Page:The Queens of England.djvu/218

184 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. Agincourt, where Henry the Fifth appointed him, for his merit, one of the squires of his body. He was still in this station, keeping guard over the queen and her infant son at Windsor, when, by his handsome person, he attracted the attention of Katherine. Being called upon to dance before the court on some festive occasion, Owen made a stumble and fell into the queen's lap, as she sat in a low seat amongst her ladies ; and the good humored manner in which she excused this awkwardness, first raised a suspicion amongst the court ladies of her liking for him. The marriage gave the greatest offense to the late king's courtiers, and especially to the Duke of Gloucester, who had been appointed protector. It was kept as profoundly secret as possible by Katherine ; and on the first suspicion, not of the actual fact, but of the danger of it, a severe statute was enacted in the sixth year of her son's reign, forbidding, under heavy penal- ties, any one to marry a queen-dowager, or any lady holding lands of the crown, without the consent of the king and his council. There can be little doubt but that the marriage had taken place some time before, and this law would only tend to the more strictly maintaining secrecy as to their connection. It was never recognized by the government ; Katherine always styled herself the widow of Henry the Fifth; and her son, Henry the Sixth, never acknowledged Owen Tudor as his father-in-law, though he received him after he attained his majority, into considerable favor, and raised two out of the three sons of Tudor and Katherine to rank and fortune. The Duke of Gloucester, the brother of Henry the Fifth, and uncle of Henry the Sixth, appears to have been most especially incensed at the queen-dowager's marriage with Owen Tudor. It was in vain that Tudor boasted of descent from Cadwalla- der kings, and asserted that he was of the line of the old prince. Theodore, which the Saxon pronunciation had corrupted to Tudor, and even vulgarized to Tidder; he was regarded of mean station. Rapin declares that his father was a brewer, of Beaumaris ; and Pennant will not allow him to have been more than scutifer, or shield-bearer to the Bishop of Bangor. After Katherine had had four children by him, three sons and one daughter, in the year 1436, fourteen years after her royal husband's death, the Duke of Gloucester succeeded in separat- ing Katherine and Owen Tudor. Katherine was compelled to retire to the Abbev of Bermondsev ; her three sons were torn