Margaret Beaufort

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who, as a child bride, became mother to the boy who would eventually become the first king in the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c1443-1509) was twelve when she married Edmund Tudor, half his age, and gave birth to their son Henry when she was thirteen and Edmund was already dead from the plague. Margaret Beaufort made it her life's work to protect Henry during the Wars of the Roses, which had begun soon before his birth and, as many more obvious successors to the crown died or were killed in the wars, she pivoted to supporting Henry when he became the strongest contender against Richard III. She was to survive Richard III declaring her a traitor and went on to see Henry become Henry VII, the first Tudor king, and herself become the King's Mother. Outliving her son by a few months, she was then to help her grandson Henry VIII succeed and the Tudor dynasty continue. With Joanna Laynesmith Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading Katherine Lewis Honorary Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lincoln and Research Associate at the University of York And David Grummitt Staff Tutor in History at the Open University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Nathen Amin, The House of Beaufort (Amberley Publishing, 2017) Rachel Delman, 'The Vowesses, the anchoresses, and the aldermen's wives: Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Devout Society of Late Medieval Stamford' (Urban History 49, 2022) David Grummitt, A Short History of the Wars of the Roses (revised edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) Michael Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (Yale University Press, 2010) Lauren Johnson, Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025) Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge University Press, 1991) Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women's Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2008), especially the chapter ‘Margaret Beaufort's Literate Practice: Service and Self-Inscription' J. L. Laynesmith, Cecily Duchess of York (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) Susan Powell, The Household Accounts of Lady Margaret Beaufort, 1443-1509 (The British Academy, 2022) Nicola Tallis, Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Matriarch (Michael O'Mara, 2019) Micheline White (ed.), English Women, Religion, and Textual Production, 1500-1625 (Ashgate, 2016), especially ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Translations as Mirrors of Practical Piety’ by Brenda M. Hosington In Our Time is a BBC Studios production Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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• 1:05Speaker 03

  Hello, Misha Glenny here. Before you listen to this episode, I wanted to share some exciting news. You can now watch this episode and all future episodes of In Our Time in full video. Just search for In Our Time on YouTube or watch episodes 28 days early by subscribing to the streaming service BBC Select in the US and Canada.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. Margaret Beaufort was almost 12 when the Wars of the Roses broke out in 1455, and she was soon to marry her second husband Edmund Tudor. Age 13, and Edmund was already dead, she gave birth to their son Henry Tudor. It became Margaret's life work to protect Henry and, when the chance arose, promote his claim to the throne.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Seemingly invincible, Margaret was to survive Richard III branding her a traitor, and she saw not only her son become Henry VII, but her grandson succeed him as Henry VIII.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  With me to discuss Margaret Beaufort are Joanna Lane Smith, visiting research fellow at the University of Reading, David Grummitt, staff tutor in history at the Open University, and Katherine Lewis, honorary professor of medieval history at the University of Lincoln and research associate at the University of York. Catherine, can I start with you? Margaret Beaufort was born in 1443, when crises of succession affected more or less everyone. What was her particular family's situation at the time of her birth?

• 3:01Speaker 04

  Margaret Beaufort was the daughter of John Beaufort, who was the Duke of Somerset, and her mother was Margaret Beecham, who actually was from a rich gentry family rather than being of a noble background. When Margaret was just shy of her first birthday, her father died. He had just returned from a disastrous military campaign in France, part of what we now call the Hundred Years' War. He was in disgrace, and there was even a rumour that he had taken his own life. Margaret was his only child, so that meant that she was the sole heir to his vast estates. He had lands in Somerset, but also in Lincolnshire, Kent and Devon.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Now, the annual income from these lands was about a thousand pounds a year. To put that into context, an average labourer in this period would probably earn about two pounds a year. That's just the income from the lands. So, in modern terms, Margaret is a millionaire as a baby. And really, this determines the rest of her life, the fact that she's such a rich heiress, and also that she is descended from Edward III, because her father was a great-grandson of Edward III.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  She was popular presumably because a lot of people wanted to marry her for her money.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So, because she was a baby, that meant that obviously she couldn't inherit her father's lands immediately. Now, in situations like this, a baby would become the ward of the king. So that meant the king, and in this case that's Henry VI, who was actually Margaret's second cousin, he now has custody of her person, of her Her lands and he also has the right to arrange her marriage. Now, this is all very standard practice at the time. It was also standard practice for kings to give these wards to their followers. And in this case, Henry actually gave Margaret's wardship to his closest adviser. So that's William de la Pole, who was the Earl and then the Duke of Suffolk. Margaret seems to have stayed with her mother, though. She's only

• 5:00Speaker 04

  a baby. Sometimes wards go and live with their new guardians, as Henry Tudor did, but Margaret stays with her mother. Now Suffolk, as the 1440s progressed, became very, very unpopular. And by 1450, he knew that his downfall was imminent. And he was really concerned to make provision for his only child, John, who was his heir. He does this by marrying John to Margaret. Now, Margaret is six, John is seven. So this isn't a real marriage. It's really more of a betrothal. What it means is that they've made a legal agreement that when they reach the age of consent, which for a girl would be 12 and for a boy would be 14, they would indeed be married. And indeed, Suffolk was quite

