Jasper Tudor, Henry Tudor’s uncle, is perhaps the man behind the King, a true Kingmaker much more than Warwick was with Edward IV. Jasper seemed to only operate from a place of dedication to his King, and not someone who was into self promotion or shouting his accomplishments. For that reason, he’s often overlooked.
In this episode, Melita Thomas of TudorTimes.co.uk talks about the Person of the Month for March on Tudor Times, Jasper Tudor.
Suggested link:
Tudor Times Person of the Month Feature on Jasper Tudor
Books
The Hollow Crown by Dan Jones
Jasper Tudor, the Man Who Made the Tudor Dynasty by Terry Breverton
Jasper Tudor, Godfather of the Tudor Dynasty by Debra Bayani
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Transcript of Tudor Times on Jasper Tudor
Heather:
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast. This is episode 45, and it is another joint episode with Melita Thomas of Tudor Times. This is the second joint episode that we’ve done, and I’m really looking forward to doing a great deal more with original content and podcasts with them.
Just a quick admin note that the Renaissance English History Podcast is a proud member of the Agora Podcast Network. The Agora podcast of the month is actually a collection of podcasts from a group called Podcastnick. They produce The Secret Cabinet, History of Germany, Bohemican, lots of other great history podcasts. Check it out at podcastnik.com.
As always, you can get show notes and more information about the Renaissance English History Podcast at englandcast.com. Or for this episode about Jasper Tudor, you can also go to Tudortimes.co.uk. So Englandcast.com or tutor times.co.uk. Now that I have read you like 8 million different URLs, let’s get on with the show.
Melita Thomas is the co-founder and editor of Tudor Times, a website devoted to Tudor and Stuart history in the period between 1485 to 1625. You can find it at Tudortimes.co.uk. Melita, who has always been fascinated by history ever since she saw the 1970 series Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson, also contributes articles to BBC History Extra and Britain Magazine.
So tell me a little bit about Jasper’s life.
Melita:
Jasper was born almost but not quite royal. His parents were Catherine of Valois, who was the widowed queen of Henry V, and her second husband, Owen Tudor. It was a good deal of scandal attaching to that marriage as Owen was not only a member of the Queen’s household, but also a Welshman. Sometimes there’s very severe legal restrictions in England. So there was a lot of secrecy surrounding Jasper’s birth.
But fortunately for Jasper, his half-brother Queen Catherine’s son was King, obviously Henry VI, but he was also a very kind and generous man. He supported his mother’s second family. Jasper and his brother Edmund received large estates, earldoms, and a wealthy heiress as a reward.
Jasper repaid this generosity by his lifelong loyalty to Henry VI’s wife and son, and later to the son of the woman Henry had bestowed on his brother as a bride, the King’s cousin, Margaret Beaufort. So I think what we can say about Jasper is he knew how to repay generosity and he was a loyal and committed friend to his family.
Heather:
He fought throughout the Wars of the Roses. He was present at the beginning and at the end, right? Was he considered to be kind of a good military leader? He had great wits about him as well, didn’t he?
Melita:
He certainly had great wits about him. I think it’s perhaps a moot point about his actual military skill in open battles. It is assumed he was actually at both the Battle of St. Albans and at Bosworth itself, but there’s no absolutely definite proof he was at either battle. It just seems the most likely place for him to have been. Particularly at Bosworth, you’d have expected him to be there.
The battles he fought in other than Bosworth were not actually particularly successful. The First Battle of St. Albans, the Lancastrians lost. Then the only battle where we know Jasper actually commanded was Mortimer’s Cross in 1461, where he was very heavily defeated. He didn’t make it to Tewkesbury. Bosworth was of course, a great victory, but it was mainly down to the Earl of Oxford, who was the overall commander.
Where Jasper’s military skill seems to have been, was in siege warfare and guerrilla warfare. He conducted a very successful campaign to capture Denbigh Castle from the Yorkists, the only person to actually ever capture that castle by a siege.
He spent most of the 1460’s conducting guerrilla warfare. He would come into the castles from France or Brittany or various other places where he was looking for support and do a bit of raiding and generally have a damaging effect on Yorkists castles in Wales, and then he’d disappear again. So more of a guerrilla warrior than an open battle kind of a chap.
Heather:
Why should we know about him?
Melita:
Jasper’s claim to fame really is that if it were not for him, it’s highly unlikely that Henry Tudor would ever have even got to the Field of Bosworth, let alone won the battle. After the Lancastrians had been defeated at Tewkesbury and Jasper’s older nephew, Edward of Lancaster had been killed, the young Henry Tudor became the only possible heir to the Lancastrian claim to the throne.
Jasper supported him. He took him into exile. Henry was only 14. Presumably through those years, supported him morally, if even if he couldn’t support him financially or in any other way. Then when the time came for Henry to invade, it was into Jasper’s old lands of the Earldom of Pembroke that they sailed directly there.
Jasper’s relationships with the local nobility and Gentry had lasted long enough, even through exile for Henry to actually get a toehold into Wales and enabled him to raise enough of an army to invade and win at Bosworth. If Jasper hadn’t had friends in Wales, it’s very likely that Henry would have just been captured and come to a sticky end.
