Lady Margaret Beaufort, the sole living child and heir of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and his wife, Margaret Beauchamp of Bletsoe was born on 31 May 1443. Through her father she was the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster through the legitimized eldest son of his third wife, Katherine Swynford. Thus the tiny newborn was a potential heir to the Lancastrian claim to the English throne, then occupied by another of John of Gaunt’s great-grandchildren, King Henry VI.
From the cradle, Margaret was a valuable marriage prize, both as an heiress and as great-great-granddaughter of King Edward III. Her father died in her infancy, and her wardship was granted to to William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who was one of King Henry VI closest advisors. To ensure that the child’s wealth remained in his family, de la Pole married his little ward to his eldest son, John de la Pole, sometime between 1448 and 1450.
This irked King Henry VI, because he intended her as a bride for his maternal half-brother, Edmund Tudor. When his loyal friend, William de la Pole, was murdered by Yorkists on his way to exile on 2 May 1450 the king might have considered letting the union stand, but in the end Henry had Margaret’s marriage to John de la Pole dissolved on the excuse of her youth. In the spring of 1553 the king and transferred Margaret’s wardship to Edmund and his younger brother, Jasper Tudor.
Edmund had already be invested as the Earl of Richmond on 15 December 1449 and Jasper as the Earl of Pembroke on 23 November 1452, so either young man would have been of suitable rank for the heiress of Lancaster. however, as the eldest, Edmund was naturally chosen as young Margaret’s husband. The 24 year old Earl of Richmond wed Margaret on 1 November 1455, when she just 12 years old, the youngest legal age of a wife recognized by church and cannon law.
By custom, Edmund should have waited until the girl was 15 or 16 to consummate the marriage – it was rightly considered dangerous to the bride to get pregnant too young. Although there were no laws against it, it was considered very bad form to sleep with so young a wife, and reflected very poorly on her husband. Nonetheless, it what must have been a ploy to guarantee that the marriage wouldn’t be dissolved or that disputes over her wealth could occur if she died, went ahead and sealed the deal.
Edmund was captured by rebellious Yorkist forces in the Wars of the Roses less than a year after his marriage, but he had already impregnated the young countess. Held in captivity by William Herbert at Carmarthen, Edmund died (either of illness or was murdered) on 3 November 1456, leaving his 13-year-old widow, who was seven months pregnant, in the care of her brother-in-law, Jasper at Pembroke Castle.
It was at Pembroke Castle that young Margaret gave birth to her only child, Henry Tudor, on 28 January 1457. It was touch and go whether mother and child would survive, but – almost miraculously – they both lived. If Jasper had been anything other than a wonderful brother-in-law and uncle, it would have been super easy to say that baby and mother had died in the birth, making himself the heir to the entire Lancaster and Richmond fortunes. Instead, Jasper treated his little nephew as his own son and would repeatedly risk his own life to protect Henry both as a child and an adult.
Margaret was cruelly forced to leave her infant son behind in Pembroke when the king ordered her to wed Sir Henry Stafford on 3 January 1458. Thankfully, Jasper took good care of the boy and send Margaret frequent news of the toddler’s health. Nor did a rival for her son’s inheritance appear – Jasper remained single and Margaret, probably damaged by the early birth, was never able to bear another child. Little Henry remained the focus of all Margaret and Jasper’s paternal care.
Alas for Margaret and Henry, Jasper was wounded at the at the Battle of Towton in 1461, and had to go into hiding. To add insult to Jasper’s injuries, the victorious Yorkists made William Herbert – the man Jasper suspected of killing his brother — the new Earl of Pembroke. Margaret’s husband became a Yorkist supporter and little Henry was shipped off to the Herbert stronghold of Raglan Castle. There the boy would live as a prisoner/ward of Lord Herbert.
Henry was heir to the Earldom of Richmond, and was treated well by his captors. In fact, at some point Lord Herbert was negotiating for Henry to marry one of Herbert’s daughters. These plans all came to nothing when Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick turned against King Edward IV in 1469. Lord Herbert was captured after the Battle of Edgecote Moor and executed by the now pro-Lancastrian Warwick. Backed by Warwick and the French, King Henry VI was restored to his throne on 3 October 1470. Jasper Tudor was once more the Earl of Pembroke, and lost no time in rescuing his nephew.
Before Jasper took Henry back to the safety of Pembroke Castle, he brought the 11 year old to court where Henry met the king and was reunited with his mother. The happy family wasn’t together for long though – Henry’s stepfather allied himself with the Yorkists to try to win back the crown for King Edward IV. Stafford died fighting for the Yorkists at the the Battle of Barnet in April of 1471, leaving Margaret a widow again and subject to remarriage by the eventual winner of the Wars of the Roses.
