Who has not enjoyed the stories of the mythical King Arthur and his noble knights? The sword Excalibur in the stone that only the king of England could remove, the magic of Merlin, the Round Table of the castle of Camelot where Arthur and his knights narrated their exploits saving maidens or fighting monsters and evil, the search for the Holy Grail, betrayal of Guinevere and Lancelot… According to legend, Arthur was mortally wounded by his son Mordred at the battle of Mount Badon and Merlin protected him with a spell and moved him to the Isle of Avalon, where he waits to return in a time of great need. your country and lead it to victory against the invaders.
It is not the purpose of this entry to unravel what is legend and what is reality in the myth of Arthur. Suffice it to say that it seems that at the origin of the narratives his figure (devoid of castles, round tables and Lancelots) comes from a British leader, possibly of Roman descent, who between the 5th and 6th centuries held off for a time the invasions of Britain by part of the Saxon tribes. Finally these took control of the island and cornered the former inhabitants in the southwest of Britannia, in present-day Wales.
When England's King Edward I invaded Wales he took it upon himself to re-inter the supposed remains of King Arthur at Glastonbury, a story recounted in a blog post. Since the Welsh were descended from the Britons and the English from the Saxons, Edward I made it clear that Arthur was dead and buried and would not return to lead the now Welsh Britons to victory.
During the reign of the different monarchs of the Plantagenet dynasty there were numerous attempts by the Welsh to shake off English rule. The last great Welsh rebel was Owain Glyndwr, who started a revolt against Henry IV of England in 1401 and was last given the title of Prince of Wales by his countrymen. At the height of his rebellion, Owain held more territory than any Welsh ruler since Llywelyn the Great, and his threat became more apparent when in 1405 he joined forces with the main English opponents of King Henry Percy and Edmund Mortimer.
However, from 1410, the rebellion began to lose strength, among other reasons due to the loss of support in France and Scotland, and from 1412 the track of the leader is lost Of the same. Some sources, specifically Adam of Usk, state that in 1415 Owain "after four years of hiding from the king, he died and was buried by his followers in the dead of night". The truth is that Owain Glyndwr was the last Welshman to proclaim himself Prince of Wales and who led a rebellion against England aimed at recovering national identity, and is considered a national symbol in Wales.
Among Owain Glyndwr's relatives and followers was his cousin Owain Maredudd ap Tydyr. From his marriage a child was born in the year 1400 who was named after his father. Years later Owain ap Maredudd ap Tydyr joined the Welsh forces that accompanied the new English king Henry V. This monarch had been very successful in his campaigns in France during the Hundred Years' War that led to the great victory of Agincourt (1415) and the signing of the Treaty of Troyes (1420) by which, among other things, he was granted the hand of the daughter of the King of France, Catherine of Valois.
But Henry V died only two years later, in 1422. Catherine, who had fathered a son by him (Henry VI), withdrew from public life. But among the people who put themselves at her service was the Welshman Owain ap Maredudd ap Tydyr. Between him and the dowager queen love arose and they had several children. It seems that they were secretly married, although there is no evidence to prove it. At one point, the English scribes changed the name to the Welsh one for the more understandable to the English of Owen Tudor.
The couple's children, Welsh on their father's side, were half-brothers of King Henry VI who involved them in the country's politics and granted them positions and important marriages. One of these sons, named Jasper, was made Earl of Pembroke and his brother Edmund was given the hand of a young woman from the royal family, Margaret Beaufort.
The Tudors and the Beauforts were one of Henry VI's main supporters in the Wars of the Roses, but when they were defeated in 1471 by his rival Edward IV at Tewkesbury and both Henry VI as if only son died, the son that Margaret Beaufort had with her Welsh husband, whom she called Henry, fled to Brittany. He had become the head of the Lancastrian side in the war for the English throne, but he would have to wait for his time.
This moment came in 1485, when after the death of Edward IV his brother Richard III came to the throne. The government of this had generated enough discontent, especially for his maneuver against the children of his brother, whom he locked up in the Tower of London and declared illegitimate to seize the throne. The fate of the young princes of the Tower has already been dealt with here and I will not dwell on it now.
As I said, in 1485 Henry Tudor saw the time had come to seize the throne and traveled from France. His landing in the British Isles at the command of a small force of French mercenaries took place on the Welsh land of his paternal ancestors, at Milford Haven. There, the first to join his army were Welshmen. The conclusion of the story is well known:on August 22, 1485, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and proclaimed himself King of England.
Some saw in the victory of the son of a Welshman from Wales to which the Britons were forced to retreat after the Saxon conquest of the island over the king who occupied the historical throne of the Saxons in London, the fulfillment of the prophecies about the triumphant return of King Arthur. It is true that Arthur is a legendary character, that Henry Tudor only had a quarter of Welsh blood and that Richard III did not represent a Saxon dynasty but a Norman one, but it is also true that sometimes it is not bad to adorn History with a little poetic justice. And if in addition to this we know something more about the Welsh origin of the Tudor dynasty, honey on flakes, don't you think?
Image| Henry VII Wikimedia commons
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Peter Ackroyd. A History of England Volume I (Foundations) .Ed. Mcmillan, London. 1st edition (2011)
Derek Wilson. The Plantagenets, The Kings That Made Britain . Quercus Edition Ltd., London. Ebook edition (2014)
Matthew Lewis. Richard, Duke of York:King by Right .Amberley Publishing, Stroud. 1st edition (2016)
DanJones. Secrets of Great British Castles:Caernarfon. (Documentary).