All these lightly should be torned up so downe
Ne were of wommenthe prefight stableness.1
Lancastrian fortunes reached their nadir in 1471. Not even in the years following Henry VI’s deposition a decade earlier had things been so bleak. Then, the king and prince had remained focal points for dynastic hopes: an embodiment of a potential future in which the wheel of fortune would turn again and propel them back into power. With their deaths, there was no clear replacement, no younger Lancastrian son or brother in waiting, with the Beaufort line coming to an end and the Tudors never representing a serious claim due to their parentage. All the male members of the dynasty had died without leaving an heir, or those heirs had themselves been killed. However, there was a woman in whom the blood of John of Gaunt still flowed: his great-granddaughter Margaret Beaufort.
The devastating battle at Barnet in April 1471 which had claimed the life of Warwick also proved to be the last stand of another Lancastrian knight whose death helped shape the dynasty’s future. Margaret’s third husband, Sir Henry Stafford, had fought on the side of the Yorkists to regain the throne for Edward IV, but had sustained such injuries that he was brought home to die. He lingered for six months but his wounds finally killed him on 4 October. Margaret was then 28. Over her short life thus far she had experienced drama and reversals that had taken her from the heart of the restored Lancastrian court into an uncertain future. However, with a wise marriage, clever negotiation and a degree of good fortune, she was to emerge a woman of resolution and courage, whose determination was to restore the crown to the bruised house of Lancaster.
Margaret’s early history had been tainted by tragedy. The daughter of John Beaufort, Gaunt’s grandson, she would have had no memories of the father who had fought alongside Henry V in France and replaced the Duke of York as Lieutenant of Normandy. However, his loyalty had not always been returned: between his capture at the battle of the Bauge in 1428 and 1438, he had been imprisoned by the French before being ransomed and allowed to return home. His final campaign in Cherbourg and Gascony proved a disaster and his death in 1444 has long been considered a possible suicide. The official version of his demise charged it to ‘an unexpected infirmity’ and there were plenty of precedents of such illnesses killing previously healthy adults in their late thirties. By the 1460s though, French chronicler Thomas Basin described Beaufort’s ‘unexpected infirmity’ as brought on by an inability to bear failure and shame, being ‘vain and inefficient in his deeds’ but his ‘proud and presumptuous spirit’ made him ‘unwilling to bear patiently any sort of disgrace or injury’.2 By the time the Croyland Chronicle was written in the 1470s, Beaufort’s pride had escalated into ‘extreme indignation’ at being accused of treason. Unable to bear the stain, he had ‘accelerated his death by putting an end to his existence, it is generally said, preferring to cut short his sorrow, rather than pass a life of misery, labouring under so disgraceful a charge’.3
Following her father’s death, Henry VI granted Margaret’s wardship to Suffolk, even though her mother was still living, which was then fairly usual practice. At Berkhamsted Castle on 31 May 1444 he confirmed that:
For asmoche as oure Cousine the Duc of Somerset is nowe late passed to Goddes mercy, the whiche hath a doughter and heir to succede after hym of full tender age called Margarete. We, considering the notable services that oure Cousin th’erl of Suffolk hath doon unto us … have graunted unto hym to have the warde and marriage of the said Margarete withouten anything therefore unto us or oure heires yelding.
Although Suffolk was now her guardian, the girl remained with her mother at Bletsoe Castle in Bedfordshire, to be brought up in anticipation of a great future.4
Margaret’s mother, Margaret Beauchamp, had been the heiress to her only brother, with lands and estates in Wiltshire, Dorset and Bedfordshire. She was a considerable catch when she first married, in her teens, to Sir Oliver St John and bore him seven children before being widowed at the age of 27. Thus Margaret already had a large family of stepsiblings whose marriages would later create a network of affiliation with the important Scrope, Pole and Zouche dynasties. Margaret was raised with the St John children, even embroidering their coat of arms into a decorative piece that remained on display in the castle until the reign of James I. Margaret was taught to read French and a little Latin; later, Bishop Fisher would describe her as ‘of singular wisedom ferre passyng the comyn rate of women. She was good in remembraunce and of holding memorye … a redy witte she had also to concyve all thyngs … right studious she was in Bokes, which she had in grete number, both in Englysh and in Frenshe.’5 She was also devout, even at a young age, praying to St Nicholas the helper of all true maidens at four in the morning ‘to beseech him to put in her mynde what she were best to do’.6 Fisher also identified the intensity of emotion that would show itself on certain occasions later in her life, writing that Margaret was ‘endued with great towardness of nature’. Later, both she and her mother would be admitted into the confraternity of the Abbey of Croyland, close to their property of Deeping, as well as patronising other religious establishments. Mindful early on of her daughter’s position, the potential stigma of suicide coupled with the Beaufort inheritance, her mother agreed to the betrothal of the young Margaret, aged between 1 and 3, to John de la Pole, eldest son of William, first Duke of Suffolk. A formal marriage ceremony may have been undertaken, but it was dissolved after Suffolk’s death and Margaret herself never considered them to be legally husband and wife.
Margaret may have been the only daughter born of her parents’ marriage, an older brother dying young, but she was not her father’s only surviving girl. A woman named Tacine or Tacina or Thomasine of Somerset has sometimes been attached to John, Duke of Somerset, an affair he had whilst on campaign in France. She is traceable through documents relating to her husband, Reginald Grey, seventh Baron Grey of Wilton, who was born on or around 1420. If his wife was a similar age, this would place her father in his late twenties, and their encounter during the period of his service with Henry V. However, some confusion may have arisen between two women of similar name, obscuring the identity of both or perhaps creating two individuals out of one. According to at least one genealogical site, Grey had already been married once, to a Tacinda Tudor, reputedly a daughter of Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois. If so, this Tacinda died before October 1447, after which point Grey remarried to a Thomasine Beaufort, John’s illegitimate daughter by an unknown mother, who went on to bear Grey a son and heir. Tacine’s existence is proven by a reference in the Council records for 20 June 1443, when her foreign birth necessitated the award of English nationality: ‘the Kyng graunted at the same time and place that Tacyn doughter bastard to my said Lord of Somerset and her heires of her body lawfully begotten.’ This was probably in preparation for her marriage because in October she is listed for the first time as Grey’s wife; the last reference to her is made in 1469.
