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Back to Basics: A Series for Newer Members
Issue 9 -- June 1994
The
Beaufort Legitimation
| The Direct Descendants of John of Gaunt | Sources
for the Reign of Richard III | Mediaeval Dictionary:
Terms in Probate Law | Back to Index
The question of
whether or not any of the Beaufort family were capable of inheriting
the throne was academic until 1461 when Edward IV became king, since
the main line of the Lancastrians unquestionably came before the Beauforts.
From 1461 however, and certainly after the extinction of the senior
descendents of John of Gaunt in 1471, the status of the Beauforts became
of some importance. There was no doubt in Richard III's mind when he
issued his proclamation against Tudor in 1483 that Henry Tudor was of
illegitimate descent and incapable of becoming king, but was this so?
The legitimation
of the Beauforts, the children of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford,
was initiated by Richard II in 1397 when he issued Letters Patent, subsequently
read out by the Chancellor in Parliament, thus making it in effect an
Act of Parliament. They had in 1396 been legitimated by the Pope but
this could only spiritually legitimate them, it could not (necessarily)
allow them to inherit lands or titles. This the Act of Richard II did,
declaring them unconditionally able to 'receive, hold, bear and exercise'
'any kind of honours, dignities, preeminences' whatsoever. It did not
mention any right to inherit the throne, which it may well be Richard
assumed would be excluded anyway given the Beaufort's origin.
It seems that Henry
IV thought this because when John Beaufort, the eldest of the family,
asked Henry in 1407 for an exemplification of the original Letters Patent
they were issued in the same wording as before with the addition of
the words 'excepta dignitate regali'. This addition followed
an interpolation written into the original Patent after the Chancellor
had read it out in Parliament, but there is no doubt as to Henry IV's
intentions and that he did not regard his Beaufort cousins as in the
line of succession. He had not gone beyond his own sons in 1406 when
settling the crown on them all in succession after himself.
It thus seems that
the Beauforts, and hence Henry Tudor, probably did in strict law have
a right to inherit the throne. There remains a question though as to
whether Richard II could give a right to the throne in the case of children
born when both parents were married to other people and it seems probable
that the general opinion in the fifteenth century would have been that
the Beauforts were barred from the throne.
This question is
discussed in many books, 'The Beaufort Legitimation' by M.H. Jackson-Lipkin,
Coat of Arms, vol. 4, 1956-58, pp. 321-28
is the most detailed, and pp. 19-21, 23-24 of The King's
Mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby
by Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood (1992) is also useful.
Let us look at
the Beaufort family whose rise and fall parallels that of the House
of Lancaster to whom they were so closely related.
John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, had four children by his mistress (later to become
his third wife) Katherine Swynford, who were given the surname Beaufort:
John, created Earl of Somerset in 1397; Henry, who became a bishop in
1398 and Cardinal in 1427; Thomas, Duke of Exeter, who died without
issue in 1426; and Joan, whose second marriage to Ralph Neville Earl
of Westmorland produced nine children, including Cecily Neville, mother
of Richard III. Cardinal Beaufort, sometime Chancellor of England and
a leading councillor and money lender to the three Lancastrian kings,
is the most prominent member of his generation of the family. His life
is well covered in Cardinal Beaufort: a study of Lancastrian
ascendancy and decline by G.L. Harriss (1988); unfortunately
this book is not currently in the Library but we do have an article
by K.B. McFarlane, 'At the Deathbed of Cardinal Beaufort' (from Studies
in Medieval History presented to F.M. Powicke, edited
by R.W. Hunt and others, 1948), describing his will and his behaviour
on his deathbed and what they reveal about his financial dealings.
The next generation
of the family are represented by the five children of John the first
Earl: Henry, the eldest son died unmarried in 1418, the title passing
to his next brother, John, who was present as a boy of 16 with his cousin
Henry V's army in France and was taken prisoner in 1420 -- he remained
in captivity for 18 years. He died in 1444, two years after his marriage
to Margaret Beauchamp, which produced Margaret Beaufort. The title passed
to the third brother, Edmund. As one of the king's chief commanders
he was blamed for the loss of English lands in France. The paper by
M.K. Jones, 'Somerset, York and the Wars of the Roses' (from English
Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 411, April 1989) discusses
the enmity between the Dukes of York and Somerset which culminated in
his death in the first battle of St. Albans in 1455. There were also
two sisters: Joan, who married James I of Scotland and Margaret, who
married Thomas Courtenay Earl of Devon.
The third generation
are represented by Margaret Beaufort, who as the mother of Henry VII,
turned out to be the most significant member of the family, and by the
four children of Edmund, the fourth Earl. Henry succeeded his father
as one of the leaders of the Lancastrian party and commanded the victorious
Lancastrian army at the battle of Wakefield, where the Duke of York
was slain. He was attainted when the Yorkists came to power in 1461,
but pardoned in 1463: two articles examine Edward IV's policy of conciliation
-- 'Edward IV and the Beaufort Family: conciliation in early Yorkist
politics' by M.K. Jones (from The Ricardian,
Vol. VI, No. 83, December 1983) and 'Edward IV, the Duke of Somerset
and Lancastrian Loyalism in the North' by M.A. Hicks (from Northern
History, Vol. 20, 1984). However the policy was not successful
and he was captured at the battle of Hexham and executed in 1464. His
brother Edmund commanded a wing of the Lancastrian army at Barnet and
Tewkesbury and was beheaded after the latter battle, in which John,
the third brother, was also killed. Their sister, Joan, married the
Earl of Wiltshire.
