Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society The Mother of All Tudors: Child Bride to Kingmaker About this episode Ever heard of Margaret Beaufort? Probably not. But whilst her name has been overshadowed by those of her son, grandson and great-grandchildren, her impact on history remains.
Lauren Johnson joins Kate for this episode to explain how this woman put the Tudors on the throne. Why was she married aged 12? How did she use marriage to her advantage? And was she as manipulative as she has been portrayed?
Lauren's new book is ‘Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker’.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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Transcript 10,032 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:37 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.
1:12 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lester. Thank you for listening to Betwixter Sheets, home of as much historical smut as your little hearts can handle. But before we can have any of that said smut, I do have to remind you that this is quite a smutty show, apparently. Here it is. This is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And I do have a note here from my producer, hello, Sophie, to let everybody know that this is quite a spicy episode. We will be covering themes of child abuse, and you just might not want to listen to that one today, in which case, get out now while you still can, and we'll catch you in the next one. Right, on with the show.
1:56 Kate Lister? Henry VIII. Henry the 12245678. Eight Henry VIII. Arguably, one of the most famous names in history. It is, it just is. We don't like him, but he's famous. In fact, he's so famous, he kind of encompasses the very word Tudor, doesn't he? He is the Tudor, the original. Or is he? Hmm, what about his dad? Henry VII, we never hear very much about him. We hear quite a bit about his children, Eddie, Liz and the first Bloody Mary. But there were Henrys before him. And of course, what about the source of the Tudors? His grandmother, Margaret Beaufort. Not a Tudor, but a Tudor maker, that's for sure.
2:41 Kate Lister? And certainly quite a formidable woman in her own right. And her fault that now we have a Tudor onslaught on TV, on podcasts and film. It's everywhere. And we're going to do another one today. So let's get cracking and learn more about Margaret Beaufort.
3:19 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Matriarch is a bit of a dry word, isn't it? Mind you, it depends how it's being deployed. I wouldn't mind living in a matriarchy, that's for damn sure. But if you say matriarch, it kind of brings to mind, I don't know, an elderly woman doing knitting, keeping an eye on everything, doesn't it? Maybe it doesn't. Well, it shouldn't, that's for damn sure. Matriarchs were powerful. And the woman we're talking about today, she wasn't sitting around knitting. Or if she was, she was knitting some kind of war plans. All right, that may have been a bit excessive. But from the age of 12 at most, Margaret Beaufort was in the corridors of power. And in this episode, Lauren Johnson is going to tell us all about it.
4:04 Kate Lister? Just think, what the hell were you doing at the age of 12? Yeah, not that. Who was this woman? And where would the Tudors have been without her? Crowns are ready, everyone. Let's do this.
4:21 Kate Lister? Well, hello and welcome to Buttwixt the Sheets. It's only Lauren Johnson. How are you doing?
4:28 Speaker 02 I'm good, thank you, Kate. A little bit snoozy, as always. I always, I think that's what I say every time I say hello to you. I'm a bit snoo poo today. I'm like one of Snow White's dwarves.
4:37 Kate Lister? You've got the startled look of an author who's just published a book.
4:42 Speaker 02 Yes, very much. The deer in headlights.
4:46 Speaker 02 Oh, it is so lovely in lots of ways to have it out in the world. It's a book I've wanted to write for a long time. My one-sided love of Margaret Beaufort goes back many years, so.
4:56 Kate Lister? Let's give it its full title, your new book, your new brain baby. It is Margaret Beaufort, Survivor Rebel Kingmaker. Good title.
5:04 Speaker 02 Thank you. I mean, there were lots of adjectives at various points, as you can imagine.
5:08 Kate Lister? I love the stories of titles of books of like, was that, what was that the first one? What was the story there? There's normally mad stories about editors getting involved.
5:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. This was about four years and 15 people's worth of thinking around this. At one point, I think it was called Margaret Beaufort, The Winner Takes It All, but I was in an ABBA phase, so.
5:27 Kate Lister? I quite like that one. But there will be people listening to this going, who? What? What's happened? Margaret Beaufort, ABBA, what's going on? I'm going to start with my opening question, which is, Margaret Beaufort, who was she and when did you first come to meet her?
5:40 Speaker 02 She is a 15th century noblewoman, and that was all I sort of vaguely knew about her, to be honest. I came across her when I was doing my A levels, many moons ago. And I was a bit bored, if I'm honest, doing my history A level. The Wars of the Roses, just, it seemed like a lot of arcane, you know, titled people who were named after bits of the countryside, fighting in other bits of the countryside and changing sides every two minutes. And they were all men. That was what I was getting from the books I had. And one day, I came across a reference in one of the books to the mother of the Earl of Richmond, who, you know, you just think 15th century noblewoman. You have the image, essentially, of what Margaret looks like, you know, in her famous portraits, very dour,
6:23 Speaker 02 very old. And I found out that when she gave birth to the future Henry VII, founder of the Tudor dynasty, that she was 13.
6:33 Kate Lister? Holy mother of fuck. What?
6:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. That's, that's phase one, Kate. Phase one is that she was 13.
6:40 Kate Lister? I feel like I need to phone the police.
6:42 Speaker 02 I wish someone had, fuck. Phase two is her husband, who had impregnated her, you know, at thirteen, was already dead of the plague, having been involved in a siege of a castle in Wales. And she was just sort of like completely alone, pretty mu- not completely alone, she's still a noble woman, she's got servants. But completely isolated from the people she cared about, in this like war-torn plague zone with this tiny baby who is ultimately her only child. And like just the bare bones of that, you know, imagine I was sixteen, seventeen, being like, wow, when she was my age, she had a four-year-old. And the four-year-old was handed over to one of the Yorkists responsible for the death of her husband.