It is likely that Margaret was aware of her illegitimate half-sister’s existence but with the gap of a generation between them and Tacine already married by the time Margaret was born, they may not have had much to do with each other. Reginald Grey fought with the Yorkists at Mortimer’s Cross and lived long enough to see his wife’s nephew become the first Tudor King of England. In 1447, Margaret’s mother married again, by special licence, to Lionel, or Leon, de Welles, sixth Baron Welles, who had served Henry VI in France and campaigned with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester in 1435; he had also been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and joint Deputy of Calais. Welles already had five children from a first marriage, and his new wife bore him a son, John, around 1450. It is not clear whether the young Margaret and the St John children went with their mother to live with him, or where she may have lived if not, but a detail on a tomb in Bletsoe church may shed some light on the question. A Ralph Lannoy was buried there in 1458 and his tomb was formerly engraved with the legend ‘Cofferer and Keeper of the Wardrobe to the most noble Margaret, Duchess of Somerset, then married to her third husband, Leo Lord Welles’.7 The fact that Ralph lies in Bletsoe may be an indicator that it was Welles who moved into Margaret’s home, rather than the other way round.
There is no surviving image of Margaret as a young woman. The familiar portraits of her in severe nun-like clothing, head covered and hands together in prayer, which is echoed on her tomb, date either from her final widowhood, during the reign of her son, or from a much later period. Bishop Fisher described her as physically small and historian David Starkey sees a likeness between her picture and that of her grandson Prince Arthur, identifying hooded eyes with bags under them and a hooked nose as common features. It would seem that she was petite and dark-eyed, but looks were of little consequence when it came to the duty of dynastic marriages. More important was pedigree and affiliation, education and character. Fisher also said that Margaret was ‘of singular easiness to be spoken unto, and full courteous answer she would make to all that came unto her. Of marvellous gentleness she was unto all folks, but specially unto her own, whom she loved and trusted right tenderly.’ She never forgot any kindness or service done to her, ‘which is no little part of very nobleness’, and she was always ready to forgive and forget an injury.
In 1453, Margaret was summoned to court by Margaret of Anjou. Accompanied by her mother, the 9-year-old arrived in London in the middle of February and was given a generous allowance of 100 marks to purchase suitable clothing. Margaret later recalled that she was at Westminster in May when the Suffolk marriage was dissolved in favour of another match. As she told her confessor, she had prayed to St Nicholas for guidance and he had advised that she repudiate John de la Pole in favour of Edmund Tudor. Her strong sense of personal destiny was not untypical of aristocratic women of the period who had been raised to make dynastic marriages, especially those with royal blood, but her young age underlines the intensity of her focus.
Margaret’s wardship was granted to the Tudor brothers and, on 12 August, Henry awarded her a dowry of £111 2s 2d, a third share of 500 marks owing to her father.8 She married Edmund at Bletsoe Castle on 1 November 1455, conceived his child and was left a widow after his death in captivity the following year. It had been an intense year for a girl barely into her teens, even though she had a strong sense of her destiny and dynasty. Modern sensibilities find the early circumstances of Margaret’s life uncomfortable and, even by early modern standards, when consummation was usually delayed until the onset of puberty or the age of consent (at 14 for girls), her married life began when she was very young. Yet, in spite of her age, it cannot be called rape, as some historians and novelists have referred to the marital relations between Edmund and Margaret. ‘Rape’ is an accusation dependent upon laws of consent, and there is nothing to imply that she did not consent. Her age makes the affair distasteful to twenty-first-century morality, but Edmund was not breaking the law. To describe him as a rapist is anachronistic and unfair.
When it came to delivering the child, Margaret’s confessor described her as physically very small, so even though she had begun to menstruate, as her conception of Henry proves, the width of her pelvis must have made for a difficult and traumatic delivery. Henry arrived on 28 January at Pembroke Castle, and Margaret was lucky to survive. She barely had time to recover before her mother was already planning another alliance for the young widow. Three months later, the king settled a third of Edmund’s lands upon Margaret, to the value of an annual dowry of £200.9
Margaret’s second marriage took place in January 1458 at Maxstoke Castle, less than a year after she had given birth and while she was still only 14 or 15. Her husband, Sir Henry Stafford, was her third cousin, eighteen years her senior, the son of the Lancastrian loyalist the Duke of Buckingham. He may also have been a friend of her father. The couple probably spent their early married years at Bourne Castle in Lincolnshire, where a medieval moated site had replaced the Norman motte and bailey and the Saxon Manor that had been home to Hereward the Wake. Indications from correspondence suggest that it was a harmonious match, although no children were born to the couple, perhaps as a result of injuries Margaret had sustained from her first labour at such a young age. After the death of the Duke of Buckingham at Northampton in July 1460, the couple received a bequest of 400 marks annually. The following March, Stafford fought for the Lancastrians at Towton; he was on the losing side, but was pardoned by Edward IV on 25 June.
Stafford was fortunate on that occasion but the escalating struggles between the two factions continued to make a mark on Margaret’s personal life. In 1459, her stepfather Lord Welles was captured by the Yorkists after the battle of Blore Heath and later released, but he was less fortunate in 1461. Having served in the army of Margaret of Anjou and been victorious at the second battle of St Albans, he was killed in the terrible slaughter in the snow at Towton and attainted by Parliament that December. Thus none of his properties or effects went to his widow, who survived him by two decades.
