Margaret Beaufort

Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (1443-1509)

Margarat Beaufort was the only child and consequently the only heiress of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and his wife Margaret Beauchamp of Bletsoe. Margaret´s father was a grandson of King Edward III and the son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, therefore Margaret was a relative to the King and had Lancastrian roots.

Lady Margaret Beaufort had been married four times in her life, but is most mentioned with regard to her marriage with Edmund Tudor and being the mother of Henry VII.

Margaret´s first husband was John de la Pole. The child-marriage was arranged by The Duke of Suffolk, who wanted to secure his son´s future, who could then have had a claim to the throne, due to Margaret´s ancestry, if King Henry would have died childlessly. In 1453 the marriage was dissolved by Henry VI, so that his half brother, Edmund Tudor, the newly created Earl of Richmond, could marry Margaret.

Hence, Margaret was married to her second huband, Edmund Tudor, in 1455 at the age of 12. It is likely that the King wanted Edmund Tudor to as his heir, in the right of Margaret, due to her Lancastrian roots [Jansen 28]. But the marriage did not last long, since Edmund had been dead by November 1456, leaving behind his six-month pregnant wife. On the 28th of January 1457 Margaret gave birth to her only son, Henry VII. From this point on Maragaret´s main interest was to keep her son safe. In order to do so she took an active role in arranging her following marriages.

As Margaret wanted protection for herself and her son by Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, she married his second son Henry Stafford. Since Margaret and Henry were second cousins, a bishop had to grand dispensation, before the marriage could finally be contracted in 1450. The marriage lasted for 14 years and turned out to be a good decision, since Stafford was reconciled to the Yorkist King, Edward IV, and lived a prosporous live as they were given a great amount of land by Buckingham and could additionally profit from Margaret´s heritage. Their marriage ended as Stafford died in 1471 in The Battle of Barnet, fighting for the Yorkists.

Finally she married her fourth and last husband Lord Thomas Stanley in 1472. Stanley was a Yorkist supporter and so Margaret could return to King Edward IV´s court. As Stanley´s wife the Lancastrian Margaret was involved in the Yorkist court and took for example part in Richard III´s coronation in 1483. Nonetheless it is her who is said to have initiated the rebellion of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, againt Richard III. But the rebellion failed and Richard III wanted to pass an Act of Attainder in parliament against her. He accused her of treason, by sending messages to her son that aimed to overthrow the King by supporting the rebellion. It was only due to her husband´s good and trustworthy services at Richard´s court that saved her from the Act of Attainder. Anyway she was no longer allowed to communicate with her son and all her belongings as well as Margaret herself should be controlled by her husband.

Margaret´s efforts to defeat the King did not stop with the failure of the rebellion but she tried to defeat Richard III by arranging a marriage between her son and a daugther of Edward IV, since she believed that the Yorkist/Lancastrian marriage could gain many supporters. So Margaret and the widow of King Edward IV arranged the marriage between their children. Henry, Earl of Richmond and Elizabeth of York married in 1483.

Two years later Henry defeated Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth Field and became King Henry VII. Thus Lady Margaret of Richmond and Derby became "the King´s mother".

Margaret had a lot of influence in the King´s household as well as in the kingdom. In the household she had an influence on e.g. her grandchildren´s education and their marriages. With regard to the kingdom she influenced and adviced her son, took care of foreign affairs (e.g. with France) and presedet in the Royal Court. In addition she maintained her own household at Collyweston, where her husband was welcomed as a visitor but she lived there as an independent women as she had been declared a femme sole by the parliament, which meant that she could keep and administer all her belongings without a husband. Through the years of her son´s kingships the relationship between mother and son had always been a strong one. She had also been the right hand the the queen consort and used to travel everywhere with the couple.

Margaret died just two months after her son had passed away, in June 1509.

Sources

Jansen, Sharon L. The Monstrous Regiment of Women. Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Jonse, Michael K. & Underwood, Malcolm G. The King´s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Coutness of Richmond and Derby. Cambridge University Press, 1999.