Heather:
But early on, when it was all just beginning, didn’t he seem kind of willing to work with York and the Yorkists? I guess that was down to just at the time. It wasn’t as if they were trying to position themselves as actually taking the throne. But it seemed as if he wanted to be on good working terms with York. Then even later, when York came to France, he seemed willing to try and broker deals. A, is that true? B, what do you think made him change his mind and kind of stay so loyal to Lancaster throughout his life?
Melita:
I think you’re right that he was perhaps of the conciliating nature, and certainly, his nephew, Henry VII, and Henry VI as well, so all three Henrys were it seemed inclined to working with people rather than instantly going for battles. It was definitely apparent to everyone in the 1450’s, even to Jasper and his brother Edmund that despite his best intentions, Henry VI was with an absolutely hopeless King.
His Queen Margaret of Anjou, she was not a good queen in the sense that she was very, very divisive. So most of the nobles of the 1440’s and 50’s, they wanted Henry’s government to continue but to improve. If that could be done by giving York the authority, they were willing to support that. I think that’s where Jasper was in his relations with York.
He wanted to see better government and less of the very factional state of affairs that was leading to the government being broke more or less, and increasing unrest. I think the problems that arose when it became clear that there was no way of compromising really because a number of York supporters were equally factional, same as Queen Marguerite, and they wanted to take perhaps more power than was their fair share.
But there was also long-standing rivalries between York, Somerset, Warwick, Salisbury, Northumberland… Eventually, it became apparent that there was no no middle way and Jasper, when he was forced to choose, he supported his brother, his half-brother, and he never deviated from that. Not once.
Heather:
And that loyalty of course, made him a fugitive more than once. He spent a lot of time in exile, in various forms, the long, long exile, and short periods. How do you think all of that affected him?
Melita:
I think that’s a really interesting psychological question. I think he’s a very interesting character psychologically. I think one of the things that exile did was make him very self-reliant because there were times when he had to escape very swiftly, possibly in disguise or some sounds very romantic disguised as a peasant, he’d have had to be able to just walk away from any, anything that, that held him back.
Insofar as everyday life is concerned, it probably prevented him from marrying. He hadn’t been married in the late 40’s, 50’s when he might’ve been expected to possibly because there weren’t suitable candidates. Perhaps Henry VI not being a particularly vigorous King hadn’t arranged anything.
So once he was an exile, it pretty much became impossible to marry a woman of his own rank. Nobody was going to marry their daughter to a man who was penniless and roaming around the courts of Europe trying to raise money and troops. That probably affected him.
He probably, I think he was somebody who had a very, very focused character. I can imagine that in a previous age, he might’ve been a Crusader. I think he liked having a cause and was one of those people who would follow that cause wherever it led him. Very single-minded. Focused. It’s an interesting, interesting question. Perhaps if he’d lived longer, he would have gotten bored of safety.
Heather:
So he essentially is the reason why Henry Tudor was able to come to the throne. What was his relationship like with Henry Tudor? Were they close?
Melita:
I would say yes and well, yes and no. I think Jasper was extremely protective of his nephew. He knew him when he was a baby. But when Henry was about four, he was put into the guardianship of William Herbert who was the Yorkist Earl of Penbrook. Jasper didn’t then see him for more or less 10 years.
But then once they were reunited after the battle of Tewkesbury, Jasper was obviously very protective. He took Henry into exile with them in Brittany, protecting him from any possible Yorkist revenge. But they weren’t together all the time in Brittany. They were separated at different points so that Brittany could make the most of having two possible hostages.
I think it’s likely that they probably corresponded and met. They wouldn’t necessarily spend a huge amount of time together, but Henry clearly was very, very grateful to Jasper. He rewarded him very richly, gave him a dukedom, a wealthy wife, honors, carried the King’s crown at the coronation. So I think affectionate, respectful, and grateful was Henry. And perhaps Henry was the son that Jasper never had.
Heather:
Of course, the woman behind a lot of this was Lady Margaret Beaufort with sending some money and helping to plot, I suppose. What was his relationship like with Lady Margaret?
Melita:
Well, that’s the great romantic question, isn’t it? I know there’s been a lot of speculation that Jasper was in love with his sister-in-law. But to me, that seems highly unlikely. There’s certainly no evidence for it. The reasons I think it was unlikely, well Margaret was only 12 when she married Jasper’s brother. He was around 23 or 24. Obviously not impossible that people of that age gap would fall in love. But it isn’t that likely a 24-year-old man would become romantically attached to a 12-year-old.
Couple of years later when she was widowed, he arranged her marriage to Henry Stafford, very, very promptly. He didn’t make any attempts to keep Margaret with him. So we could infer from that he was fond of her as his sister-in-law and obviously his ward. He wants her to be safe and happy, but I don’t think you can draw anything romantic from that.
Then he wouldn’t have seen a great deal of her ’till 1470. So that’s another, 12 years when he and Henry spent a week with Margaret once when the Lancastrians came back into power. I suppose, they could have become attached to each other. I just don’t think it’s very likely.