The Staffords adjusted to the new Yorkist regime and even prospered. In 1466, Edward granted them an old Beaufort property in recognition of Margaret’s descent, the manor of Woking in Surrey. This had once belonged to her grandfather John Beaufort, through his marriage to Margaret Holland, daughter of Joan of Kent from her first marriage. It was an impressive property built on a high spot amid marshy ground encircled by the River Wey, with a large great hall, pantry and buttery, a chapel and private chambers, of which one section of red brick wall remains. Outside the walls lay extensive parklands, fishponds, orchards and gardens. The manor accounts from 1467 show that extra staff were hired to help the new couple settle in, and that roofs and stables were mended and a new larder built.10 It was from this period that Margaret’s friendship with Sir Reginald Bray began: he was resident at Woking as her estate manager and would remain her devoted lifelong servant. In the late 1460s, Stafford worked for the Yorkist dynasty, attending on the king and present at council meetings: once, Margaret accompanied him to London for the opening of Parliament, staying at the Mitre in Cheapside,11 an inn later known to Samuel Pepys.
In 1468, the Staffords entertained Edward IV at their hunting lodge Brookwood, near Guildford. Margaret would have overseen the arrangements, including the ordering of local produce such as oysters, pike, lampreys, wildfowl, five barrels of ale and ‘half a great conger for the king’s dinner’. A pewter dinner service of five dozen dishes and four dozen saucers was ordered from London and Margaret selected yards of velvet and Flemish cloth in order to make her dress for the occasion. It was probably a diplomatic move on their part, a gesture of reconciliation that serves as a reminder that the future was by no means guaranteed and, as far as the Staffords knew, King Edward might reign for another thirty years and be succeeded by one of his sons. It was pragmatic to accept the situation and attempt to live as best they could under the Yorkists, no matter what Margaret and her husband might have thought of them.
Another Beaufort marriage took place in the late 1460s to connect the Lancastrian dynasty with one of the most famous families of the century. At some point before 1470, Margaret’s niece Anne, the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, married William Paston, a younger son of the Justice of the Peace of the same name. William senior and Margaret, his wife, were the authors and recipients of many of the surviving Paston letters, which paint a vivid picture of life during the period. On 1 March, Anne was referred to in a letter by her nephew John Paston as having recently undergone the process of churching, so she had borne at least one child by this point, although accounts of exactly how many she did deliver are conflicting, sometimes suggesting that she had four girls and sometimes adding four brothers. John mentioned her again in a letter that June, to say that ‘myn Lady Anne and myn Onyll Wyllam shall be at London within thes viii or x daiys’, so Anne was clearly well enough to travel to Warwick Inn, which was their usual base when visiting the capital. The Pastons were initially Lancastrian sympathisers, especially as Edward IV ruled against John Paston’s inheritance of some family land, and they welcomed the readeption of Henry VI, during which William and Anne celebrated their marriage. However, like other families, they were not averse to playing the diplomatic game when necessary and did make efforts to win the favour of the Yorkist king. In 1469, Warwick had laid siege to their property of Caister Castle, but it was restored to the family in 1471 and in the same year the Pastons reciprocated by fighting with the earl at Barnet. Their fortunes fluctuated again with the return of Edward IV but they found a champion in Anthony Wydeville, brother to his wife. The Pastons were proud of their lineage and, like many families of the day, were keen to clarify it and preserve their heritage and rights. It was probably William, identified from his handwriting, who compiled the Paston Book of Arms at some point before 1459, laying out the coats of arms of the family and others related to it by marriage.
In September 1496, Anne’s husband made his will, by which point Anne was already dead. He requested that he be buried in the church of the Black Friars in London, at the north end of the high altar, ‘by my Lady Anne, late my wife’ and that a large stone be placed on top of them both. He also mentions his two daughters Agnes and Elizabeth, between whom his lands and tenements were to be divided, indicating that by this point they were his only two surviving offspring. If Anne had borne sons, to whom the estates would usually have been bequeathed, they had predeceased their father. In fact, this is confirmed by a note by Sir Nicholas Nicolas in his 1826 Testament Vetusta,12 while the couple’s third daughter, Anne, married Gilbert Talbot and bore at least two sons. William made provision for his servants and tenants, and for the sale of his properties Warwick Inn, Castre Clere and in Norwich. The church of the Black Friars Priory, where he and Anne lay, was dissolved during the Reformation.
Meanwhile, the wardship of Margaret’s son Henry had been given to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who raised the boy at Raglan Castle. Margaret had little say in the matter and, although it was common practice for the sons of the nobility to be raised in the household of a mentor, Henry was her only child. She was able to write to him and visit on occasion, but it cannot have been easy. As the male heir of Lancastrian blood, albeit through his mother’s side from John of Gaunt, coupled with his position as half-nephew to Henry VI, Henry’s proximity to the throne may not have been as great as the sons of York, but it certainly put him within striking distance. He was an important figure in the Lancastrian picture, whose young life was passed in awareness of the dynastic conflicts that were dividing the country. It was probably with the boy’s dynastic heritage in mind that Pembroke included a clause in his will of 1468, stating that he wished his daughter ‘Maud be wedded to the Lord Henry of Richmond’. However, this match would never take place. The following year, Pembroke was executed by the Lancastrians following the battle of Edgecoat, when the rebels Warwick and George, Duke of Clarence had taken Edward IV by surprise. The loss of the man who had been a surrogate father was a terrible blow for Henry and, for the time being, he sheltered from the storm with Pembroke’s wife, the Countess Anne, to see which way the tide would turn.
The coming year saw more heartbreak for Margaret’s family, this time concerning Margaret’s stepbrother Richard Welles and his son Robert. At least a decade her senior, Richard had fought alongside his father at St Albans in 1461 and been part of Queen Margaret’s army which turned away from London; he had also survived Towton, where his father had lost his life. As was the case with many figures of the time, Richard thought it prudent to ally himself to the new regime, as well as having family ties with the Earl of Warwick. He received a pardon from Edward IV in February 1462 and, after fighting alongside him at Hexham in 1464, where Henry Beaufort was killed, he was awarded his family estates and the title of Lord Welles. In fact, in 1468, Edward favoured Richard’s claim in a land dispute that had emerged between him, his half-brother John Welles and his stepmother, Margaret Beauchamp.
