House of Tudor

The Tudors of Penmynydd were a Welsh gentry family on the island of Anglesey, descending from Ednyfed Fychan (d.1246), distain (chief steward) to Llywelyn the Great. They were a senior lineage of the House of Aberffraw without princely status, and they sided with their kinsman Owain Glyndŵr in the revolt of 1400–1415 — and lost lands in consequence.

Owen Tudor — Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur (c.1400–1461) — was a younger son of the line who entered the household of Catherine of Valois, widow of Henry V. He married her in secret around 1429. Their son Edmund Tudor (c.1430–1456) was created Earl of Richmond and married Margaret Beaufort, of the Lancastrian royal line. Their son was Henry Tudor — the Welsh-born child whose claim to the English throne descended through this Welsh-marriage line.

Henry landed at Mill Bay in Pembrokeshire in August 1485 with around two thousand French troops and Welsh exiles. He marched through south Wales raising men under the red dragon standard of Cadwaladr — the last British king — and met Richard III at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire on 22 August 1485. Richard was killed in the field. Henry took the crown in person on Crown Hill near Stoke Golding. The Tudor dynasty ruled England, and from 1536 a unified England-and-Wales, until the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.