Ricardian Fiction

Margaret Beaufort

Kathleen Spaltro

 "For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than are the children of light."

Translator and patron of literature and printing, foundress of chantries and of Christ's and St. John's Colleges at Cambridge, great landowner and shrewd manager of vast estates--the tiny but powerful figure of Margaret Beaufort united many apparent polarities. Most striking of the polarities she lived out in her 66 years were her intense involvement with her religion and, always intertwined with this, her perennial presence in the thick of the murderous dynastic struggles of her relatives.

Studded with saints, her life could serve as a précis of the Christian faith of the fifteenth century. Not only was Margaret Beaufort given to many acts of piety, to regular devotions, and to charitable beneficience, but the circumstances of her life also exposed her--from afar or at a distance--to figures currently and later revered for sanctity. After her father's death, Henry VI made Margaret the ward of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the implacable antagonist of Saint Joan of Arc. Margaret as a young widow with a posthumous child would later name her baby Henry after the same Henry VI--whose reputation for sanctity almost rivaled his renown for political fatuity. Much later in life, Margaret would take as her confessor John Fisher, whom she urged her grandson, the young Henry VIII, to obey in all things. Henry VIII would instead propel Fisher towards canonization by executing this courageous defender of Queen Catherine of Aragon and denigrator of the Royal Supremacy over the Church in England.

Margaret's closeness to Fisher, in particular, underscored her deep concern with the unworldly. Yet her family heritage, her marriages, and her advocacy of her child, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, could serve as a veritable index to the vagaries of the Lancastrian/York conflict and to its eventual resolution in the establishment of the Tudor dynasty. A daughter of the Beaufort house born on the wrong side of the blanket during John of Gaunt's prolonged affair with Katharine Swynford, Margaret was naturally a Lancastrian by blood. Her marriage to Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, half-brother to Henry VI, bonded her even more to the Lancastrian side. Henry VI, her brother-in-law as well as her second cousin, in urging Edmund to marry Margaret, may even have intended to make his half-brother his heir in the right of Margaret Beaufort.

The eventual birth of the Prince of Wales, Edward of Lancaster, to Henry VI's queen Margaret of Anjou, made all such shifts to create a Lancastrian succession seemingly unnecessary. Moreover, Henry VI's saintly incompetence and the ambitions of Richard Duke of York to supplant Edward of Lancaster as the heir ended in the political maelstrom of the Wars of the Roses. The accession of Edward IV and the dominance of the York dynasty necessitated Margaret's coming to terms with her Yorkist relatives through her next husband, Sir Henry Stafford. Her father-in-law, the first Duke of Buckingham, was another anatagonist of Joan of Arc; her husband's nephew and namesake, the second Duke, was a protégé of Edward IV, as well as the ally of Richard III. Margaret became a widow for the second time when Sir Henry Stafford died from wounds suffered from fighting for Edward IV at Barnet.

As the young widow of Edmund Tudor, she had proposed the marriage to Henry Stafford, which turned out to be a close and happy union. As the widow of Henry Stafford, she again made terms with her Yorkist relatives by marrying an ally of Edward IV and the steward of his household, Thomas, Lord Stanley, the Earl of Derby. When Richard III came to power, Stanley played an equivocal role. Stanley, who became steward of Richard's household, carried Richard's mace at the coronation, and Margaret carried Queen Anne Neville's train. Yet Margaret's involvement in her nephew Buckingham's failed rebellion caused Richard to attaint her and to jail her in the keeping of her husband. Undeterred, Margaret conspired with Bishop John Morton to supplant Richard III with her son, Henry Tudor, and Stanley won the battle of Bosworth Field for his stepson Henry by delaying his participation until he could effectively betray Richard by turning the tide.

Not only a conspirator and financier of a rebellion and invasion, Margaret was also a dynasty-maker. Years before the accession of Richard III, Margaret had discussed with Edward IV the possibility of uniting the Lancaster and York strains by marrying Princess Elizabeth of York to Henry Tudor. Now, with Richard III in power, she resumed those negotiations with Edward IV's widow, Elizabeth Woodville.

With Henry VII married to Elizabeth, Margaret's influence on both made her a formidable figure at court and in the land. Tragically for her, she outlived both her son and her daughter-in-law, being named as the chief executor of Henry VII's will and seeing her grandson begin his gaudy career as Henry VIII.

How do we reconcile the unworldly and devout Lady Margaret with this portrait of a mover and shaker whose designs had crucial impact on the death throes of the House of York and the birth pangs of the Tudor dynasty? Perhaps we could say that Lady Margaret Beaufort both enjoyed and was fit for the exercise of power, both spiritual and political, and that she saw no such contradictions between spirituality and clout. Unlike her kinsman Henry VI, whose undoubted goodness and piety undermined his political acumen, and unlike his queen Margaret of Anjou, whose effective and ferocious political leadership seemed to dismiss the spiritual realm, Margaret Beaufort comfortably united religiosity with an appetite for power.

The historians and biographers admire her as a formidable woman, who even gained the right to hold property and to sue, giving her an unique legal status. Their questions center upon what reading to give the ambiguous evidence about certain matters: (1) how valid did the Beaufort claim seem to contemporaries?; (2) did Henry VII base his claim upon his Beaufort descent or not?; (3) what was the exact nature and extent of Margaret Beaufort's influence upon Henry VII?

Cicely Neville, the mother of Edward IV and Richard III, came from an older generation of Beauforts; the granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Cicely was Margaret's father's first cousin and thus Margaret's first cousin once removed. Both were mothers and grandmothers of kings; moreover, these blood cousins were further related by the marriage of Henry Tudor to Elizabeth of York, for Margaret was Elizabeth's mother-in-law and Cicely Elizabeth's grandmother. Thus Henry VIII had Margaret Beaufort as a grandmother and Cicely Neville as a great-grandmother. When this matriarch of the York dynasty died in 1495, her will left to Margaret a breviary bound in cloth of gold. Was this elegant gift in itself emblematic of the contradictions Margaret Beaufort embodied?

[Ed. Note: Spaltro had hoped to include a review of the fictional treatment of Margaret Beaufort in a novel, The Lady Margaret, but was unable to obtain it via interlibrary loan as we went to press. In most other novels of the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort makes only brief appearances, chiefly as offstage player in the negotiations with a sanctuary-bound Elizabeth Woodville for the marriage of Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor. When she does appear, she is usually characterized as reserved and austere.--LVB]

• Jones. M.K. and Underwood, M.G. (1992). The King's Mother. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Seward, D. (1995). The Wars of the Roses. New York: Viking.
• Simon, L. (1982). Of Virtue Rare: Matriarch of the House of Tudor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

About the Author: Kathleen Spaltro, a new member, lives in Woodstock, IL with her husband and two beloved dogs, Winston and Franklin. [A female black lab named Stalin also used to live in her neighborhood.] Since receiving a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern 16 years ago, she has written, edited, and taught literature and writing in a variety of capacities. Currently, she is trying to master the mysteries of HTML.

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