However, Richard remained locked in a dispute over land with his neighbour Sir Thomas Burgh, who was Master of the Horse to Edward IV. In February 1470, Richard’s son Robert attacked Burgh’s house then joined the forces of the Earl of Warwick. The king summoned Richard to London to explain. Initially, Richard claimed to be too unwell to travel, before travelling south and seeking sanctuary at Westminster. He was granted a pardon the following month, but kept in prison whilst Edward dealt with the rebels. When Robert refused to submit to the king, Edward ordered that his father be executed, followed by Robert’s own death as a traitor a week later. Robert had borne arms against the king so had little reason to expect mercy, but the death by association of his father, Margaret’s stepbrother, after years of loyal service, must have been difficult to accept. When Warwick finally caught up with Edward and the king was forced to flee, Lancastrian fortunes underwent a sudden reversal.
Margaret Beaufort would have heard the news of the restoration of Henry VI with delight, recognising it as the opportunity for her son that she had been waiting for. In October 1470, Margaret, Stafford and the 13-year-old Henry of Richmond travelled by barge to Westminster, where they dined with the king and Jasper Tudor and Henry VI is said to have predicted that his young nephew would heal the divisions of civil war. Thus, Margaret’s son was already being imagined as a future king, a successor to the dynasty given the lack of heirs. It may have been a triumphant moment, but it was brief, as the Lancastrian fortunes were to turn again.
At the end of March 1471, two weeks before the battle of Barnet, Edmund Beaufort paid a visit to Stafford and Margaret at Woking, staying with them for four days. The return of Margaret of Anjou and Prince Edward was imminent and Warwick still held the kingdom for Henry VI, who was something of a puppet with little real understanding of the dramatic events of the past decade. A real Lancastrian restoration was within grasp, with the support of the Tudors and Beauforts, and the Staffords must have been privy to Edmund’s discussions and plans, perhaps even his entreaties for support. What happened during Beaufort’s visit is unclear, but when Stafford was summoned by Edward IV to fight at Barnet, he obeyed and fought on the side of the Yorkists. Perhaps he considered Edward to be the rightful king or, pragmatically, to be a stronger king: perhaps the thought of treason and reprisals moved him to support a more viable regime. Margaret may have agreed with him, or she may have argued against him. It is impossible now to know her feelings on the matter, but no doubt she considered the position of her son, both as a potential heir to Henry VI and in terms of his personal safety and survival. If she disagreed with Humphrey’s decision, she could not prevent him from taking arms against the Lancastrians.
Humphrey’s wounds at Barnet claimed his life. He made his wife executor of his will and left a new blue velvet trapping for four horses to his stepson Henry, a ‘grizzled horse’ to Reginald Bray and £160 for masses to be said for his soul. Other items in his will suggest his piety and local connection to the parish church of Woking for he left money to the high altar and also the church’s ‘works’, a cause which Margaret would have shared. In addition, the witnesses of the will included a Walter Baker, the local vicar and Sir Richard Brigge, ‘prior of the Priory of Newark’. Henry left everything else, ‘the residue of all my goods, catalogues and debts … I give and bequeath to my entirely beloved wife Margaret, Countess of Richmond, she thereof to dispose her own free will for evermore’.13
Henry’s final resting place was the de Bohun Castle of Pleshey in Essex, as he was a great-grandson of Eleanor de Bohun and Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. Margaret’s son was more fortunate. Jasper Tudor failed to make it to Tewkesbury on time, which may have saved his life as well as that of young Henry. After hearing of the Lancastrian defeat and the surrender of the queen, Jasper Tudor fled to Brittany and took his nephew with him. Both men were included in the Act of Attainder passed by the Yorkists against their enemies shortly thereafter. Margaret Beaufort would not see her son again for fourteen years.
Margaret temporarily left her home at Woking and took a reduced staff of sixteen to live with her widowed mother in her London home of La Ryall in the parish of St Michael. It was a building with strong Lancastrian connections. First named as a tenement in the thirteenth century, it had been granted by Edward III to Philippa of Hainault, who carried out extensive repairs to the property and used it to house her wardrobe. It had also been used as a refuge by Joan of Kent, wife of the Black Prince, during the terrifying Peasants’ Revolt;14 presumably before or after she had been insultingly kissed in the Tower by some of the rebels. By the sixteenth century it was being used as stables but it was probably still a prestigious dwelling in the 1470s. While she was at La Ryall that May, Margaret drew up a will, giving instructions that her body be buried alongside that of her first husband Edmund Tudor, removing him from Carmarthen to Bourne Abbey and preserving an English estate for her son in the event of his return, her vision clearly focused on his future. Just months later, she was left without a husband or son, having lost her Beaufort cousins under a victorious Yorkist regime and facing possibly the most important choice regarding her future.
Eight months after Stafford’s death, Margaret remarried. Her new husband was Thomas Stanley, a wealthy, shrewd and powerful figure who had served the Lancastrians and made a successful transition to the Yorkist regime. Stanley had been born in 1435, the son of the Stanley to whom Henry IV had granted the Isle of Man and lieutenancy of Ireland, who had acted as gaoler to Eleanor Cobham and broken the news of his arrest to Gloucester at Bury St Edmunds. Thomas had been a squire at the court of the young Henry VI but he had married Eleanor, the daughter of the Earl of Salisbury, who had borne him nine children. When he was called upon by Margaret of Anjou to fight for the king at Blore Heath, Thomas had held his armies back instead of coming into conflict with his father-in-law. Nor had he gone to the assistance of his brother-in-law Warwick in 1470, but had assisted Edward during his return from exile in 1471, and was rewarded with the position of Steward of the King’s Household. Eleanor died in 1472, so Thomas’ next marriage must have taken place within months. This has been taken as evidence that his union with Margaret was a purely political one, and though the parish registers of half a century later reveal that some marriages did take place within months of bereavement, Margaret probably sought a powerful protector in Stanley and he, in turn, was happy to unite with the Beaufort family with its extensive connections.