7:27 Speaker 02 Like, it was just so movie epic. I just fell in love with her at that moment, to be honest. And I always wanted to tell more of her story and then more of the story of the other women in the Wars of the Roses as I came across them. And she is astonishing. It's just the unlikeliest story that you begin there and you end up with her being the mother and then grandmother of the Tudor dynasty. She survives to see Henry VIII safely on the throne and then dies eating a swan.
7:58 Kate Lister? See, it's not true what they say about teen mums, is it? That she is the living, the living proof. Oh my god. Well, okay, I'm not surprised that you've been fascinated by her. So that is a very quick introduction to this woman, but let's, thirteen, fuck. Like, you're not, we're gonna get to this. I'm now stuck on this, on this bit, but we'll, we'll, we'll build up to it.
8:21 Speaker 02 Well, I was too, don't worry. I think most people are.
8:24 Kate Lister? Holy moly.
8:25 Speaker 02 And that was her second marriage also, that's the other thing.
8:27 Kate Lister? No.
8:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:29 Kate Lister? Oh, they're fucked up, aren't they?
8:31 Speaker 02 They are. And what's like really fascinating as well, like I was a bit obsessed with Henry VII as well. And I thought his story was quite amazing. You know, he grows up without a father, this father's dead before he's born. But actually, so does Margaret. Her father dies when she is less than a year old. She's brought up by a strong mother, again, very sort of redolent story. And just the fact that you have these two sort of like slightly weird little individuals in the 15th century navigating it and coming together and being driven apart and coming together and being driven apart and eventually ruling an entire kingdom. I mean, kind of between them because Margaret is a real powerhouse as well. It's incredible.
9:12 Kate Lister? So she's the mum of the first Tudor king in a sort of a nutshell. And we know how that all got there, sort of a bit Richard III and a bit stabby. But let's, let's take it back to her long, long, long life before she became his mum, all of 13 years. Holy shit. Like, what is her background? Where did she come from? You said she's a noble woman, so I assume she's not like roughing it around a council estate or anything. What was her? How did she even get in line to be given birth to kings?
9:41 Speaker 02 I mean, like a lot of people in the 15th century, she's descended from Edward III. Aren't we all? You know, I mean, I'm not, but pretty much everyone you meet in the 15th century is. But she is descended through an illegitimate line, the Beaufort line that goes back to John of Gaunt having an affair with Catherine Swinford, his servant. So they're a Lancastrian family, but they're a little bit sort of in and outside of the elite. They are part of it, they're part of the royal family, kind of, but they're also not officially part of it. There's a whole parliamentary statute that says they can't, you know, claim the throne for themselves.
10:16 Kate Lister? Because John of Gaunt knocked up his servant, that's why.
10:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. I mean, the legitimacy that they get, the, and it's like a papal legitimacy, a parliamentary legitimacy, happens when their eldest child is like 20. So very after the fact. And Margaret's descended from that line through her father, who, like I say, dies before she's one. So a father of whom she probably has like maybe a sense memory and that is it. She does not know him at all. And he dies under, under a cloud, certainly, maybe under slightly suspicious circumstances. There are rumours later that he might even have taken his own life. He is certainly in disgrace. He's had a completely disastrous military campaign. He comes back from France just like, and effectively is banished.
11:02 Speaker 02 At the time that Margaret's mother, another Margaret, unfortunately, everyone is called Margaret in this story. She is pregnant with another child. So like, again, Margaret Beaufort's mother is someone who I feel like has not, has not been given, heard you, attention and interest either. It's the mother who kind of keeps them, keeps Margaret Beaufort safe from this horrible beginning.
11:22 Kate Lister? Marrying at 13, like, all right, she's a noble woman, she's got legitimacy, although it's got a slight, you know, like, people might be whispering about it and raising their eyebrows at court, but, you know, they're, they're, they're there. Marrying at 13, tell me about that. Was that unusual for the time? What on earth was anyone thinking?
11:39 Speaker 02 Her getting married wasn't that unusual. So she gets married at 12, which is the legal age of consent for girls.
11:46 Kate Lister? Okay.
11:47 Speaker 02 For boys, it's 14. Her husband is not 14. Her husband is in his late twenties, so substantially older than her.
11:53 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
11:55 Speaker 02 And he really is, he's just angling for the money because she's got a lot of landed estates, a lot of cash through her lands, and also this potential blood claim to the throne. He wants those. And in order to get them, the best thing that he can do is impregnate her quickly because even if the child dies, even if she dies, he's then going to have a claim on her estates. But like you say, this is not normal behaviour. This is a really mercenary act on his part. What people usually do, even if they're married very young, and they might be arranging marriages from when they're babies, you know, is they wait until
12:34 Speaker 02 a girl, and I, I use the word girl advisedly, is physically able to have a child safely. So we're talking 16, I think 20 is the average age of first child for most aristocratic women in this time. So this is really young. I mean, even the fact that Margaret Beaufort had periods is quite unusual. Like, obviously, it's a bit difficult to know, isn't it? But the demographic studies there are seem to suggest that puberty was later in the Middle Ages.
13:04 Kate Lister? Interesting.
13:05 Speaker 02 So I feel like about 14 was sort of a fairly common age to be starting your periods. And she evidently must have started earlier because as soon as she's getting her periods, it seems she is pregnant.
13:18 Kate Lister? Wow. What did a mum say about all this? Just to help yourself off, you go, have a lovely time. What on earth is going on?
13:24 Speaker 02 No, it's kind of the tragedy of it, I think. My impression is very strongly that her mother was trying to protect Margaret, because we know that there had been this sort of specific contract made between Margaret's parents and the king, who's King Henry VI at this time, that if he died during this military campaign he was off on, that the baby Margaret would be kept by her mother, that she would be looked after by her mother, rather than, as was completely within the king's rights, her being removed from her mother and just handed off to some other random guardian who wanted her land.
14:00 Kate Lister? Okay.
