The Welshness of the Tudors
Without their Welsh connections, the Tudors could never have made good their rags-to-riches ascent to the English throne, argues Peter R. Roberts.
The fortunes of the Tudor dynasty were laid by the most romantic mésalliance in English history, the secret betrothal of a Welsh attendant at the Court of Henry VI to the dowager queen. How Owain ap Maredydd ap Tudur, member of a family implicated in the revolt of Owain Glyndwr, and perhaps named after the rebel himself, came to be employed in the royal household is one of the unsolved riddles of fifteenth-century history. Henry V, the hammer of the Welsh, had continued his father's proscription of the whole nation in punishment for the rebellion.
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