Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty (27 page)
Margaret, a Beaufort by birth, was married to her second husband, Edmund Tudor, for a shorter period than any of her other spouses. In spite of this, it was the union that produced her only child, and she prioritised Edmund over her other husbands, significantly always using the title of Countess of Richmond that marriage to him had bestowed on her. The arms of Beaufort, Tudor and Stanley adorn the fine tomb that was built for Margaret in Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey, but there is no mention of Henry Stafford, the husband with whom she was, almost certainly, happiest. For Margaret, the childlessness of her third marriage and the great success of the child of her second marriage made Henry Stafford fade into the background when she adopted her new role of ‘My lady, the King’s Mother’.
Through her actions in assisting her son on his path to the throne, Margaret helped to ensure that, through him, she has been the ancestress to every subsequent monarch of England. Whilst the direct line of the Tudor dynasty died out in 1603, Margaret’s line continued through the descendants of her favourite granddaughter and namesake, Margaret Tudor. Margaret Beaufort was recognised as an important ancestress by the first Stuart king, James I. In the early years of the seventeenth century, the poet Samuel Daniel delivered an address to the King that spoke of his famous greatgreat- great-grandmother:
Marg’ret of Richmond, (glorious grandmother
Unto that other precious Margaret,
From whence th’Almighty worker did transfer
This branch of peace, as from a root well set)
Thou mother, author, plotter, counsellor
Oh union! that didst both conceive, beget,
And bring forth happiness to this great state,
To make it thus entirely fortunate:
O could’st thou now but view this fair success,
This great effect of thy religious work,
And see therein how God hath pleas’d to bless
Thy charitable counsels; and to work
Still greater good out of the blessedness
Of this conjoined Lancaster and York:
Which all conjoin’d within; and those shut out,
Whom nature and their birth had set without!
How much hast thou bound out posterities
In this great work to reverence thy name!
And with thee that religious, fruitful, wise,
And learned Morton! who contriv’d the same,
And first advis’d, and did so well advise,
As that the good success that thereof came,
Show’d well, that holy hands,
Clean thoughts, clear hearts,
Are only fit to act such glorious parts.
Within a century of her death, Margaret’s role in ending the Wars of the Roses and bringing to power the Tudors, a united dynasty combining the claims of both Lancaster and York, had become legendary. Of all the great figures in the Wars of the Roses, Margaret was one of the last surviving, and she was certainly the victor, however much she feared a further turn of Fortune’s Wheel. She did not rule Henry VII, but there is no doubt that he was guided by her. She was the counsellor that he trusted the most, and he allowed her to take up the role and trappings of queenship, even in the lifetime of his wife. Margaret could be domineering at times, and she entirely overshadowed her daughter-in-law, but she was also kind and genuinely thought that she was acting in the best interests of her family and dynasty in everything she did.
For Margaret, the final turn of Fortune’s Wheel came in June 1509, and even she, one of the last survivors of her generation, seen by many as a relic from an England that had been left behind, could not cheat death. In her Will, dated a year before her death, she wrote that she had had ‘called to our remembrance the unstabilnesse of this transitory worlde, and that ev’ry creatur here lyving is mortall, and the tyme and place of deth to ev’y creatur uncerteyn’. She left John Fisher, the person she trusted most after her own son, as the chief of her executors. He did not let her down, and whilst, with Margaret’s forceful character gone, her servants and relatives felt able to challenge her Will and much of what she had done in relation to her colleges and charities, he diligently set out to fulfil her wishes. It was left to Fisher and the other executors to arrange Margaret’s grand funeral after her death, and Fisher himself preached her funeral sermon, praising the woman who had done so much for him. Margaret’s young servant Henry Parker in his old age extolled the virtues of his former employer, informing her great-granddaughter, Queen Mary, that ‘this precious margareyte is past from this worlde, not as other ffloures [flowers] be that to day be fayre, and to morowe withered and drye, but this oure fayre floure as long as the sea hath fyshes, and the skye twinkling starres, untyll the sounde of the last trompet shall call all creatures to Judgment, her fame, her honour, her liberalitye, her prudence, her chastytye, & her excellent vertue shall be comendyd for euer’. Margaret was genuinely loved and admired by those who knew her.
It is left to Margaret’s great friend and closest associate, John Fisher, to supply her epitaph. Some years after her death, he wrote, in a dedication to a mutual friend, Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester,
As I have spoken her praises in a funeral oration, I will not pursue the subject here, though she never could be praised too much. This only will I add, that though she chose me as her director, to hear her confessions and guide her life, yet I gladly confess that I learnt more from her great virtue than I ever taught her.
Fortune’s Wheel was both kind and sometimes unkind to Margaret: the daughter of a probable suicide, the greatest heiress in England, divorced at ten, married to the King’s half-brother at twelve, a widow at thirteen, a mother at thirteen, twice more a widow, a plotter, a prisoner, the mother of a king, most of all, Margaret Beaufort can be remembered as the mother of the great Tudor dynasty.
25. Margaret Beaufort. Margaret had a reputation for piety and, in later life, followed an ascetic lifestyle.
30. Catherine of Valois - Margaret Beaufort’s mother in law – giving birth to the future Henry VI. She shocked contemporaries by marrying Owen Tudor around 1430 (her second husband, her first husband was Henry V). From the
Beauchamp Pageant
.
