Ruins of Keynsham Abbey
On 21st December 1495, Jasper Tudor, 1st Duke of Bedford and 1st Earl of Pembroke, died at his manor at Thornbury at the age of around sixty-four. His entrails were buried at the parish church at Thornbury and the rest of his remains were laid to rest at Keynsham Abbey, according to the instructions he left in his will of 15th December.
Jasper's biographer, Debra Bayani, writes of Jasper's funeral procession:
On the way from Thornbury to the market town of Keynsham close to Bristol, Jasper's funeral procession halted at Kingswood, where they were met by ‘the Maire and his brethren […] with iiml men on horsebake, all in blake gownes, and so brought his body to Keynsham, for the which the said Maire and his brethren had grete thankes of the King’. The king and queen, with an escort of spiritual and temporal nobles, also travelled to Keynsham for the interment in the abbey.
As Bayani notes, "only part of the foundations of the twelfth-century Augustine abbey now survive. The abbey and Jasper's tomb were
not spared by Henry VIII and did not survive the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539", so it is impossible to visit Jasper's tomb. However, it is possible to visit St Mary the Virgin's Church, Thornbury, where his entrails were buried.
Jasper was the second son of Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois, half-brother of Henry VI and uncle of Henry VII. It was alleged that he had an illegitimate daughter, Helen or Ellen, who was the mother of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.
Today is also the anniversary of the death of Marguerite of Navarre (also known as Margaret of Navarre, Marguerite of Angoulême and Marguerite de France) in Odos, in France. You can read more about her in an article I wrote for The Anne Boleyn Files - click here.
Notes and Sources
Image: Ruins of Keynsham Abbey, © Copyright Rick Crowley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
- Bayani, Debra (2015) Jasper Tudor: Godfather of the Tudor Dynasty, Chapter 16.