Owen TUDOR (1400?-1461)

Individual Events and Attributes

Marriage

Individual Note

He was from Anglesey, and was a Welsh soldier and courtier, directly descended from The Lord Rhys but remembered only because of his role in founding the Tudor dynasty and for his relationship with Catherine of Valois, widow of King Henry V of England. At some point Owain anglicised his name from the Welsh Owain ap Maredudd to Owen Tudor, taking his grandfather's name for a surname rather than the more common practice of taking his father's.

Owain entered the service of Queen Catherine of Valois as keeper of the Queen's household (or her wardrobe) some time after the death of her husband Henry V of England on 22 August 1422. The Queen at first lived in the household of her infant son, King Henry VI, before moving to Wallingford Castle early in his reign, taking Tudor with her. No documentation survives of her marriage to Owen Tudor, which is believed to have taken place in around 1428. As Parliament had passed a resolution in 1428 forbidding queens dowager to remarry without the king's permission, their marriage would not have been legally valid.