Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty (7 page)

Stafford’s accounts during the time of his marriage to Margaret show that he was often in ill health. He frequently sent to London for medicines, and there are a number of references to physicians in his records. He may have suffered from the condition St Anthony’s Fire, which, in the fifteenth century, was considered to be a form of leprosy. This is suggested by the fact that he joined the confraternity of the leper hospital at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire. Margaret was also always devoted to St Anthony Abbott, the patron saint of those afflicted with skin complaints, and this, given that her devotion persisted into her later life, again suggests a fondness for her third husband that endured until well after his death. In spite of Stafford’s ill health, the couple were able to regularly indulge in their favourite pastime of hunting, making a hunting trip, for example, in 1470 to the area around Windsor and Henley.

Margaret’s marriage to Henry Stafford was, in part, a response to the troubled political climate in which she lived, and she sought a powerful protector for herself and her son. The dispute between the Houses of Lancaster and York continued to rage in the late 1450s. With Henry VI’s illness in 1453 and 1454, his wife, Margaret of Anjou, emerged as the leader of the Lancastrian party in England, and her enemy, York’s nephew by marriage, the Earl of Warwick, wrote in 1460 that ‘our king is stupid and out of his mind; he does not rule but is ruled. The government is in the hands of the queen and her paramours’. Following the first Battle of St Albans, at which Margaret Beaufort’s uncle, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, had been killed, the King had been taken into York’s custody and the duke had once again been declared protector. Margaret of Anjou continued to build up a powerbase, and in October 1458, after an attempt was made to assassinate Warwick in London, the earl fled to Calais where he began raising troops. His father, the Earl of Salisbury, headed north to raise an army there, whilst York went to Wales to muster support. Margaret of Anjou, determined to oppose them, went to Cheshire and began to raise troops under the banner of her son, the Prince of Wales.

Margaret Beaufort, as a member of the House of Lancaster and the sister-in-law of Henry VI, sympathised with the King, in spite of her kinship with York’s wife, Cecily Neville, who was the daughter of her great aunt. Henry Stafford and his father were also connected to York through Cecily Neville, but they remained staunchly Lancastrian in their sympathies. In October 1459, Margaret of Anjou won a victory over the Yorkists when they fled in the face of her army in the Welsh Marches. In June 1460, her fortunes ebbed, and she was heavily defeated at the Battle of Northampton, at which the King was once again taken prisoner. The outcome of the battle was a disaster for the Lancastrian cause, and it also had personal consequences for Margaret and her husband. They received word that Henry Stafford’s father, the Duke of Buckingham, had been killed in battle. This removed a powerful protector from the couple, and the duke was succeeded to his titles and estates by his five-year-old grandson, Henry Stafford’s nephew Henry, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.

As a prisoner of the Yorkist party, Henry VI was taken to London. Success emboldened the Duke of York, and in October 1460, he returned to the capital. According to
Whethamstede’s Register
,

The lord king [Henry VI] was assembled with the prelates, peers, and commons in parliament at Westminster, for the good government of the realm, soon, almost at the beginning of the parliament, the Duke of York, with the pomp of a great following, arrived in no small exultation of spirit; for he came with horns and trumpets and men at arms, and very many other servants. And entering the palace there, he marched straight through the great hall until he came to that solemn room where the king was accustomed to hold parliament with his commons. And when he arrived there, he advanced with determined step until he reached the royal throne, and there he laid his hand on the cushion or bolster, like a man about to take possession of his right, and kept his hand there for a short while. At last, drawing back, he turned his face towards the people, and standing still under the cloth of state, he looked attentively at the gazing assembly.

And while he stood there, looking down at the people, and awaiting their applause, Master Thomas Bourgchier, the Archbishop of Canterbury, came up, and, after a suitable greeting, asked him whether he wished to come and see the lord king. At this request the duke seemed to be irritated, and replied curtly in this way: ‘I know of no person in this realm whom it does not behove to come to me and see my person, rather than I should go and visit him’.

York’s conduct stunned those assembled, and it was a major departure from his previous actions. It was the moment that the course of the war turned from simply being concerned with dominance over the King and instead focused on who had the most right to wear the crown.

Richard, Duke of York, set out his claim to the throne to those who had assembled for the parliament. Although, on his paternal line, York was only a descendant of the fourth surviving son of Edward III, his maternal family was of more concern to the Lancastrian party. York’s mother, Anne Mortimer, was the daughter of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, who in turn had been the son of Philippa, the only child of Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, the second son of Edward III. York’s own father, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, had been executed in 1415 for plotting to put his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer, on the throne, and whilst the Mortimer claim had lain dormant since Edmund Mortimer’s death, it had not been forgotten. Unlike France, England did not have the Salic law that barred a woman from either succeeding to the throne or transmitting her claim. Whilst, by the fifteenth century, no woman had successfully prosecuted a claim to the English throne, Henry II had claimed the throne through his mother in the twelfth century. There was therefore nothing in English law to bar first Philippa of Clarence and then her granddaughter, Anne Mortimer, from transmitting a valid claim to the throne.