14:01 Speaker 02 So there's that to begin with. And then there's multiple sort of instances of Margaret's mother protecting her children, because she has several other marriages and several other children, in which she's doing it legally, she's doing it a bit unscrupulously. We know that Margaret and her mother have a very long, and it seems affectionate, relationship for the whole of Margaret's life. So I think almost certainly what happened here is that there was this collusion, probably among men, would be my suspicion, powerful men around King Henry VI, who went, this is the marriage, this is the time it's going to happen. Edmund Tudor, you just take your child bride, off you go to Wales, we'll, we'll just deal with it. And the mother has to accept it, because now this child is 12. So it's, it's absolutely fine.
14:46 Kate Lister? Nice.
14:46 Speaker 02 And I don't think that her mother wanted it. It is possible that Margaret might have been like, oh, well, I'm 12, I'm old enough to deal with this situation.
14:55 Kate Lister? Like, possible, I guess, I guess. So who's, who's this husband then, apart from him being in his, in his late twenties? Tell me, tell me who he is, so I can hate him properly.
15:07 Speaker 02 He's someone I always wanted to like. I was very annoyed when I found out more about him.
15:10 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
15:11 Speaker 02 He's called Edmund Tudor. There are, hmm, how to put this? So yet another illegitimate, like, half sibling situation. We've got the Beauforts, illegitimate half siblings of a Lancasterian way back in time. Then, under Henry VI, we get yet more illegitimate half siblings of him, because his mother, Queen Catherine Valois, once French princess, wife of Henry V, in later life remarries her servant, Owen Tudor, who is a Welshman. And has a number of children with him, including Edmund and including Jasper Tudor, who goes on to be very important under the Tudors.
15:48 Kate Lister? Jasper Tudor, right. I can never heard of him. Okay.
15:50 Speaker 02 Yes. And Edmund and Jasper, because of this Welsh lineage with their father, they kind of take over some of the sort of Lancastrian overlordship of some parts of Wales during Henry VI's reign. Like, we've talked about Henry VI, really ineffective king. Everyone else kind of has to do the actual business of running things. He's confronted with the House of York sort of vying for position and York has quite a lot of Welsh power as well. So the Tudors are sort of ratcheted in to try and counter that and assert Lancastrian dominance. So that's what Edmund Tudor is there to do, basically. And he's kind of given this wealthy child bride, almost as a sort of like, here you go, this is your sweetener, off you go and fight the Yorkists.
16:33 Kate Lister? Right. Okay. But he's not royal yet.
16:37 Speaker 02 Not officially. If he's royal at all, it's through his mother, who is French. And as we know, in England, that obviously means nothing.
16:46 Kate Lister? It doesn't mean a damn thing. All right. So I just can't imagine this at the age of 12, getting married. So she gets pregnant very, very quickly. I mean, if you found any evidence that anyone at the time was going, that's a bit fucking weird, or is just all of that lost to us?
16:59 Speaker 02 Not at the time, but what there are is quite a lot of kind of telling tidbits from later in Margaret's life, both by her and by her confessor, John Fisher, who is one of the like, major sources for her sort of interior life, really. He writes a lot about her thoughts, her feelings, her expressions. And he makes this, what I find to be quite a creepy speech. I think it's meant to be funny, but it's a bit creepy. In like 1506, so Margaret by then is in her 60s, and he does a speech to her at Cambridge, her and Henry VII. And he says, oh, look at this, look at this little lady here. She's so tiny. When she gave birth, she was even smaller still. If you can imagine it, it seemed like
17:42 Speaker 02 a miracle that so tiny a body could bring forth a child at all. So that immediately suggests not only that everyone could see she was a tiny and probably had been a very slight child when she was married, but also that I suspect there was a general understanding of it, because I don't think he'd be saying something like that in a public forum if if she hadn't enabled him to do that in some way, if she hadn't maybe made a joke of it.
18:08 Kate Lister? Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, that would be.
18:11 Speaker 02 There's a few references actually in in other places to her sort of joking about how small she is compared with, especially the Yorkers. The Yorkers are all really tall. They're like, you know, it's like if you went to London Fashion Week, if I was there, this sort of little little wide dwarf looking up at goddesses. That's how Margaret sees herself.
18:28 Kate Lister? He'd have only said that if that was a joke that was already in currency at the time, I think, wouldn't he? Do you have any information about the pregnancy and the birth itself? Because like, she's 13, she's not she's not developed for this.
18:42 Speaker 02 No, it's very frustrating because the short answer is we don't have that information. The longer answer is, again, reading between the lines, it seems to have been, I mean, I would say traumatic. I use that term advisedly. I suspect psychologically and physically deeply damaging. Again, John Fisher makes references later to how afraid Margaret was at this time, that she was afraid that like her her baby in her womb would get the plague that had killed his father. She was afraid of everything that was going on at the time. Like I say, very small. There's also an interesting reference later in Margaret's life when she has a granddaughter who's going to get married, Margaret Tudor, who goes on to marry the
19:22 Speaker 02 King of Scotland. And both Margaret Beaufort and her daughter in law, Elizabeth of York, the Queen, they both intervene to stop Princess Margaret being sent to her husband too early. And it's very specifically said, like, they don't want her to go because she's quite underdeveloped for her age, again, like Margaret Beaufort had been. And they worry that if she went to Scotland, her husband like couldn't restrain himself and he would hurt her.
19:50 Kate Lister? Right, okay.
19:51 Speaker 02 So, I mean, to me, that that really suggests that there is an understanding that birth and sex within marriage can be damaging.
20:01 Kate Lister? Yeah, yeah. I'd forgotten that that her husband died of the plague. You said that just there. So she's also a widow at thirteen, that and and was it the plague, like the Black Death that he died of?