Margaret and Stanley were wed at Knowsley Hall in Lancashire, with a contract allowing mutual financial and legal advantage to both. She gained lordships and manors worth an annual £500 while he received similar grants totalling £800. They lived mostly away from the Yorkist court in the north but did return to London for certain occasions, as Stanley was a member of the royal council and Steward of the King’s Household. Husband and wife were present in the capital during Edward’s preparations for the invasion of France in 1475, when Margaret would have said goodbye to Stanley, who was to command forces for the king. He was also involved in the Scottish campaign of 1482 led by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. On occasions during his absence, Margaret took on some of his administrative and local government duties, hearing disputes between tenants and sitting on panels to resolve property questions. For all intents and purposes, the Stanleys were supporters of Edward IV’s regime. They were connected to the Yorkist royal family by marriage, as Thomas’ son married Joan le Strange, niece of Queen Elizabeth and such ties were inevitable given the closed world of the aristocracy, but the Yorkists had been responsible for the deaths of Margaret’s second husband, stepfather, cousins and stepbrothers.
The nature of the Stanleys’ marriage is unclear, but the absence in the initial contract of provision for heirs has been interpreted as evidence that Margaret wished to live chastely, almost like a vowess, under the protection of a husband. Had she simply entered a nunnery, many political avenues would have been barred to her in the service of her son. Whether or not their union was consummated, it provided her with a necessary stability in changing times. She was 29, still not considered too old in this period and still potentially fertile, according to the birth patterns of her direct contemporaries. There is a fair chance that her experience of giving birth at the age of 13, long before her immature body was ready for such an ordeal, created a lasting problem that prevented her from conceiving again or that, as a result, she imposed a ban on sexual activity that arose more from the desire to survive than any sense of piety. Stanley had three sons who lived to adulthood from his first marriage, so did not have much incentive to produce more. Presumably the matter was discussed, but whatever decision they reached, the mutual benefits clearly outweighed any disadvantages.
Stanley was not only gaining a wife with advantageous family connections, he was also marrying a woman of considerable strength of character, piety and intelligence, as well as discretion and an understanding of the political system and just how far her influence might extend. In many ways, she was an ideal wife. Margaret was not about to push the boundaries of gendered behaviour, to challenge authority or respond with a heavy hand, as Margaret of Anjou had done. While the former queen was active and warlike in the defence of her son, Margaret Beaufort adopted a quieter, stealthier method of waiting behind the scenes, building alliances and biding her time. Circumstances dictated their actions but character also played a significant part in their decision-making. Stanley clearly trusted Margaret’s abilities, deputising to her in legal matters less than eighteen months after the marriage. In November 1473, he placed her in charge of an arbitration panel established to deal with a property dispute in Liverpool and the following August she oversaw another issue that had arisen between two of her husband’s tenants.15
In 1476, the Stanleys were present at the reinterment of Richard, Duke of York and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland. After their deaths at the battle of Wakefield in December 1460, York’s and Rutland’s heads had been set upon Micklegate Bar in York, while their bodies had been hastily buried, probably in the Priory of St John the Evangelist at Pontefract. Now, the remaining York brothers had them brought home to Fotheringhay, where they would lie in two impressive tombs inside the church. Richard’s coffin was topped by a life-size effigy wearing a gown of royal dark blue and ermine, with an angel holding a crown above his head to signify that he was king by right. In the last week of July, a solemn procession including Lord Stanley and Lord Welles accompanied both coffins from Pontefract to Fotheringhay, dressed in black with black hoods. Margaret was probably present in the church when the bodies were reburied on 30 July, with the queen and other leading ladies who offered mass pennies and filed past to show their respect. The Stanleys were among over 1,500 people who were housed in tents on the site afterwards and would have participated in a funeral feast that drew in thousands more. With Edward IV firmly back in control of the country, it did no harm to the Lancastrian cause for Margaret to be seen to be toeing their line.
In 1480, Margaret and Stanley were summoned to attend upon Edward IV and his family. With her own son classed as a traitor and exiled for almost a decade already, it must have been a bittersweet moment when she was asked to take a formal role and welcome the king’s youngest daughter. Bridget was born at Eltham Palace on 10 November and her christening followed the next morning, so Margaret must have been invited in advance, and was staying in London or at Eltham itself, awaiting the outcome of the queen’s confinement. The service was performed by Edward Storey, Bishop of Chichester, who was the queen’s chaplain, accompanied by a procession bearing 100 torches. The girl’s godparents were her aunt Elizabeth, Lady Maltravers and her grandmother Cecily Neville, with William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester as godfather. Margaret was responsible for carrying the baby to the high altar. It was a trusted role, indicative of just how far Lord Stanley’s concessions to the Yorkists had been successful. It was also clear that Margaret was judged to be of good character, a pious and respected woman; the legacy of a primer and a book of the Epistles and Gospels from her kinswoman the Duchess of Buckingham confirms this. However, soon after little Bridget reached her third birthday, Margaret’s position would again be called into question.
Just before the storm hit, there was an encouraging period of calm. In the first half of 1482, Margaret’s mother died and was buried at Wimboune Minster, in Dorset, designated a royal peculiar by Edward II. That June, the Stanleys were at Westminster, where they consulted Edward IV over the disposal of Margaret Beauchamp’s extensive properties, accumulated as the widow of three husbands. Margaret and Thomas must have made the case for her son Henry, as Edward agreed to reserve the majority of the legacy for the young man’s use, on condition that he return from exile ‘to be in the grace and favour of the king’s highness’. They may even have discussed a marriage between Henry and Elizabeth of York at this stage, as Lord Stanley later recalled, and Tudor’s creation as Earl of Richmond.16 This proposal predated any intention of Henry to invade England, or assert his claim over that of the Yorkist dynasty, so there is little reason to doubt that it was a genuine offer. Margaret could begin to envision a future where her son lived close by, reconciled with the Yorkist king as she was, playing a part in national or local politics, perhaps even raising a family in the properties inherited from her maternal line. After all, the Beauchamp line had long been connected with royalty, serving Edward III and his wife, when the new line of the present Lancastrian family had been created. But an unexpected event meant that instead of returning home to enjoy his estates peacefully, Henry Tudor would cross the Channel at the head of an invading army.