Under the rules of heredity, there is no doubt that York had the strongest claim to the throne. However, Henry VI also had a strong claim, and according to his contemporary John Blacman, he set this out some years after York first stated his claim:

[When] King Henry was asked, during his imprisonment in the Tower, why he had unjustly claimed and possessed the crown of England for so many years, he would answer thus: ‘My father was king of England and peaceably possessed the crown of England for the whole of his reign. And his father and my grandfather were kings of the same realm. And I, a child in the cradle, was peaceably and without any protest crowned and approved as king by the whole realm, and wore the crown of England some forty years, and each and all of my lords did me royal homage and plighted me their faith, as was also done to my predecessors.

For all his shortcomings as a king, Henry VI was still able to muster a considerable amount of support, and the idea of deposing him in 1460 was not popular. A compromise was therefore reached in which it was agreed that Henry VI would remain king for the duration of his life and that York would be his heir, disinheriting the Lancastrian Prince of Wales. York’s triumph proved to be short-lived, and the Queen, on hearing of her son’s disinheritance, marched north with an army of 20,000 men. On 31 December 1460, she met an army commanded by York and his brother-inlaw, Salisbury, at Wakefield and won a great victory. York was killed during the course of the battle, whilst Salisbury, who was captured, was summarily executed. According to
Hall’s Chronicle
, Margaret of Anjou could not resist displaying her triumph to the world, and her men ‘came to the place wher the dead corps of the duke of Yorke lay, and caused his head to be stryken of, and set on it a croune of paper, and so fixed it on a pole, and presented it to the Quene’. Margaret had both York and Salisbury’s heads set on poles above the gates of York before marching south in triumph.

Margaret of Anjou met a second Yorkist army at St Albans as she moved south, and she was once again victorious, taking possession of her husband, who had been taken out of London to appear as a puppet at the head of the Yorkist army. Outside London, however, Margaret of Anjou committed her greatest mistake, as she was persuaded not to enter the city by a deputation concerned by the damage that would be done by her army. Margaret instead moved north again, and within days, York’s eldest son, Edward, Earl of March, had entered the capital and had himself declared king as Edward IV. On 29 March, Margaret of Anjou’s army met the new king’s in battle at Towton, and she was defeated. The Queen, her son and the hapless Henry VI were driven as fugitives towards Scotland.

The events of 1460 were dramatic and affected the lives of most people in England to some extent. Jasper Tudor remained loyal to his half-brother throughout the turmoil of the year, and in late January 1461, he moved towards the Herefordshire border raising troops in the company of his father, Owen Tudor. Whilst Edward IV concentrated his efforts on defeating Margaret of Anjou and the main Lancastrian army, he instructed his ally, Sir William Herbert to raise a force to face the Tudors. On 3 February 1461, the two armies met at Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire in an engagement that proved to be disastrous for the Tudors. During the course of the battle, Owen Tudor was captured by Herbert and later executed on the orders of the Yorkist king. Jasper managed to escape and fled towards Pembroke Castle. Margaret, whose whereabouts during this period are not recorded, must have listened anxiously for news of all that was happening in Wales, and it is almost certain that the four-year-old Henry Tudor was present at Pembroke Castle during the turbulent events. Throughout much of the year, Jasper remained at large and loyal to his half-brother, but it soon became obvious that his position was unsustainable. On 30 September 1461, Pembroke Castle surrendered to Sir William Herbert, and the following month, Jasper sailed to Scotland to join Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI in their efforts to regain the English throne.

Margaret suffered troubles of her own during 1461, as both her husband, Henry Stafford, and her stepfather, Lord Welles, fought for Henry VI at Towton. If, as seems likely, Margaret’s relationship with her third husband was a loving one, she must have been horrified to see him leave for battle, and it was a great relief when he returned to her unharmed, albeit as a member of the losing army. Margaret’s mother did not prove so fortunate in her own husband, as Lord Welles fell in the field, leaving his widow to manage his estates on behalf of their young son, John. Margaret later secured an advantageous marriage for her youngest half-brother to Cecily of York, the daughter of Edward IV, and it is clear that she felt the same sense of responsibility towards him that she did for her elder St John half-siblings. He also paid her the compliment of making her one of the executors of his Will, demonstrating that the pair had a close relationship, and it is likely that Margaret was also grieved by her stepfather’s death, as he must have played a prominent role in her early childhood. It was a relief for Margaret when, on 25 June 1461, Edward IV, who was in a mood to be conciliatory towards former Lancastrian supporters, granted Henry Stafford a pardon for opposing him at Towton, and whilst the couple would still have been uncertain about the favour in which they were held by the King, they were at least aware that Stafford would not face prosecution as a supporter of Henry VI.

Whilst Margaret was worried about herself, her husband, her mother and her half-siblings, her chief concern during 1461 would certainly have been her son. With the accession of Edward IV and Jasper Tudor’s continued loyalty to the old Lancastrian regime, Henry’s wardship had effectively lapsed, and when Sir William Herbert finally entered Pembroke Castle at the end of September, he found Henry Tudor there. Although he was a nephew of Henry VI, Henry Tudor was not closely related to him on the paternal line, and in 1461, with both Henry VI and his son still living, any Beaufort claim to the throne was remote. Henry Tudor therefore presented no political threat to the new king, and whilst his lands were taken away from him and given to the new king’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, a blind eye was turned towards the continued use of his title as Earl of Richmond. Henry, at four years old, had caused no offence to the King, and attainders were often reversed, making it seem likely to his contemporaries that he would be restored to his lands and officially to his earldom at a later date.

4. Edward III from a drawing in St Stephen’s Chapel. Margaret was descended from the king’s third surviving son, John of Gaunt.