20:11 Speaker 02 Or it might have been a like jail fever as well, because he was imprisoned after having been involved in this siege. But yeah, we're not completely sure. She is very worried about the plague for the rest of her life, which, to be honest, I mean, we've all lived through a pandemic. I feel quite worried about plagues at this point in my life.
20:28 Kate Lister? So fair, fair, not a problem there.
20:34 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Lauren and Margaret after this short break.
20:45 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet.
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21:17 Kate Lister? Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
22:00 Kate Lister? So who is this baby then? This poor little girl who has been forced to give birth, husband's dead. I'm not sad about that, to be completely honest, but who is this baby?
22:10 Speaker 02 This baby is Henry Tudor. There is a later myth that perhaps he was going to be named Owen after his grandfather, who presumably is a godfather as well, and that Margaret intervened and said, no, he should be named after the king, he should be named after the people I'm related to. Not completely clear if that's a bit of retrospective, connecting Henry to the king, to kingship in general. It's not totally clear. But I think it is believable because what we know is that within about two months of giving birth, which is both according to church custom and also, let's be honest, medical guidance, I suspect, about the earliest you can be getting up and around and moving independently.
22:52 Speaker 02 So as soon as possible after giving birth, Margaret leaves this baby Henry and goes and arranges a marriage to someone else.
23:00 Kate Lister? Why is she doing that? Because one of the things I have learnt from speaking to many, many, many different historians, and indeed my own research, is being a widow was awesome. That's the best bit. You get married, you have to put up with a little bit of, oh god, huffing and puffing, or in Margaret's case, flat out abuse, but then he dies and you get everything. And then you can just be like, no, actually, I'm all right. I'm too sad to marry again. I'm just too sad to do it. So why is she deciding she wants to get married again?
23:27 Speaker 02 You're right that in most cases, being a widow is brilliant in this era, I think. And maybe this is a little bit early for that, but certainly later in The Wars of the Roses, it's actually a bit dangerous to be a widow, or sometimes to be married to an exile, so a husband who's still alive but has rebelled and then gone into exile. Because women are supposed to, in this period, be protected from the actions of their husbands. So if a husband, for instance, is tainted, that is, he's condemned as a traitor, all of his stuff is forfeit, women's possessions are supposed to be protected. But we see time and again throughout the Wars of the Roses that that does not happen, that there are little legal loopholes, or that people just intervene and take stuff
24:10 Speaker 02 from them, that women are put into the care of, care, inverted commas, of guardians, effectively jailers, to be honest, other lords who are monitoring them, who are stopping them from having any involvement in, you know, the legal, the political actions of their relatives in helping rebel against the crown, basically.
24:29 Kate Lister? Okay.
24:29 Speaker 02 And because Margaret is so wealthy throughout her whole life, and because she has this blood connection, distant as it is, I think she recognizes that she is in a really vulnerable position. And I also suspect that she was like, I have had something awful happen to me, it's been imposed on me, I am not going to let that happen again, I'm going to take control of things. Realistically, at this point, the best way that I can protect myself and this baby, who doesn't have a father, so is in exactly the same position I was for my entire life, the best way I can do that is to have a patron, basically, to have a political ally with someone from a, like, someone from a family that's got power of its own.
25:13 Kate Lister? Okay. So who does she go for?
25:15 Speaker 02 She goes for a very little known individual called Harry Stafford, someone so unimportant that no one even really knows when he was born.
25:23 Kate Lister? That's an interesting joke.
25:25 Speaker 02 Crucially, though, he is the son of the Duke of Buckingham, and the Duke of Buckingham, I mean, there are only, what, like, three dukes in England at this time, anyway, it's one of the highest ranking, sort of almost princes of the kingdom.
25:36 Kate Lister? Okay.
25:37 Speaker 02 And he is also one of the last people who is still kind of trying to keep the Wars of the Roses in check. He's got connections on both sides, York and Lancaster. He has been around Henry VI since Henry was a baby king. And so he is one of the only people who can kind of intervene and try and keep control. And again, this is really interesting that Margaret chooses that family. So it's not an out and out Lancastrian family, it's not out and out Yorkist, it's someone in the middle, because she's like, that way, whatever happens, we're probably going to be all right.
26:06 Kate Lister? Hmm.
26:07 Speaker 02 And the other, I think, big sell of Harry Stafford is that by marrying him, Margaret gets to go back to the territories that she grew up in, because his lands are also in Lincolnshire, in and around Lincolnshire. So that means effectively, what I see her doing is she's almost like cutting the Tudor ties completely. As far as we know, she leaves Henry in Pembroke Castle, she goes away and, and lives with her new husband. And crucially, she's living right next to her mother, her half siblings, where she grew up, a place of safety and security. And I think that as well is part of the attraction of this marriage, that she is able to thereby, like, just restore a bit of protection and comfort to her life.
26:51 Kate Lister? That makes sense. All right. It's not a completely harebrained scheme then. She's still so young. She's still like, what, 14 at this point?
26:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, 14, three times married.
27:02 Kate Lister? Much smarter than I was at 14, quite frankly. I don't want to say what, what was the Wars of the Roses, because we don't have enough time for that. But can you attempt to give us a sort of an overview of like, what was happening at this point? I mean, it was just chaos, wasn't it? It was Game of Thrones, basically.
27:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's pretty much Game of Thrones, but with, let's keep it really simple. White Rose of York, Red Rose of Lancaster. Henry VI is Lancastrian, so he's the Red Rose, the Duke of York, Richard Duke of York, White Rose. And they spend about 10 years just sort of like, I mean, fannying around really, just, you know, the odd battle here, the odd attack there. It just sort of escalates and escalates and escalates until finally, during the time that Margaret is married to Harry Stafford, Henry VI is deposed, he's driven out of the kingdom, and Richard Duke of York's son, teenage son, Edward Earl of March, becomes King Edward IV.
27:56 Kate Lister? Right.
