Tudor Marriage: Scandal - Owen Tudor and Catherine Valois

Few couples broke through as many barriers and changed the course of history more than Owen Tudor and Catherine Valois. They were unequally matched, married for love, and broke the law with their union. Because they dared to do so, England boasts the history of the Tudor dynasty.

Details of the marriage of Owen Tudor and Catherine Valois are lost to history. However, since there was no attempt made to declare their children illegitimate, we can quite safely assume that it took place sometime before their first child was born in 1430. This was long before the time prescribed by the king’s council for Catherine to consider another match. They had ordered the dowager queen to wait until King Henry VI, Catherine’s son, was old enough to approve any marriage that she might make. Since he was less than a year old when his illustrious father, Henry V, died, the council intended that Catherine have a rather long wait.

She had been a widow for approximately six years when she decided that she had waited long enough. The council had already thwarted her efforts to make a match with Edmund Beaufort, so Catherine was more clandestine in her plans with Owen. The king was only six years old, potentially a decade away from being deemed of age and able to approve his mother’s marriage, so Catherine took charge of her own future.

Marriage of Henry V and Catherine Valois

Owen’s ancestors, once a prosperous and prominent family in Wales, had been ruined due to their role in Welsh rebellions against King Henry IV, placing him far below his bride in both social and economic standing. No negotiations or betrothal are known to have taken place between Owen and Catherine or any representatives for them, and they certainly did not have anyone’s approval. They did what few others of Catherine’s station dared, they married for love.

While Catherine may have been encouraged by the fact that Owen was of low enough status to not pose a threat to her son or his council, evidence indicates that she married him primarily because of mutual attraction. The couple quickly produced four children and several disapproving accounts note Catherine’s lust for her handsome new husband. In fact, rumors of how their relationship began include stories of her discovering him naked as he bathed and another that he caught her eye by falling into her lap when dancing.

Women of this era were expected to be pillars of virtue, and no one more so than the queen. Therefore, the fact that Catherine had failed to control her urges in her defiance of the law brought down the wrath of the council upon her. If she thought Owen’s lowly status would protect him, she had lost that gamble. Worse, they thought even less of him because he was Welsh.

Not quite sure how to proceed against the mother of the king, the council bided their time until Catherine died on January 3, 1437. Did Owen ever regret that he had married the beautiful French princess as he sat in his cell at Newgate? He would have had no inkling that one of he and Catherine’s sons would become the father of a king of England.

The line of succession would not typically go through a queen consort, and even Owen’s oldest son’s marriage to Margaret Beaufort did not place them in line for the throne. Margaret, after all, was from a bloodline that had been legitimized but not included in the succession. Were it not for the Wars of the Roses, which so thoroughly pruned the branches of England’s royal families, the sprig of the Tudors would likely never have flourished.


Don't miss the rest of the Tudor Marriage Blog Series!

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Additional Reading:

De Lisle, Leanda. Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. The Story of England’s Most Notorious Royal Family. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013.

Penn, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Bacon, Francis. The History of the Reign of King Henry VII. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1850.

The Death of Catherine Valois

Marriage of Henry V
and Catherine Valois

On January 3, 1437, Catherine Valois died. She had been born a French princess and become an English queen when she married the famous warrior king, Henry V. At the time of her death, she was married to a simple Welsh squire named Owen Tudor.

Catherine had been banned from remarrying after the king's death, though it was not quite worded that way. Instead the council informed her that any match that she might make must be approved by the king, her son. This is something that he would not be able to do until he reached the age of majority, typically around sixteen but possibly as young as twelve. When Catherine was widowed, her son was not yet a year old. It was a clever way to control the young dowager queen.

She tried to do what was asked of her. When she fell in love with Edmund Beaufort, she requested permission to marry him and was denied. After all, who wanted the royal but illegitimate Beaufort clan to have claim to Valois blood? When Catherine next felt her heart flutter at the sight of a handsome young man, she did not bother asking for permission.

Catherine Valois
funeral effigy

Owen Tudor was from a prominent Welsh family who had lost everything in rebellions against the English. His position in Catherine's household is not completely clear, but he soon found his way to her bedroom. Details of their marriage do not exist, but their contemporaries did not question the legitimacy of their children, so it is fairly safe to assume that it took place. They proceeded to have four children in the next seven years.

Catherine may have inherited some of her father's madness, as she seems to have passed on to her son, Henry VI. She died young, possibly after beginning to experience symptoms of mental decline. While she was alive, the council's hesitancy to prosecute the king's mother had protected Owen, despite their disapproval for the union. When she died, they moved against Owen.

Perceiving that something like this would happen, Owen fled for Wales, but not quickly enough. A messenger from the king intercepted him and presented a summons to Westminster. Had Owen been willing to leave behind the riches that Catherine had bestowed upon him, he may have been able to travel with greater speed and make his escape.

Instead, he found himself at Westminster, kneeling before a king who had only recently been made aware that he had four Tudor half-siblings. Owen was initially released, since it had been only the promise of safe conduct that he had returned at the messenger’s request. Soon, though, new charges were brought against him, and he was held at Newgate.

Henry VI

He may have been given privileges and decent accommodations at Newgate rather than being tossed into a dank cell, but the lack of freedom still rankled since Owen believed he had done nothing wrong. A little over a year after Catherine's death, Owen schemed to escape Newgate. The plan succeeded, but it did not take long for Owen to be recaptured.

Thankfully, Owen was flouting the law under a king who would become famous for his peculiar blend of kindness and lack of judgement. Henry VI pardoned Owen and recognized him as his step-father. Henry even raised up his two eldest half-brothers, making Edmund earl of Richmond and Jasper earl of Pembroke.

How differently things might have turned out if Henry VI had looked upon these men jealously as a threat as so many other kings both before and after him would have done. Instead, he gave Edmund a royal cousin to marry, the young heiress, Margaret Beaufort. And the rest, as they say, is history.