I think if we want to find a love interest, I’d have said a far more likely candidate would be another sister-in-law, Marguerite of Anjou. There isn’t any evidence but to me, it seems more likely. They were the same age. She was a glamorous foreign princess, married when she was about 14 or 15 to Henry VI who clearly wasn’t that interested in, what should we say, his marital duties.
Jasper and Marguerite spent a lot of time together. He was with her in exile for many years, served her faithfully. I don’t know what his feelings were, but I’d have thought psychologically it seems more likely, that if he had an attachment to one of his sisters-in-law that it was Marguerite of Anjou.
Heather:
He had a lot of kind of rises and falls in his lifetime. The whole wheel of fortune sometimes had him at the very top and then he was at the very bottom. Another psychological question, how do you think that kind of shaped who he was and his commitment? He was like you said, he was very loyal. He never wavered from this commitment to the Lancastrians or his loyalty. What do you think it must’ve been like for him having these ups and downs all the time?
Melita:
Well, I think we can confidently say that he wasn’t a quitter. I think that was probably the keynote of his character, the very, the deep commitment to a cause. I wonder if after a while it almost became exciting. Was he perhaps an adrenaline junkie? Did he really need to do some of the things that he did?
One of the examples is Denbigh Castle, which was under siege from the Yorkists with some Lancastrians inside. Jasper wasn’t there initially, but he managed to smuggle himself into the besieged castle. That really does seem quite an extreme piece of behavior. Perhaps the excitement of it, and he found it difficult to live a normal life, maybe.
How would those sorts of things affect you? You would probably become, again, as I said before, probably very self-reliant. You wouldn’t trust people very much. You’d perhaps be careful not to perform emotional ties with people. Possible thing, he’s a bit of a James Bond sort of a character though, perhaps without romantic interests. Forever jumping off a mountain somewhere or climbing Everest.
Heather:
He seems to have had more escapes and luck than any one person should have in their lifetime. He’s like a cat with nine lives. Was that just because he was just really smart? Did he have really good people around him? What do you attribute to this streak of luck that he had?
Melita:
I think, I think he was somebody who would seize the opportunity. I think perhaps he was a natural actor. There’s certainly one story that seems probably true. That he escaped, I think it’s from Denbigh castle disguised as a countryman carrying a bag of straws and peas pods. Perhaps that’s how he got into Pembroke castle as well.
So maybe, maybe he was just very good at disguising himself and he would take risks. I think he was a risk-taker and people who take risks are very often lucky. They seize the moment. They come up with an idea and they think, “yeah, let’s just go with that”.
I’m sure he had good people around him. He certainly must’ve inspired loyalty to have the reaction when he and Henry landed in 1485, that he was not betrayed by anybody. He did garner support as they marched through Wales. So yes, definitely a bit of a James Bond, I think.
Heather:
Why do you think he’s not remembered more than he is?
Melita:
I think possibly because he didn’t have children. He died in 1495, obviously by Henry VII, but Henry’s children were too young to remember him. Henry VIII was only four at the time of Jasper’s death. He had no children to carry on the title or to be cousins to the new King. He didn’t ever really seem to do any of this for himself. It was very much about first supporting Henry VI, then Edward of Lancaster, and then Henry VII.
He didn’t seem to be wanting the limelight himself, unlike perhaps the Earl of Warwick who did seem to have rather a sort of personal interest in the whole thing. Jasper seemed to be doing it for the wider cause. He hasn’t left any monuments. He did some building at Pembroke and at Tenby but he didn’t build vast amounts of buildings that we can see around.
His widow remarried very quickly. Yes, he seems to have been forgotten quite soon. There’s a bit of a resurgence of interest, possibly because of some of the fiction that there’ve been three biographies out of him recently. He’s perhaps he’s coming into his own at last.
Heather:
Where can people go to learn more about him? What are some of the resources you recommend?
Melita:
There’s a very nice biography of him by a chap called Terry Breverton, a Jasper Tudor: Dynasty Maker that is definitely interesting. There isn’t a lot of good academic research on him or not that I’ve been able to come across. There’s a couple of other biographies, but I think the Breverton one is best.
But other than that, he just sort of pops up as a big part in other people’s biographies. So there’s Dan Jones’ The Hollow Crown covers him to a degre. Chris Skidmore‘s book Bosworth that gives him a fair outing, but there isn’t a lot out there.
Heather:
Is there anything else that you’d like to say about him that I haven’t asked?
Melita:
I think we’ve covered him. For me, he’s a bit of an unsung hero. I think perhaps a lone wolf.
Heather:
Thank you again to Melita Thomas for taking the time to tell us all about Jasper Tudor. For more information on Jasper, you can go to tudortimes.co.uk, or you can also see the resources available on the Englandcast site at englandcast.com. Thanks so much! I will be talking to you again in about two weeks and we’re going to talk about Shakespeare, more on the theater and Shakespeare. So I’ll be talking with you soon. Thank you. Bye, bye!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.