27:57 Speaker 02 And very swiftly, Margaret and pretty much all of her relatives make peace with Edward IV and are like, right, that's fine, he's the guy now. We're all Yorkists.
28:08 Kate Lister? Smart, okay.
28:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:09 Kate Lister? Okay. Then how do we get from this to her being a kingmaker? Because it seems like she could have just sat back and just gone, look, we're all Yorkists, this is all great, I'm just gonna sit everywhere and do some, some needlework. But that doesn't seem to be what fate has got in store for her.
28:25 Speaker 02 No. I mean, again, the Wars of the Roses are such an absolute mess. I mean, like, I would say- Yeah, I would have said shit show. So we get to like fourteen sixty nine to seventy one. I'm not even going to go into detail, but everyone swaps back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And Margaret tries to be a sort of a little political manipulator. She tries to engineer it so that she is able to get control of her son again, so she can restore his estate.
28:51 Kate Lister? Oh, yeah. Where's he in all of this? Sorry, no.
28:53 Speaker 02 He's always just in Pembrokeshire.
28:55 Kate Lister? Right, okay.
28:57 Speaker 02 Don't worry about it, Kate. He's living in Wales.
29:00 Kate Lister? He's fine. He's fine. Okay, right, continue. Sorry.
29:03 Speaker 02 Well, this is the thing, like, so I do want to kind of emphasise it really, is that at this point in time, Margaret has not been involved in his life. He is, what, like, eleven years old almost by the time she actually, as far as we know, meets him again. Like, she leaves him in Wales, she goes to Lincolnshire, she resurrects her relationship with her family, she just forgets all about him. And I suspect she is thinking, oh, well, that's all behind me. Now I'm going to have a normal, air quotes, marriage. I'm going to have children with this husband and they will be the people I'm going to kind of invest a bit more energy in because they'll be around.
29:43 Kate Lister? Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 02 And instead, what happens is that she doesn't have any more children. We don't know if it's a choice. We don't know if it is just a sort of legacy of the trauma of the birth that she's had. My suspicion is that, that whether physically or psychologically, it just wasn't possible. And that she had hoped for children, and it's only when she starts to think, hmm, okay, I don't think this is going to happen, that she resurrects a relationship with her son, and that that's when she starts to be a bit more present in his life.
30:14 Kate Lister? Jesus. Just getting a letter from your mum aged about twelve, just going, remember me? Oh, God, that's so weird.
30:21 Speaker 02 Well, she might have been sending letters. To be fair, we don't have loads of detail for the first few years of the fourteen sixties, but it does seem like the first time she goes back to Wales and sees him is fourteen sixty seven. So he would have been ten years old at that point.
30:35 Kate Lister? Tudor mothers suck. Right, okay, but is she, is she politically involved at this point? I mean, think about the War of the Roses again, we can't go into it, we're gonna have to move past this quite quickly, is that like, as much as I'm joking that she could have just sat down and, and you know, just sat this one out, I don't think you could really, it was so all encompassing and so messy and such a complete and utter disaster that it's a bit like saying that you could sit Brexit out, it's like you can't, it's, it's there, like you're either for or you're against, like it's gonna get you. So how was she involved in this?
31:05 Speaker 02 I think she tries to sit it out for a while. I think the trouble is, is, and like, again, this is the complexity of it, is we're talking about a span of time that's 20 to 30 years. And within that time, her opinions completely changed. So for most of that period of time, firstly, she's very hands off. Then when she remembers she has this son and would like to have a relationship with him, she decides that, I mean, really, all she wants is for him to get what's his right, which is the Ealdom of Richmond, which has been taken away and given to someone else while he's a child. That's her concern. And then in 1471, he goes into exile because the Yorkists start to see him quite threatening towards the Lancastrians. So he flees overseas
31:49 Speaker 02 and she just doesn't see him for 11 years, basically. But she never loses sight of the fact that in order for him to come back and to have any sort of future in England as a noble man, he has to make peace with the ruling regime. And then he needs to get this Ealdom back. Like, that is, that's her aim, is to sort that out for him. And she manages to do it in around, well, not quite manages, she almost, she's on the very precipice of having sorted all of this out in 1482. She makes a deal with Edward IV of York, that Henry can come back if he makes peace, he'll be completely safe. And I should say, by this point, most of the Lancastrians have been killed, one way or another, you know, by fair means and foul during the Wars of the
32:34 Speaker 02 Roses. He is starting to be one of the very few who is left alive.
32:38 Kate Lister? But he's just in France, just like on a massive gap year.
32:41 Speaker 02 Brittany.
32:42 Kate Lister? Brittany, right, okay. So is he doing anything that's threatening when they said that you've got, you've got to make peace if you want to come back? Was he writing nasty letters to the king? Was he like?
32:50 Speaker 02 No, I think that's, I think that's why Edward IV is willing to make a deal with Margaret for Henry's return, is because like, Henry Tudor is sort of the model citizen, really, like his uncle has been. If, you know, locked in Harlot Castle for years, defending the Lancastrian cause. There's other people who have been breaking out of prisons and leading armies. Henry's never done any of that. He's like, he's, he's, he just wants a quiet life, I think, probably. But at the point that Margaret finally manages to make a deal that would secure Henry's safe return with his life safe and his ability to kind of take up his position as Earl of Richmond. Edward the Fourth dies and everything goes to hell in a handcart.
33:31 Speaker 02 And I think like, that's what we need to understand about Margaret at this point.
33:36 Kate Lister? Had Henry come back from Brittany before he died? Or was this like, he gave up the ghost in negotiations?
