Tudor Queens of England Read Online Free PDF

John Boyers, was paid in the same way.
    9 This time
    Henry had been summoned to relieve a Burgundian garrison at Cosne sur Loire but it soon transpired that the sickness that he had picked up at the fall of Meaux earlier in May was actually dysentery. By the time that he got to Corbeil he was too weak to continue and he had to be carried in a litter to Vincennes, where he died on 31 August. Catherine may or may not have been present (the sources do not agree) but if she were not, this should not be taken to suggest any kind of a rupture between them. Henry had in a sense died on active service, which his consort could not be expected to share. They had been married for a little over two years. The Queen’s grief was palpable and we are told ‘greatly edifi ed the people’. She conducted his body back to England in a solemn and magnifi cent cortege, and erected a great tomb in his memory. It might have been expected that after the obsequies, Catherine would have returned to her own family because she was still only 21. However, her father died on 21 October and her brother was locked in combat with her son’s Council for control of the kingdom of France. In the circumstances, home was where her son was, and she remained in England. Soon after the parliament confi rmed her dower at the slightly reduced, but still substantial, fi gure of £6,000 a year, taken mostly from the Duchy of Lancaster and therefore presumably assessed on different lands. No more is heard of the 20,000 francs from France but the provision made was perfectly adequate for a Queen Dowager.
    For the next few years, Catherine acted mainly as the mother of her young son. This was a personal, not a political role because, offi cially, the Earl of Warwick was the guardian of the King’s person but the Queen Mother appeared regularly with the infant Henry. At the same time England was run by the Council, presided 18

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    over by the King’s uncle, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, as protector. The French lands were similarly ruled by Humphrey’s brother, John Duke of Bedford, who had his own council. Henry was moved around a good deal, partly for the sake of his health and partly to prove to the people that he was still alive and well. Catherine was, however, still only in her mid-twenties and was apparently highly sexed. As one chronicler put it (not too discreetly), she was ‘unable fully to control her carnal passions’
    .10 Ther e were rumours of an affair with Edmund Beaufort, the nephew of the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester, accompanied inevitably by talk of a marriage, to which the Duke of Gloucester was adamantly opposed. It might have been as much because of this known weakness as because of the need to be near her son that Catherine went on living in the King’s household until 1430. Henry VI was crowned in 1429 and this was presumably a rite of passage in more than one sense. He was now in the fullest sense a king but his education would also have moved on, into the hands of male tutors. He was no longer ‘living among the women’ and his mother was surplus to requirements. Despite the fact that the parliament of 1427–8 had decreed that the Queen Mother could only re-marry with the consent of the Council, Catherine seems to have celebrated her freedom by uniting herself with one of her sewers, a Welsh squire named Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur.
    Owain was the son of Maredudd ap Tudur ap Goronwy of Penmynydd in Anglesey and claimed descent on his mother’s side from the princely house of Deheubarth. How he fi rst encountered Catherine is something of a mystery. There are a number of unsubstantiated stories about his youth and upbringing and some of his kindred seem to have been involved in Glyn Dwr’s revolt, although Owain himself would have been too young. Perhaps he had some connection with Henry as Prince of Wales although he would only have been about 13 when the latter became King. The fi rst certain