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From: John Carmi Parsons <>
Subject: Re:Subject: Re: Catherine of Valois / Owen Tudor debate
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 07:30:36 -0500 (EST)


No one was patronizing any one else here. The tone of the entries quoted below
is, to my understanding and intent, quite neutral. At no time did I use such
words as ridiculous or laughable. I admit that I erred in suggesting that
Michelle was hoping for another juicy royal scandal here, and for that I do
apologize to her.

I was trying simply to point out what seem to me some very obvious weak points
in Michelle's approach to thinking about history. Arguments that take an
absence of evidence as a basis for concluding that such evidence never did
exist, and that therefore nothing ever existed to generate that evidence (in
this case, Catherine's marriage), ARE weak, and no historian worth his/her salt
would willingly admit to basing conclusions on intuition.

Michelle is perfectly correct in saying that the evidence for Catherine's
marriage is so slight that, most probably, no definitive answer will ever
be found. Such evidence as has been found is massively inconclusive and
arguments can be developed to explain that evidence in more than one way.
I believe the pair did marry at some point, though at what point and under
what circumstances is unknown. Michelle interprets the evidence otherwise.

I do not for one moment mean to deny her right to do so, but as an historian I
do feel there are weaknesses in her reasoning. This does not mean her arguments
are entirely invalid, but she may wish to rethink and restate them.

In any case, I want to go on record here as pointing out that the questions
asked about Catherine's relationship to Owen have virtually no bearing at
all on the tenor of English history. No child Catherine bore by Owen Tudor
would have any claim on the English throne and, in fact, the legitimacy of
any child she bore after Henry V's death was strictly speaking utterly
without importance, save to Catherine's own honor as a king's daughter, a
widowed queen and a king's mother (the primary reason I feel she would never
have risked bearing any man's children out of wedlock). Whether or not Edmund
Tudor was legitimate, his legitimacy would have had no bearing whatever on the
status of his son Henry Tudor, whose blood claim to the throne came through
his mother. As long as no aspersions were cast on the lawful marriage of
Edmund and Margaret Beaufort, their son's position was legally unassailable.

In fact, as I've stated earlier, there is no reason to think Henry VI saw
anything questionable about Edmund and Jasper's birth, and despite the well
known facts as to the origin of the Beaufort family, by the 1450s they were
among the premier families in the realm, very likely considered themselves
part and parcel of the royal house, and might have had a word or two to say
about their heiress marrying an OOW, even if he were the king's half-brother.
It was only in the Yorkist era, and particularly under Richard III (in whose
reign Henry Tudor really emerged as the Great Lancastrian hope) that open
aspersions were cast on Catherine's relationship with Owen Tudor and their
children's legitimacy. The assertion that Catherine bore Owen's children
on the wrong side of the blanket was therefore a later development and one
that was politically motivated; it does not correspond to what were taken
to be the facts when the relationship was first revealed and Henry VI openly
accepted Owen Tudor's children as his half-siblings.

Other comments below.

On Tue, 2 Mar 1999 Michelle.Murphy% wrote:

> I'll return to the content of this discussion in a moment, but I just want to
> query the tone of the statements I've quoted below.

>>This is a very risky statement. Arguments from silence are notoriously weak
>>and few historians would rely on them unreserveely.

>>Just because the records aren't there now doesn't mean they were never there.

>>"Merely" a moral indiscretion? For a deeply religious society such as that
>>of the medieval centuries, that's assuming a great deal.

I'm afraid I must stick by this, particularly in the context of a royal lady
possibly producing children OOW. Catherine surely knew that if she were to do
so and it became common knowledge, the legitimacy of Henry VI would also come
into question. In any event, given medieval society's religious beliefs,
"mere" in reference to such a moral indiscretion is entirely out of place here.

>>"Intuitively" is, again, a risky word for an historian to throw around.

>>And finally, in the last sentence above you're arguing from silence again.

[long snip]

> We have no record of correspondence between Catherine and her French family,
> after the Philip of Burgundy/Humphrey of Gloucester conflict. I coupled that
> with the fact that many medieval families did not stay in touch as a modern
> family would - there were many sisters or brothers who would never even have
> known each other, let alone developed a personal familial bond. Consider also
> that England and France were actually at war - there is always the possibility
> that correspondence between Catherine and the "Dauphin" might be viewed in a
> very poor light by the Council. Given all of this evidence, can anyone really
> assert that Catherine is likely to have written letters to her brother Charles
> VII between 1422 and 1436/7? As I explained earlier, her father was dead, as
> were two of her brothers and two of her sisters. Jeanne, Duchess of Brittany
> barely knew Catherine, while Marie was a nun and probably did not spend time
> writing letters to a sister in an enemy country whom she had not seen for years.

There is a good point here, and I'm glad the continuing discussion has brought
it out. Certainly the English Council might have been leery of Catherine's
correspondence with Charles VII (as we must count him, at least after his
coronation), if any--especially if she were carrying it out on her own, w/o
official supervision. On the other hand, England always tried to maintain
ties with Brittany in the 100 Years' War, and Catherine's ties there through
Jeanne might have been important there.

It is important in this context to divest ourselves of modern concepts of
sibling relationships, because the medieval aristocracy did not function as
modern nuclear families do. It may be true that Jeanne and Catherine were
not closely acquainted before either of them married and left the French
court, but both of them were certainly raised and prepared for their roles
as international brides. Royal women appreciated the power they could
exercise by maintaining their ties whether or not those ties depended on
familial affection as we now understand it. Eleanor Plantagenet (1161/2 -
1214), queen of Castile, was certainly barely acquainted with her brother
John, who was at most 3 when Eleanor went to the Castilian court in 1170--in
fact, he may never have left England before that time, while she was raised on
the Continent, and so he may never even have laid eyes on her before she left
Aquitaine. But after John took the English throne, Eleanor actively worked to
maintain Castile's diplomatic contacts with John and may even have journeyed
to meet with him in person. Even if Catherine de Valois decided to retreat
from the court, Jeanne of Brittany might have discerned some valuable
opportunities in her connections to England through Catherine.

John Parsons

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