33:42 Speaker 02 The deal is made. I think Henry is still suspicious that it is not actually going to keep him safe. And then within nine months, Edward is dead. So, yeah, Henry the Seventh, by this point, still, still on the continent. The Wars of the Roses kicks off again. And it starts to become, I mean, just so labyrinthine in the political shenanigans that are going on at this point. But effectively, as we know, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, takes the throne instead of Edward the Fourth's children. The princes disappear in the tower, the princesses, one of whom was kind of earmarked to marry Henry Tudor. They all disappear into Westminster Abbey in sanctuary.
34:26 Speaker 02 So like, there's no real inducement there for Henry to come back and marry them now. And Margaret is like, what? I had this great idea, guys. What have you done?
34:37 Kate Lister? You fucked it up. Oh, my God. Oh, she must have been fuming.
34:41 Speaker 02 This close to sorting it out.
34:46 Kate Lister? It's like, when, when the, when the king died, just going, did he leave any notes? Did, did he mention anything to anyone?
34:51 Speaker 02 Shit. Was there, was there just maybe a parchment that he'd scribbled a picture on?
34:56 Kate Lister? Fuck. All right. Okay.
34:58 Speaker 02 HT4 Liz of York.
35:02 Kate Lister? Oh, you'd be fuming, you'd be so angry. All right, okay, so he's dead, she's cross, he's still in Brittany. How does she get him back?
35:09 Speaker 02 How does she get him back? That is the, that is the question. And I'm not going to go into the whole Prince is in the Tower stuff, obviously. But it is like, it is an important backdrop to everything that's going on and why Margaret behaves the way she does. I mean, there's a bit of a tacit threat to her and her then husband, who is a different man called Thomas Stanley in 1483, because Richard, Duke of Gloucester, has had quite a fractious relationship with Thomas Stanley. They've had run-ins in the past, most recently in the wars in Scotland, like there were real issues only a year before. So yeah, Stanley's not necessarily one of Richard III's major supporters, but he is very good at sort of manoeuvring himself back into people's good graces. So he manages to like persuade Richard that he can be useful.
35:53 Speaker 02 Margaret Beaufort, I get the impression is just sort of sitting and seeing what happens.
35:56 Kate Lister? Just waiting, just waiting.
35:58 Speaker 02 Just waiting to see what occurs.
35:59 Kate Lister? Keep your powder dry, that's what my mum says, keep your powder dry.
36:04 Speaker 02 And then I personally think, this is my interpretation, other interpretations are available, of course.
36:09 Kate Lister? Controversial.
36:11 Speaker 02 That the princes in the tower, if they are not dead by summer 1483, most people think they are. So.
36:19 Kate Lister? They've gone to live on a nice farm in a, in a different state with some people that are going to look after them. That's what's happened.
36:25 Speaker 02 Yes. But yeah, that's not the prevailing feeling at the time. Most people seem to think the princes have died.
36:33 Kate Lister? They've gone.
36:34 Speaker 02 Richard III has killed them and that's not okay? Like, that's the very short version of events.
36:40 Kate Lister? That's a fair assumption.
36:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think Margaret is in the camp of people who are like, I don't think you should have killed your nephews, actually. I'm not really sure I want to do business with you. And as she's looking around and she's seeing, okay, Richard III isn't really going to help me with my plan. Henry's never going to make it home at this rate and he's nearly 30.
37:00 Kate Lister? Fucking hell, what's he doing? Nearly 30, letting his mum sort of everything out for him.
37:06 Speaker 02 Just drinking cider. That's all he's doing, pretty much.
37:07 Kate Lister? When they talk about the invisible labour of women, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
37:13 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly so. And I mean, to cut a long story short, I think Margaret is thinking, well, I'm not happy about this. We know that other members of her family are definitely oppose actively against Richard because they've got links to Edward the Fourth's household. They're not happy about what's happened to the princes in the tower. They think Richard should be got rid of and someone should replace him. If it can't be the princes because they're dead, well, then who is it going to be? And Margaret, in her little tick, tick, tick, tick, tick brain is like, hmm. So it needs to be someone who can like ally all of these different factions who are trying to kill each other. Hmm. I know someone who's been abroad for 10 years and therefore hasn't been involved with any factions. It needs to be an adult man because they're probably going to have to fight. Oh, I know
37:57 Speaker 02 someone who's an adult man.
37:59 Kate Lister? I know one of them.
37:59 Speaker 02 And it needs to be someone who has some sort of blood connection to the throne. So like ding, ding, ding. She's like, Henry Tudor. This is it.
38:08 Kate Lister? Boom.
38:08 Speaker 02 But like, I really want to emphasise, this was not the plan all along. This is the plan because of what Richard III does in 1483. He makes this situation and Margaret is just trying to like, get her family safely through it.
38:24 Kate Lister? Okay.
38:24 Speaker 02 Unfortunately, the way she does that is she leads this, well, she doesn't lead. She engineers a big rebellion. Henry Tudor leads it. He nearly gets killed because he comes like to the very shores of England on a boat. He's waving at people on land. They all go, hello, we're your friends. He's like, something seems a bit off. He sails back to the continent and Margaret is effectively imprisoned because the rebellion totally fails.
38:46 Kate Lister? Oh, that was a rebellion, him coming over on his boat and waving?
38:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, I mean, there are lots of other people doing the actual rebellion. Yes. Unfortunately, like just everything, everything went wrong. I mean, there's just no way to even go into it. Like the weather's against them. The Duke of Buckingham's over here doing something. Another, like, the West Country is doing something. Everyone's completely uncoordinated in fourteen eighty-three, so the rebellion totally fails.
39:10 Kate Lister? Right, okay. And Margaret's in jail. Oh, no.
39:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, she's in, like, Aristo jail.
39:16 Kate Lister? Right, not like Wormwood Scrubs, then?
39:18 Speaker 02 No, she's living in her husband's house, but she's not allowed her servants, she's not allowed to send messages, she's legally, you know.
39:25 Kate Lister? Right, okay.