In April 1483, the 40-year-old Edward IV died after an expedition on the Thames. Having ruled for over twenty years through charisma and strength of character, he had kept a lid on the various factions in his court, from the old nobility to the extended family of his wife, the Wydevilles. His end was unexpected for, though chroniclers like Croyland insisted that he had lived a debauched life, Edward was still active: he had summoned Parliament on 20 January, negotiated a treaty with the Scots and spent much of March at Windsor Castle. Various causes have been suggested for his death, ranging from a stroke, pneumonia, a surfeit of vegetables or an unsubstantiated claim of poison. He had fallen ill by 2 April, but did not die at once. It would have been apparent to his court that his death was imminent. False reports of his death even reached York on 6 April.
The king’s eldest son was still underage. Prince Edward had been born in sanctuary during the readeption in November 1470 and he was twelve and a half at the time of his father’s death, around eighteen months away from ruling in his own right. He had been raised under a careful programme planned by both his parents, at his own establishment at the traditional Yorkist base of Ludlow Castle on the Welsh Marches. He was in Ludlow with his uncle Anthony Wydeville when the news reached them that the king had died on 9 April. King Edward IV had made a will back in 1475, before he set off to invade France, but at that point his son had been only 4 years old. It is likely that in his dying days, Edward added at least a codicil to his previous will, naming his younger brother Richard as Protector, or establishing a regency council just as Henry V had named his brothers Senior Regent and Protector of the Realm. However, neither of these codicils survived in the coming days, if they were written down at all. This might indicate that they were destroyed by parties whose interests they did not serve.
The news of Edward’s death reached Richard, Duke of Gloucester a couple of days after it arrived in Ludlow. He travelled south to intercept the train of the prince, who had set out for London in anticipation of his imminent coronation. What happened during the coming weeks has given rise to much speculation among historians seeking an explanation of the dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the house of York. With so little primary material surviving to give insight into the motivation of the key players, it is easy to describe the series of events but much harder to interpret them and form any sort of consistent answer or theory. Perhaps this in itself highlights that the transfer of power from Edward’s son to his brother was less of a concerted plan than a series of reactions which escalated to an unpredicted level as both sides sensed the necessity to strike against those they distrusted, threats real or imagined. Firstly, Gloucester met with Prince Edward and Anthony Wydeville at Stony Stratford and, after an evening of apparent conviviality, ordered the arrest of Wydeville and two of his associates, and took custody of Edward. The news reached London in advance of Richard, prompting the dowager queen Elizabeth to seek sanctuary at Westminster. Richard requested the presence of her younger son, Richard of Shrewsbury, and then sent both boys to the Tower in order to await the coronation, which had been planned for 4 May, then postponed to 22 June.
However, the coronation of Edward V never took place. On 7 May, the executors of his father’s will met at Cecily Neville’s London home, Baynard’s Castle, a meeting at which Lord Stanley was present. The will of 1475 was rejected and the royal jewels were taken into custody. It is from this period, particularly from this action, that certain historians have extrapolated that the Wydeville family were embezzling the king’s coffers: others have taken the view that the Wydevilles were reacting to Richard’s return to London with a significant store of weaponry. More meetings were held through the month of May and into June. As the days passed, with costumes being sewn and the nobility being summoned to London to attend, suspicion spiralled out of control at the court. At a council meeting on 13 June, Richard ordered the arrest and immediate execution of King Edward’s friend Lord Hastings, on grounds of treason that have never been adequately explained. Stanley was among those arrested that day, reputedly hit on the head by a guard before being thrown into the Tower. The news of his arrest must have reached Margaret amid a climate of uncertainty and fear that escalated through the summer. Luckily, Stanley was released without charge after a couple of weeks; in fact, he was then promoted to be Steward of the Royal Household, such a complete change of fortune at the hands of the same man cannot have encouraged the Stanleys to feel confident in their relations with Richard.
Then, on 22 June, a sermon was preached at the cross outside St Paul’s Cathedral by Sir Ralph Shaa, which stated that Edward IV had been conceived in adultery, was ‘in every way … unlike the late Duke’ and that therefore his sons could not legitimately rule. This was a staggering accusation against Cecily Neville, Duchess of York but worse still was the accusation that Edward’s own marriage was not legitimate, having been conducted in secret and pre-dated by a union the king had entered into with Eleanor Butler, née Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. On 25 June, a delegation from the council arrived at Cecily’s home of Baynard’s Castle and offered the throne to Richard, Duke of Gloucester. He accepted the following day and was crowned king at Westminster on 6 July. Margaret and Stanley attended this event, as they were duty bound to do; what they made of it has not been recorded. Stanley carried the ceremonial mace and Margaret was in attendance upon Richard’s wife and queen, Anne Neville, having been given 10yd of scarlet, 6yd of crimson velvet and 6yd of white cloth of gold for the purpose. After the crowning ceremony, the Duchess of Suffolk sat on one side of Anne and Margaret sat on the other.
The question of what happened to the Princes in the Tower has not yet been resolved. They were last seen playing in the grounds in July before being moved further into the Tower itself, where they were attended by a reduced staff including an Italian, Dr Argentine, who was finally dismissed that summer. At the end of July, an attempt was made to release them by members of Edward IV’s old household, while Richard was in the north on progress. The ringleaders were executed. Some have seen this as a critical moment for the boys’ survival, Richard realising that they would always be a focus for discontent and plots aimed to overthrow his regime. If the boys were killed, by whatever method, this is a likely moment for it, either at the instigation of Richard III or by someone acting on his behalf or in his perceived interests. However, this is only one theory. Some prefer the solution that the boys survived and were smuggled to the Netherlands, where the younger prince later became the pretender Perkin Warbeck. Another version, fully developed in Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel The Daughter of Time, favours Margaret Beaufort herself as the killer. Exactly how Margaret became the suspect in this unresolved mystery might be the result of hindsight, the caricatures made of her ambition by later historians and her certain involvement in plots to favour the situation of her son in late 1483.
