Tudor Times is the online repository for all things Tudor and Stewart (1485–1625)

On 1st November 1456 Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, died at Carmarthen Castle aged about twenty-three. Edmund was the oldest son of the marriage of Catherine de Valois, Princess of France and Dowager Queen of England, and one of her household, Owain Tudor. The Tudor family was descended from the native Welsh Princes, but, following the conquest of Wales by Edward I, and the suppression of the uprising of Owain Glyndwr at the turn of the fifteenth century, Welshmen were severely handicapped under English law. Edmund, however, was lucky. His half-brother, King Henry VI, recognised his mother’s second marriage in the Parliament of 1453, and treated his half-siblings generously.

Edmund was granted the Earldom of Richmond, and married to one of Henry’s second cousins, the child-heiress Lady Margaret Beaufort. Modern sensibilities are horrified by Edmund’s impregnation of his wife, who was about thirteen, but, although consummation of marriages at such a young age was not widespread, it was legal. Edmund, and his younger brother, Jasper, gave their complete allegiance to King Henry and in 1456, Edmund was captured by William Herbert, a Yorkist, who held him at Carmarthen Castle, where he died of plague.

On 31st October 1512, Windsor Herald (whose name was Francis Dyes or Dees) submitted his expense claim for travelling to Aragon, to convey messages to Ferdinand II of Aragon, Henry VIII’s father-in-law. The two kings were in league against France, although the campaign turned into a disaster for England when the Aragonese refused to supplement the English troops’ inadequate supplies, and Ferdinand did a deal with France behind Henry’s back, after he had achieved his own goal of capturing Spanish Navarre. To be fair to Ferdinand, he claimed that the English troops, led by Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, Henry’s cousin, had failed to co-operate with him.

Windsor Herald spent: £4 6s 8d for a return journey from London to Plymouth and then 13s 4d for a ‘reward’ to the sailors on the ship that took him to San Sebastian (it is not clear whether his passage was free – perhaps he went in one of the King’s own ships). From San Sebastian to somewhere he phonetically spelt as 'Trollegrono', where he met Ferdinand, cost him 40s return. He then went from San Sebastian to Bilbao and on to Laredo at a cost of 53s 4d. The sailors on the return journey received 20s (presumably the trip was longer).

The picture shows the coast of Spain in about 1606 – it would not have changed hugely.

On 30th October, 1600 Elizabeth I refused to renew Essex's monopoly on sweet wine with the words ‘an unruly horse must be abated of is provender that he may be the better brought to managing’. Monopolies were a common way for the Crown to give grants to favoured courtiers. As the name suggests, all imports and exports of the product in question were routed through the monopolist’s hands, who was then free to take a percentage of the profits. During the 1590s, the practice of granting monopolies was heavily criticised by the House of Commons as being in restraint of trade. In Elizabeth’s last Parliament she promised to look into the matter, but no changes were made. For Essex, the loss of the monopoly effectively bankrupted him and was a contributing factor in his descent into open rebellion – read more on that here