39:25 Speaker 02 She's not allowed to raise any money, and the thing that would, like, be really offensive to her is that pretty much all her lands are taken away. So she has nothing. It's all taken away. It's, Stanley gets to keep it for his lifetime, I should say, that's an important difference, for his lifetime, and he's ten years older than her. When he dies, everything is lost. That's what she's looking at at this point. So, I mean, effectively, she's like, well, now I have literally nothing to lose.
39:54 Kate Lister? Nothing to lose now, right, yeah.
39:55 Speaker 02 Me and Henry haven't got anything, so, I mean, we might as well try again. And that is what they do in fourteen eighty-five. And in the interim, I think is, like, I think it's really important to remember that as much as Margaret is sort of, you know, locked away probably somewhere in the northwest of England, the people she's connected to, you know, the merchants who've been stocking her household, the various messengers who've been working for her, the priests who go roving around all over the country, all of those people are still active, they are still moving about, some of them back and forth across the channel as well. It's really difficult to reconstruct because, like, of necessity,
40:35 Speaker 02 it's, it's kept totally secret at the time. But you really get this sense in the after-effects of fourteen eighty-five, that Margaret has kind of been this little spider in this vast, like, economic web, basically, of people. She is connected financially to so many people, and by bonds of loyalty and connected over generations, because by this point she's in her forties, and as we mentioned, she's been, you know, a wife since she was twelve. So she has so many links to so many people who, like, who owe her. That she is able just to like slowly gather in these favours like, oh, could you just, could you just lend me a little bit of money? I tell you what, don't send it to me. Could you just send it maybe to Calais? And then in Calais, it gets sent on to someone
41:19 Speaker 02 else and then it gets sent to Henry. People are fleeing the country and where do they go? They go to Henry. So like, as much as her movements are restricted, she is undoubtedly still raising money for Henry, which is enabling him to raise an army, come back and fight.
41:37 Kate Lister? I hope he's doing some work as well. I hope this is just, isn't just all his mum doing all of this for him.
41:43 Speaker 02 No, to be fair to Henry, he's doing a, he's doing a lot of work as well. I think it's probably a bit of a difficult situation he's in. But what's, like, he's not really remembered as being very charismatic, Henry VII, but there must have been something about Henry that he was able to like coalesce. 500 people is like a conservative estimate of the number of exiles who have joined him in France by this point.
42:06 Kate Lister? Oh, right. Okay.
42:08 Speaker 02 And to be able to be like, yes, I will, I will reclaim this kingdom. I like, it is rightfully mine. All of you gather to me.
42:16 Kate Lister? I couldn't be bothered with that. Could you be bothered with that? Could you be bothered with that? Like, just, I'll just, I'll stay in Brittany. That's, I'd never have been a great historical figure. That's why. People like me never made the history books. I'm just going, now you're all right.
42:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, it's difficult, isn't it? Because like, they have such a different worldview, these aristocrats. They have such a sense of like, this is mine. I should claim it. Whereas, you know, I'm like, oh, I don't want to impose. Could I, could you give me a tiny amount of money for my work, please?
42:47 Kate Lister? As long as it doesn't upset anyone.
42:56 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Lauren and Margaret after this short break.
43:07 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet.
43:09 Speaker 03 Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer.
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43:40 Kate Lister? Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
44:22 Kate Lister? All right, so what happens next? She's in jail, but she's obviously wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. Henry is amassing exiles. And then, and then there must be a push. There must be a right, this is it, this is go day.
44:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, he manages also, to be fair to Henry, he manages to get a lot of support from the French court and French soldiers and Scottish soldiers as well, slightly inexplicably. He makes it all the way to Wales, not England. He lands in Wales, he progresses through Wales, gets towards what is Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. And at this point, it is still completely unclear if Margaret's husband is going to help him or not. And this is quite pivotal because Margaret's husband and his family have, I mean, tens of thousands potentially of soldiers who they can call on to help Henry. So he really needs them. And Stanley is just the absolute master of like, nah, I think I'll sit this one out, actually, guys, don't worry about it.
45:23 Speaker 02 But, and again, I think this test, this testifies a bit to Margaret's influence. We know that her stepson, George, Lord Strange, we know her brother-in-law, Sir William Stanley, other members of the Stanley and Savage families, they do go over to Henry as soon as he lands. They are in his army, or in George Lord Strange's case, held hostage. Bit of a side note. So like, there is enough of a wellspring, effectively, of support, that at a crucial moment in the Battle of Bosworth, which, again, just to emphasise, is Henry VII's, Henry Tudor's, first ever battle that he fights in.
45:56 Kate Lister? Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know, I didn't know that.
45:57 Speaker 02 Twenty-eight? Yeah. He may have turned up to one when he was 12, but like, this is the first one he's fighting in. And he somehow manages to get the Stanleys to come over to him. They play a fairly, fairly inglorious part in the whole proceedings and just sort of go around massacring people. Richard III rides his horse directly at Henry, tries to kill him, tries to take out the enemy, instead is himself killed. And suddenly, pretty unexpectedly, I think, to a lot of people, Henry Tudor is king. And Margaret is now the mother of the king.
46:33 Kate Lister? I mean, well, I'm not sure if anyone saw that coming. I mean, they must have hoped. They must have hoped, but there must have been a real...
46:40 Speaker 02 They were not ready. You can literally see them in sort of the accounts that they're keeping, just scrabbling around, being like, has anybody got any velvet? Has anybody got a flag? He's, he looks rubbish. We need him to be king.
46:52 Kate Lister? It's gonna be that easy. Oh, fucking hell. Alright, so, so he's king, Richard, and I know there'll be Ricardians listening, so, you know, sorry for your loss. He's dead and gone, and Henry is the fucking king. Oh, my God. Margaret must have been pleased.
