his own, and gave him a royal allowance as the father of his half-brothers. Owen was later killed fighting for Henry VI, his step-son, in one of the beginning battles of the Wars of the Roses.
Jasper Tudor and the Lancastrian Cause
When the Wars of the Roses began, Jasper and Edmund gave their royal half-brother unwavering loyalty, and Edmund was given the most sought-after heiress in the land to marry as a reward. Unfortunately, Edmund died of the plague early in his marriage to the 13-year-old Margaret Beaufort, but not before he got her pregnant. She gave birth to his son, Henry Tudor, after Edmund’s death, and Jasper became his sister-in-law and nephew’s fiercest protector and defender.
During the war, Jasper alone maintained ties for the Lancastrian side of the conflict in Wales, and he worked hard to promote the rights of his other nephew, Henry VI’s son Edward, to inherit the throne. After the York side came to power and deposed Henry VI, Jasper was declared a traitor and his lands and titles taken from him. The same was done to his young nephew, Henry Tudor. With Henry’s mother re-married to a Yorkist sympathizer, Jasper was Henry’s sole protector (though his mother wanted to be, but wasn’t in a position to do so at the time). He took Henry with Margaret’s blessing and went to France, working there to gain supporters to the Lancastrian cause.
Henry VI was briefly restored to the throne in 1470, and Jasper and Henry were allowed to come back to England and given back their lands and titles. However, the Yorkists deposed Henry VI in 1471, for the second time, and Jasper and Henry went to the European continent to stay in the duchy of Brittany. The new Yorkist king, Edward IV, put pressure on the Duke of Brittany to return the pair to England, but he refused, and they stayed safe. Jasper provided Henry with military training during their time in Brittany, which was to prove amazingly advantageous to the Lancastrians later in the war.
Exile and Plans for Henry Tudor
All the time he was in Brittany, Jasper maintained correspondence with Henry’s mother, Margaret, who was now married to Thomas Stanley, her fourth husband if her annulled childhood marriage is counted, a man with no particular political loyalty except to whoever was in power at the time. Under Jasper’s tutelage, thanks to his own military training under his half-brother, Henry VI, Henry Tudor became a skilled soldier.
When Henry VI’s only son and heir were killed in battle, and Henry VI himself was killed as a prisoner of the Yorks, Jasper began to work with Henry Tudor’s mother to promote Henry’s position as the last legitimate Lancaster heir. With Jasper’s help and encouragement, Henry mounted an invasion of England in 1485, where his forces killed and defeated the much more battlefield-experienced Yorkist King Richard III, thanks in part to Henry’s step-father waiting on the sidelines to see how the battle was going, and deciding to use his own troops to support his step-son when it looked like he might win.
Henry was acclaimed king after Bosworth; his formal coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on October 30, 1485. As king, Henry VII married the daughter of the original Yorkist king, Edward IV, uniting the houses of York and Lancaster. He also restored all of Jasper’s lands and titles, and even did him one better by making him Duke of Bedford, and giving him Cardiff Castle. After this, Jasper always referred to himself as “the high and mighty Prince Jasper, brother and uncle of Kings, Duke of Bedford and Earl of Pembroke.”
Marriage and Later Life
Jasper married Catherine Woodville, sister of Elizabeth Woodville and widow of the Duke of Buckingham. They had no children together. Claims that Jasper fathered other children, and pedigrees built on those claims, are not securely documented and should not be treated as proven descent.
Jasper enjoyed a decade of royal treatment and favor by the nephew he raised, who became king of England and started the Tudor dynasty. Jasper died in 1495, a happy man who had achieved everything he set out to do in life and was buried at Keynsham Abbey in Somerset. He may not be a well-known player in the Wars of the Roses, but his relationship as a half-brother to the last Lancastrian king (as Henry VII considered himself a Tudor king), as well as his raising and training of his nephew who would become king all make him as important of a player in the war as any of the better known ones. Without Jasper Tudor, there likely would have been no King Henry VII or Tudor dynasty. His devotion to his nephew through the decades-long war made it all possible, and gave us the beginnings of the modern English monarchy we know today.
Learn More
For a closer look at the evidence and historical context, explore these resources:
You can also read Who’s Who in the Wars of the Roses (free eBook) and browse the Wars of the Roses articles.
