A girl of not quite sixteen, she had the responsibility of bringing up a delicate child, and one who had many possible enemies, in a country ravaged by pestilence and distracted by civil war, which had begun definitely with the first battle of St. Had she not possessed a strong character and most steadfast faith, she might have found the difficulty of her position overwhelming. Many years later she wrote him a letter on his birthday, in which she alluded to 'thys day of Seynt Annes (Agnes) that y dyd bryng ynto thys world my good and gracyous prynce, kynge and only beloved son' and prayed that he might receive 'as herty blessyngs as y can axe of God '.

His brother Jasper at once took the young widow under his chivalrous protection she stayed for some time at his Castle of Pembroke, which as Leland described it, 'standith hard by the Waul on a hard Rokke and is veri larg and strong' - and there her son was born in the following January, on the 28th of the month. In the summer of 1456, Edmund, with all the ardour of his race, was 'greatly at war' with a fellow country man in Wales, but in the autumn, in the full strength of his manhood, he was struck down by the plague, and in November 'on the morrow of All Souls' he died, at the age of 25. It must have been a tremendous adventure to the primly brought-up little girl, to ride away with her gallant young bridegroom through the wild Welsh country to her new and unknown home, but her happiness - if such it was - ended soon in sorrow. Margaret was still almost a child-certainly no more than fourteen-when she was married to the hero of her very youthful dreams, and became Countess of Richmond in 1454 or 1455. In January 1553 he created Edmund, Earl of Richmond, and Jasper, Earl of Pembroke. Henry VI seems to have been very fond of the two energetic young Welshmen he had them well educated in their boyhood and when they grew up he knighted them and kept them with him at Court. S OON after the tragic death of the Duke of Suffolk, the King appointed his own half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, to be joint guardians of the little Lady Margaret.

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