Jasper Tudor

Jasper Tudor was the younger son of Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois and a maternal half-brother of Henry VI. Created Earl of Pembroke, he became a committed Lancastrian commander during the Wars of the Roses and, after the death of his brother Edmund, a protector and political mentor to his nephew Henry Tudor.

Defeat forced Jasper and Henry into long periods of exile, but Jasper remained central to the network that preserved Henry’s claim. He returned with his nephew in 1485 and helped secure the campaign that ended with Richard III’s defeat at Bosworth. After Henry became king, Jasper was rewarded with the dukedom of Bedford and remained one of the new regime’s senior dynastic figures until his death in 1495.

Joanna Hickson’s First of the Tudors follows Jasper Tudor from his place at Henry VI’s court into the Wars of the Roses, where he becomes guardian and political protector of the young Henry Tudor. Tony Riches’ Jasper makes that long defence of the Lancastrian cause the centre of the novel, including exile, rebellion and the effort to preserve Henry as a viable claimant. David Field’s The Flowering of the Tudor Rose shows Jasper guiding his nephew through Wales and Brittany towards the invasion that ends at Bosworth. Hickson’s The Tudor Crown concentrates on the years of exile and the network shared by Jasper and Margaret Beaufort, while Nathen Amin’s Tudor Wales follows the real places through which Jasper’s Welsh power base and support for Henry VII can be reconstructed.