One of the main issues with Tey’s novel, though, is that Detective Grant considers the reading of faces, or physiognomy, as valid evidence. Staring at portraits of Richard, he becomes convinced that his expression is one of gentleness and, therefore, he could not have been guilty of murder, overlooking the examples of Richard’s behaviour regarding Anthony Wydeville and William Hastings, and his considerable battle experience. Grant then proceeds to find evidence to support his theory, rather than letting the evidence dictate his conclusions. He also argues that there was no reason for Richard to kill the princes, on account of their illegitimacy, which was confirmed by an Act of Parliament, Titulus Regis, passed in January 1484. However, this is a naïve response to the very real danger posed to Richard by the boys, who would have continued to represent an alternative kingship, a focus for rivals, as Henry VI had done to Edward IV, necessitating his death. Acts of Parliament could just as easily be overturned by a later Council, had the princes’ line been restored to power. The boys were an immediate threat to Richard in 1483 and their continued existence would always undermine his position. Additionally, there is a lack of surviving evidence from the period: the trail of evidence on the princes goes quiet and their bodies were never displayed, nor were any formal accusations ever made. Yet there may be many reasons for this, and the absence of evidence is not evidence in itself. Since Tey’s death, other sources have come to light, such as the account of visiting Italian Domenico Mancini, who provides evidence that there were rumours about the princes’ disappearance in 1483, while Tey claims there were none. Notwithstanding these facts, Tey’s novel is a wonderful construction of plot, character and suspense, and was voted number one in the top 100 crime novels of all time in 1990. It must be read as a work of fiction which raises engaging questions about the period, but Detective Grant’s methods and conclusions must be seen objectively.
For some readers, this emotive story has created a need to search for an alternative villain and the finger of blame has been pointed at Margaret Beaufort, largely for her plans for her son to invade England in the autumn of 1483, although the timing suggests this was in response to the rumours of the princes’ demise rather than the reason for their possible dispatch. The sixteenth-century essayist George Cornwallis was among the first to suggest that Margaret may have played a hand in the deaths of the princes in order to advance her own son. Early Ricardian George Buck was quick to follow, describing her as a ‘politic and subtle lady’ whose influence over her nephew Buckingham was the direct cause of his revolt and who had united with Bishop John Morton to remove the boys from the line of succession. There is also the fact that Stanley was appointed Constable of England, which has been cited by many as evidence that he, and therefore Margaret, had access to the Tower, which was a key component of his role. However, Stanley was appointed to this position in October at the earliest, as a result of the disgrace of the former Constable, the Duke of Buckingham. By this point it was widely believed that the princes were already dead. Nor was he the only Constable, or Lieutenant, for on 17 July 1483, Richard appointed Robert Brackenbury to the position, a man English literature has often charged with the responsibility for the princes’ deaths.
It is extremely unlikely that ambition could have overcome Margaret’s extreme piety to allow her to commit or order such an act, which would have jeopardised her immortal soul. However, this does not automatically rule her out, given the piety of medieval kings known for their brutality, or the many crusades fought in the name of religion. From her actions, it may seem to a modern reader that Margaret’s piety is incompatible with the capacity to murder, but this is merely an academic argument facilitating a theory that lacks detail and substance. No accusation was levelled at Margaret or Stanley during their lifetimes but, after their deaths, such suggestions took a familiar turn. In the absence of evidence, the charge of witchcraft reared its head again. Buck pointed the finger at a Thomas Nandyke, a necromancer from Cambridge in the service of the duke, who was described in the act of attainder against Buckingham in 1483 but was pardoned by Henry Tudor two years later. Fortunately, considering the fates of her predecessors, Margaret and her husband were in a strong enough position that the mud did not stick.
The weapons of choice aimed against aristocratic women were usually slurs against their character, cutting to the heart of the two critical roles of the period: that of wife and mother. For a woman to be discredited, she had to be cast as behaving inappropriately for her position, as being unnatural, or against nature’s intent, hence the accusation that Joan of Navarre had conspired against her stepson instead of nurturing him and that Eleanor Cobham had used magic because she was infertile, or ambitious. Likewise, Joan of Arc was burned and Margaret of Anjou was considered an unfeminine woman, a ‘she-wolf’, because both were prepared to step into martial roles typically filled by men. In the case of the accusations of murder against Margaret Beaufort, soon to become the king’s mother, little could damage her more than to be cast as having dangerous impulses towards children, as having been the cause of the death of two little boys. The finger has been pointed at her by subsequent generations as part of a subtle gender campaign to undermine her achievements and her position in the Tudor dynasty. She has been portrayed as overly ambitious, as obsessive and fixated upon her son’s position, even though her real efforts to that end only date from the reign of Richard III and were a response to the deaths of the princes.
Margaret was not the only one to suspect that the princes were dead in the autumn following Richard’s coronation. The focus of his enemies turned from the boys in the Tower to Henry Tudor, then aged 26 and still in exile with his uncle Jasper at the court of Francis II of Brittany. Several rebellions broke out against Richard across the south-east and Margaret and her family were heavily involved. Her second husband Henry Stafford had a nephew who bore the same name and was now the Duke of Buckingham. He was also related to the royal family: Cecily Neville, Duchess of York was his great aunt and, by virtue of his marriage to Catherine Wydeville, he was uncle to the princes. He had proved a close confidant of Richard III in the days leading to his coronation, and was with Richard when he met Prince Edward at Stony Stratford, who had spent the evening with Anthony Wydeville before his arrest and had proclaimed Richard’s right to the throne given the reputed illegitimacy of his nephews. Buckingham had been something of Richard’s ‘kingmaker’ but by October he had turned against the king. It has been suggested that Buckingham had ambitions for the throne or that he had learned that Richard had ordered the boys’ deaths. The duke has also been suspected of their murder, though there is little evidence for this. Yet there was also a Lancastrian question at the heart of his dissatisfaction, one that goes right back to the fourteenth century and the de Bohun family.