King Edmund IV won back the throne in May of 1471, and a little over a year later, Margaret was given in marriage to a steward of the king’s household, Thomas Stanley, the Lord High Constable and King of Mann. Although she and Stanley were never particularly in love with one another, they worked well together and seemed to have had a reasonably content marriage. Stanley also brought her back to court, where she became one of Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s close friends. Margaret was so endeared to the queen that she was even chosen to be a godmother to one of the princesses, probably Elizabeth’s 5th daughter, Catherine of York.
Margaret used her influence with Elizabeth to try to get her son Henry, living in exile and relative safety in Brittany, recognized as the Earl of Richmond and to possibly arrange a marriage between him and a younger daughter of the king. No one, not even Margaret, was considering backing Henry Tudor as a rival for the throne. King Edward IV was firmly ensconced as monarch and had two healthy male heirs; the nation was sick of civil war and wanted peace. Why would anyone risk their life to try to put a crown on the far more distant Lancastrian heir?
But then England fell apart when Edward IV died young on 9 April 1483. On his death bed, the king had made his beloved and trusted brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the Lord Protector of the realm, so he could help and guide young King Edward V as he learned to govern. Instead, Edward V and his brother were declared bastards, and disappeared shortly after their uncle was crowned King Richard III. although people today still insist Richard couldn’t have done such an ugly thing as kill his nephews, most of the former Yorkist allies believed he had and turned against him.
Once the dowager Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Beaufort became convinced that Edward V and his brother were dead, they started to plot to put Henry Tudor on the throne in Richard’s place. As king, he would marry Princess Elizabeth of York, so that at least Edward IV would have a maternal grandson wear the crown. With a little help from the Welsh genius Lewis of Caerleon, the ladies gathered support for a rebellion. Backed by King Louis XI of France, Henry and Jasper Tudor sailed from France on 1 August 1485 with the English and Welsh anti-Ricardians and almost 3000 French-bought mercenaries. Henry Tudor’s troops defeated King Richard III at Bosworth Field on 22 August, and Henry Tudor was crowned King Henry VII at Westminster on 30 October.
Margaret’s baby boy was now king, and she was arguably the most powerful woman at court. Much has been made of supposed ‘contention’ between the Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville as to who was more influential at court, but the truth is that Margaret was willing to walk a half-step behind Elizabeth Woodville while that former queen was at court, and that is a huge concession to Elizabeth’s rank. Margaret did get the same high quality clothes, and she was given great power over the court by her son, but there is no real evidence this caused undue friction among the royal women. Henry’s bride, the new Queen Elizabeth, would have known Margaret since her youth and the women shared a mutual devotion to the king and the children Elizabeth bore him. There is no evidence Queen Elizabeth was anything other than fond of her mother-in-law.
After Lord Stanley’s death in 1504, Margaret was finally allowed to remain a widow. She devoted herself to her son and his children, and it is regrettable that she lived long enough to have to bury her only child in April of 1509. Greif seems to have destroyed her health, because her grandson, King Henry VIII, was still celebrating his coronation when news of his grandmother’s death on 29 June 1509 reached him, putting an end to the jousting and feasts while the kingdom officially mourned her passing.
It is a fitting tribute to Margaret Beaufort that the court seems to have genuinely mourned her loss. Bishop John Fisher praised her, saying:
“Of marvayllous gentyleness she was unto all folks, but specially unto her owne, whom she trustede, and loved ryghte tenderly. Unkynde she woulde not be unto no creature, ne forgetful of ony kyndeness or servyce done to her before, which is no lytel part of veray nobleness. She was not vengeable ne cruell, but redy anone to forgete and to forgyve injuryes done unto her, at the least desyre or mocyon made unto her for the same.”
Margaret was thinking of her family up until the last, and there is some indication that she feared her grandson – a much different kind of man than his serious father — was too frivolous and playful to a good king, since she died urging him to please listen to Bishop John Fisher, whom Henry VIII would later behead in 1535. Her grandson seems to have loved her, though. She was laid to rest in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey and Henry VIII commissioned her a grand tomb by famous Italian sculptor, Pietro Torrigiano. The gilded bronze effigy of Margaret depicts her with her head reposed on pillows in eternal rest, with her hands raised in prayer. Famous polymath Erasmus himself, who admired the erudite Margaret Beaufort, wrote the Latin inscription for her grave.
Regardless of Henry VIII’s questionable reign, the Tudor dynasty Margaret founded thrived. Through her granddaughter, Margaret Tudor, Margaret Beaufort’s direct descendant still wears the crown today. Not a bad legacy for a child bride who had little say over her own fate for the first 40 years of her life.