47:08 Speaker 02 She was, yes. And I think Henry was probably pleased that Margaret was there, because he comes into this kingdom, like I say, he's lived either in France, Brittany, or Wales his entire life. He has never spent time in the English court. He's got no idea how things work, really.
47:24 Kate Lister? Wow.
47:25 Speaker 02 He needs someone who is an insider for all this stuff, and Margaret is. She has been at court for years and years and years. She knows how things run. She knows what Henry should do. And because she is a woman, a lot of what she is doing is behind the scenes, it's not recorded.
47:40 Kate Lister? Hmm.
47:41 Speaker 02 But I would be absolutely astonished if she isn't there being like, okay, so this guy here, we don't trust him, uh, don't invite him to your party. Actually, maybe invite him, but put him somewhere where he's not gonna sit next to this other person and cause trouble.
47:54 Kate Lister? Yeah, okay.
47:55 Speaker 02 I mean, we know she's arranging marriages because that's kind of an acceptable thing for a woman to do at this time. But I think it is undoubted that she is helping Henry rule the country almost from the first moment that he is king.
48:08 Kate Lister? Does she have a happy life from here on out? I mean, I know there's a lot of debate around, was this the plan the entire time? Was she scheming this from, from her earliest days as a child bride? But now it's here, did she have a good time?
48:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think so.
48:24 Kate Lister? Good, excellent. Right, okay, well played, Margaret.
48:27 Speaker 02 That's the end. Uh, no.
48:30 Speaker 02 It is undoubtedly quite difficult. So this is 1485, Henry VII and Margaret lived to 1509. And throughout that time, there's more rebellions, there's more things to overcome, there's pretenders, there's, there are troubles.
48:43 Kate Lister? God, you can't just, people can't just leave well enough alone, can they? My god.
48:48 Speaker 02 I know. And Margaret, I think, uh, she sort of, she is part of the court for a very long time. And then as soon as she is able, I think she sort of withdraws and she becomes what's called a vauwess, which means you have a living husband, but you're effectively operating independently. And she goes and, like, it's ruling the Midlands. I know, it'd be good, wouldn't it?
49:10 Kate Lister? Oh.
49:11 Speaker 02 Yeah. It's almost like being a nun, which is why in her pictures, she always looks like a nun. But you don't have to have a dead husband. And that's the key, really, is that her husband, like, very inconveniently just doesn't die. So they have to keep him on side. And yet also, Margaret would really like to have some power of her own, please.
49:28 Kate Lister? So then as a final question, I mean, well played, Margaret, all throughout this, you can't, you know, you can't deny that. Is her reputation, because her reputation is as this sort of scheming, manipulative, Cersei Game of Thrones, Machiavellian type of sneaky woman. Is that well deserved?
49:48 Speaker 02 I don't think so. I really don't. And again, it's a, it's a thing we do with historical people, isn't it? Is we see them as something static. And it's like, this is a person who lived for 60 plus years, obvious, and their circumstances totally changed during that period. Obviously, what they wanted and who they were altered over time. And I think it is absolutely absurd to imagine that you have a 13 year old who's just given birth in traumatic circumstances, who looks at her baby and is like, I know what you're going to be one day. Ridiculous, especially at that point in time. There's no way anyone would think that this kid is going to be the ruler of the kingdom. There's too many people. And I, like I said earlier, I just
50:30 Speaker 02 don't think it comes about until Richard III's actions make it an imperative for Margaret's survival and her son's survival. I think that's what does it. And then in later life, she's in a really weird situation because she's the king's mother, but her husband's still alive. And so she has to navigate that, which means that I think maybe people have a slightly weird idea about her power, or that she's exerting too much power, or she's too independent, or she's too influential on the king. And again, like, the accusations that she's too influential on Henry come quite far into his reign. It's by the time that people, other people are starting to die off. And she sort of has to step up and,
51:12 Speaker 02 and help him because, you know, the Wars of the Roses lot are all gone. Lots of his advisors and the people who were in exile with him are dead. Like, who else is going to help? She does. And I also think like she is not this sort of, I don't know, like this tiger mum, mother from hell sort of figure. She's quite detached from Henry for quite a lot of his life. And I suspect felt very guilty about it and was trying to prove her affection and her worth to him, once he was actually in, you know, the same country as her. And I think that was kind of the foundation of their relationship. Is it, to me, it's really beautiful because it's two adults coming together and being like, you, I have a lot of respect
51:54 Speaker 02 for. You prove yourself to me over and over again. There's something in you that is also in me. And I think it is a really beautiful relationship, actually. And I think it's been twisted into a bit of a, I don't know, either an Oedipal or a, you know, a weirdly obsessive one. And I don't think it is that at all.
52:13 Kate Lister? Oh, Lauren, you have been marvellous to talk to. Thank you so much for introducing me and a whole other people to Margaret Beaufort. Give us the full title of the book again.
52:23 Speaker 02 It is Margaret Beaufort, Survivor Rebel Kingmaker.
52:28 Kate Lister? And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Not the Richard III people, leave her alone. Right. You've, you've just go and do something else.
52:38 Speaker 02 Just be nice to me, please.
52:39 Kate Lister? Just be nice.
52:41 Speaker 02 HistoryLauren.co.uk is my website where there are various events and other things related to the book going on. And also I'm on social media, mostly as at history underscore Lauren.
52:52 Kate Lister? Amazing. Thank you so much. And the best of luck with the book. It looks amazing.
52:56 Speaker 02 Thank you.
53:01 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Lauren for joining me. And coming up for the new year, we are looking at the filthiest people in history in more ways than one. And to keep up to date, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. If you would like us to explore a subject, or if you just fancied saying hello and a happy new year, you can email us at [email protected] . This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
53:41 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet.
53:44 Speaker 03 Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer.
53:49 Speaker 01 With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work.
54:00 Speaker 03 That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about.
54:05 Speaker 01 Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.
54:11 Speaker 03 That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.
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