Buckingham was the great-great-grandson of Mary de Bohun’s sister Eleanor and Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. Their eldest daughter Anne married into the Stafford family and their son Humphrey was the father of Duke Henry. Buckingham felt that this connection entitled him to some of the de Bohun lands, and he questioned the fact that they were in the possession of the crown. When Henry IV became king in 1399, his de Bohun inheritance was absorbed into the crown. But in 1461, when the Yorks had deposed Henry VI, they retained the de Bohun possessions, which were part of the Duchy of Lancaster. However, it would appear that Richard had been in the process of granting these lands to his friend, so this may not have been the cause of his dissatisfaction. Just two months after he had smoothed Richard’s path to the throne, Buckingham was plotting with Bishop John Morton and Sir Reginald Bray, two close connections of Margaret Beaufort.
Margaret had remained behind in London while Stanley was commanded to accompany Richard on his progress to the north. Although little evidence survives, it seems that from there she was the centre of a network of communication uniting the dowager queen in sanctuary and Henry Tudor in Brittany. It was Tudor historian Polydore Vergil who described Margaret’s role in the plan for Henry to invade England. In his account, she is a wise opportunist who responded to the loss of the Princes in the Tower rather than the instrument of their destruction: ‘after the slaughter of King Edward’s children was known, [she] began to hope well of her son’s fortune’ and confided in her physician, Lewis Caerleon, that ‘the time was now come that King Edward’s eldest daughter might be given in marriage to her son Henry’.17 She then invited Lewis to be the go-between for herself and Elizabeth Wydeville at Westminster, making the necessary arrangements, while her servant Hugh Conway was the link with Brittany. In fact, Vergil gives Margaret the overall control of the plot instead of Buckingham, stating that she was ‘commonly called the head of that conspiracy’ and that the duke’s dissatisfaction was another facet of a wider swathe of revolts that broke out that autumn.
It was a bold and decisive position for Margaret and she must have been aware of the dangers. After the first uprising in Kent had been quashed by the Duke of Norfolk, the West Country rose and Buckingham attempted to move south and meet with Henry Tudor, who was embarking with an invasion fleet and heading for the Welsh coast. The plan was for their joint army to defeat Richard and for Henry to be married to Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydeville. This detail underlines how clear the general belief in the princes’ demise had become, because, in their absence, the princess became the heir to her family’s dynasty. However, the one thing that Margaret could not plan was the weather. Storms in the Channel beat Henry back and river floods prevented Buckingham from travelling south. He was captured and executed at Salisbury on 2 November. Tudor’s ships limped back into harbour but the cause was not forgotten. On Christmas Day at Rennes Cathedral, he swore an oath that he would invade England again and marry Elizabeth.
Another tenet of Josephine Tey’s argument that Richard could not have ordered the boys’ death rested on the behaviour of the dowager queen Elizabeth. She had remained in sanctuary with her daughters since the summer of 1483 but now that the uprising had failed, she had to reflect on what she might be able to do for the futures of those girls. Elizabeth was not blessed with hindsight, whatever magical powers popular novelists have ascribed to her; she had no way of predicting Richard’s defeat the following year. As far as she knew, he might occupy the throne for another thirty years. Could she really spend that entire time in sanctuary, watching the youth of her daughters waste away? Whatever malice she may have felt in her heart towards her brother-in-law, balanced with his probable awareness of her liaising with Margaret Beaufort, she put the interests of her living children first and made a deal with him. Elizabeth had no bargaining power; she had nothing left. Parliament had passed the Act of Titulus Regis that January, declaring her own marriage to be void and her children illegitimate. Yet the fact that she was able to get Richard to make a public promise to protect her daughters suggests that she at least suspected his guilt in the death of her sons. Her gesture does not demonstrate trust, it highlights the need for clear, public boundaries and an admirable pragmatism. Necessity dictated her actions. She emerged from sanctuary on 1 March, although it was only to enter a kind of semi-confinement in the custody of Sir John Nesfield, living on an annuity of £700 from Richard. Later chroniclers were critical of Elizabeth for taking this route, like Raphael Holinshed, blinded to the political situation by concepts of gender:
suerlie the inconstancie of this woman were much to be marvelled at, if all women had been found constant, but let men speake, yet women of the very bonde of nature will follow their own sex. But it was no small allurement that king Richard used to oversome her for we know by experience that women are of a proud disposition and that the waie to win them is by peomises of preferement and therefore it is the lesse marvell that he by his wilie wit had made conquest of her wavering will.18
Having walked a similarly fine and dangerous line through the world of male politics, Margaret was fortunate to survive the events of 1483. She could not, however, escape being attainted as a traitor in the Parliament of December 1483, being condemned for having ‘of late conspired, confedered, and committed high treason ayenst oure sovereigne lorde the king Richard the third, in dyvers and sundry ways, and in especiall sending messages, writyngs and tokens to … Henry [Tudor] desiring, procurying and stirryng him, to come into this Roailme and make were ayenst oure said Sovereigne Lorde’. It was due to the intervention of Lord Stanley, whose ‘good and faithfull’ service to the king was not in doubt, that Richard agreed to pardon her. Like Elizabeth, Margaret was ordered to be kept under house arrest for the remainder of her life, but in Stanley’s properties, all of her estates, titles and lands passing to him, a prisoner without access to court or king, to remain in isolation until the end of her days. However, with her husband’s assistance, she was able to remain in contact with her son and, with his encouragement, to continue to hope that he would one day restore the dynasty and claim the throne for himself. She did not have long to wait. In August 1485, Lancastrian hopes were to flourish again.
1 Murray.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 CSP, Henry VI, May 1444.
5 Cooper.
6 Ibid.
7 Halsted.
8 Patent Rolls, Henry VI, August 1453.
9 Ibid.
10 Gregory.
11 Ibid.
12 Nicolas, Testament Vetusta.
13 Halsted.
14 White.
15 Gregory.
16 Ibid.
17 Vergil.
18 Holinshed.