The standard book
on Margaret Beaufort is the excellent biography by Jones and Underwood
mentioned above, but there are several others listed on page one of
the book catalogue, including C.H. Cooper's Memoir of Margaret
Countess of Richmond and Derby (1874, with extracts from
relevant documents), and a number of articles listed on page two of
the catalogue of papers in the Library. -- HCH
The study of the
history of the late fifteenth century depends on a study of the sources.
In the past the history of the period was written solely from chronicles,
using this term to mean contemporary narrative sources. Nowadays history
is written from a much wider range of documents, but the chronicles
still form a basis for the study of the period. Much has been written
about the sources for Richard's reign, a whole book indeed, Alison Hanham's
Richard III and his early historians 1483-1535,
(1935), but here we will only treat very briefly with the major English
writers, omitting Continental authors as well as Thomas More, whose
work on Richard requires a study in itself, which it receives in The
History of King Richard III (1963) by R.S. Sylvester.
First of all, the
London Chronicles. These seem to have developed from lists of City officials
with historical notes added. There are many of them, frequently partly
based on eye-witness accounts of events. Some were edited by C.L. Kingsford
in Chronicles of London, (1905, reprint 1977);
the best known is The Great Chronicle (edited
by A.H. Thomas and I.D. Thornley, 1983). Most of the London Chronicles
are anonymous, but The Great Chronicle is
probably by Robert Fabyan, an Alderman of London, who also wrote The
New Chronicles of England and France (edited by Henry
Ellis, 1811), a chronicle written from a Londoner's point of view.
Next is the Chronicle
of Crowland, edited by Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (1986).
The relevant part is the 'Second Continuation' which covers the years
1459-1486. In origin the Chronicle was a local compilation, a complete
forgery in fact, designed to substantiate the claims of the Abbey of
Crowland to privileges and property. The second continuation is a different
matter and is a description of events in the reigns of Edward IV and
Richard III by an eye-witness of many of them. The identity of the author
is much disputed. Nicholas Pronay believes it to be Dr. Henry Sharpe,
Protonotary of Chancery, but John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln has been
suggested, as have other candidates, (see for example Ricardian,
vol 7, nos. 91, 96, 99, and vol. 8, no. 108).
It has been argued
(Hanham, pp. 135-142, 148-151) that the Crowland Chronicle
was used as a source for our next 'chronicle', the
Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil. Vergil
was an Italian, resident in England for many years, Archdeacon of Wells,
and commissioned by Henry VII to write the history of England. He was
a good historian and for the period before 1400 shows an independence
of thought and a critical assessment of his sources, but after 1400
the work is biased towards showing how all events were a prelude to
the accession of the Tudors. Vergil is still useful however and undoubtedly
used the evidence of eye-witnesses of some of the events. The events
of 1422 to 1485 are found in Three Books of Polydore Vergil's
English History, edited by Henry Ellis, [Camden Society],
1844) and later events in The
Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil A.D. 1485-1537,
(edited Denys Hay, Camden Society, 1950). Passages omitted from the
published manuscript are given in Polydore Vergil, Renaissance
Historian and Man of Letters, by Denys Hay, (1952).
Finally we have
John Rous, the author of, amongst other works, the Historia
Regum Anglie. Rous was chaplain of the chapel of St. Mary
Magdalen at Guy's Cliff near Warwick, founded by Richard Beauchamp,
Earl of Warwick and Rous spent his life under the patronage of the Beauchamps
and their successors. His Historia is a general
history of England up to the accession of Henry VII. Except for a few
details it has no value apart from showing contemporary opinion in the
early years of the reign of Henry VII.
The sources for
the history of the later fifteenth century are discussed in Antonia
Grandsen, Historical Writing in England, ii, c.1307 to the
Early Sixteenth Century, (1982) and C.L. Kingsford, English
Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, (1913).
These books make it clear that much of the writing in the fifteenth
century was carefully done and based on sources, albeit within the limits
of the sources available. All of the books mentioned (with the exception
of Denys Hay's biography of Vergil) are available from the Society Library.
-- PWH
- Will:
a will is a document of binding force, revocable (or 'ambulatory')
until the testator's death, then irrevocable. It disposes (or 'devises')
a person's real propery, (the realty), lands, houses, etc. See Real
Property in the Mediæval Dictionary in
Back to Basics VIII.
- Testament:
this is the document leaving personal property (the personalty),
such as books, tools, animals, etc. Usually made at the same time
as, or combined with, the will.
- Capacity:
to make a will or a testament boys had to be over 14; girls over 12.
A person had to be of full mental capacity and to have the full intention
of making a will. Women (unless with the permission of their husbands)
had to be unmarried or widowed. A felon, an outlaw, or a traitor could
not make a will; their property was forfeit to the crown.
- Probate:
the official proving of a will, receiving probate is evidence that
a document has been received by a court as the last will and testament.
Wills were proved in ecclesiastical courts.
- Executor:
a person appointed by the testator to testatrix to obtain probate
and carry out the provisions of a will.
- Administrator:
if no executor is appointed by a will, an administrator was appointed
by the court. -- MO'R
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