• 5:45Speaker 04

  sensible to make this provision because around the same time as the marriage, he was indeed arrested. He was charged with treason and corruption. Significantly, one of the charges against him is that the reason why he married John to Margaret is because he thought she was heir to the throne and that this would make John king. Because Henry VI didn't have any children at this point. Now Suffolk ridiculed this. He said, it's against law and reason to think that Margaret is the heir to the throne. And he was right. I mean, this was a spurious accusation, really, because Margaret was descended from Edward III, but so were pretty much every other noble at the court. Now Suffolk actually ends up being, he's

• 6:28Speaker 04

  convicted, he's exiled. As he's leaving the country, he gets murdered. So that means that Margaret, her person, her lands, her marriage, all reverts back to the king. And now the king can give her, if he wishes, to somebody else instead.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  So that marriage to Suffolk's son goes away?

• 6:48Speaker 04

  And it's worth pointing out that Margaret went on to be married another three times, but she herself never acknowledged the marriage to John de la Pole as a real marriage. It was a null, so that's not a divorce. It means the marriage had never existed in the first place.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Now, David Gremet, this may come as surprising, coming from someone who is very comfortable with the politics and history of the Balkans, but I find the Wars of the Roses absolutely baffling. Can you tell me why they broke out in 1455 and who the main forces are beyond the Houses of York and Lancaster?

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Okay, so I think we can say the cause of the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455 is Henry VI. So Henry had come to the throne in 1422, aged just nine months. He had reigned for over 30 years by 1455, and during that time, he had really proven himself inadequate in almost every aspect of kingship. He had big boots to fill because, of course, his father had been Henry V, and it's Henry V who had conquered Normandy and won the Battle of Agincourt. By 1450, Normandy had fallen, and three years later, Gascony, the other large territory under English control, had also fallen.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  And Henry VI was held widely to blame for this. Not so much that he himself had failed, although I think there is a sense that he had, but more importantly, the people who he had chosen to advise him had failed. We've already heard about one of them, William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, but there were others, and that was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Now, obviously, that's the same family. Edmund is Margaret's uncle, and he becomes the king's chief councillor after Suffolk's death in 1450. The other player, of course, who we haven't mentioned yet is Richard, Duke of York. The most powerful nobleman in England.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  He had distinguished himself in the wars with France, but in 1450, he was in Ireland. He was the king's lieutenant in Ireland. And his great rival Edmund Beaufort, who was the king's lieutenant in Normandy, had presided over that debacle. In 1453, Henry VI has an acute bout of mental illness. And it's at this point that York really makes his first claim to be the protector of the realm, to govern England when Henry is incapacitated. And one of the things that he demands in 1453, and continues to demand it as we go through 1454 into 1455, is the removal of Edmund Beaufort. Now, Henry won't agree to that. And in April 1455, at the Battle of St Albans,

• 9:34Speaker 00

  the royal forces clash with the Duke of York and Edmund Beaufort is murdered. Now, alongside Edmund Beaufort are also murdered the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford, two really powerful northern lords. On the other side, with the Duke of York, are the Nevels. And that's the Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Warwick.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  How long does Henry VI last?

• 9:56Speaker 00

  So Henry VI, as I say, becomes king in 1422. He's removed for the first time in March 1461. He then wanders around the north of England and Scotland for a few years before he's captured and put into the Tower in 1465. And then in 1470, the Earl of Warwick, who we've just mentioned, actually switches sides and supports Henry VI over Edward IV.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Now, that year when the Wars of the Roses break out with the Battle of St Albans, 1455, Margaret marries Edmund Tudor. Whose idea was that?

• 10:31Speaker 00

  So Henry VI has decided that he needs to provide for his half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor. He gives them titles, so Edmund becomes the Earl of Richmond and Jasper becomes the Earl of Pembroke.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  As well as lands that they're granted, it's also important for Edmund to get married. And he's granted the wardship of the young Margaret. And rather than seeking a bride for her elsewhere, he marries her himself. And I think nobody really could have perhaps expected, and Henry VI may not have expected, what happens next.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Well, Joanna Laynesmith, let me ask you what does happen next? It's not long before she gives birth. Why was this such a life-changing moment for her, apart from the obvious?

• 11:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, giving birth is always life-changing, but for Margaret it's absolutely on another scale, I think. In the long term, it's because the baby she gives birth to, Henry Tudor, has this astonishing future ahead of him. Because so many of the male descendants of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, are either killed in battle, or murdered, or executed. One of them is mysteriously thrown overboard on the English Channel. So it turns out that he emerges as a potential claimant to the English throne, and that, of course, shapes Margaret's life and legacy. In the short term, it's hugely traumatic for her. She's 13 by the time he's born, but by that point, as you've mentioned, she's already a widow, because Edmund Tudor died of plague.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  So Jasper Tudor took her to his castle at Pembroke, and that's where she gave birth. Apparently, it was very traumatic. It's possible that the reason she never had any more children was because the birth was so difficult, but you can only speculate on that. So yes, there she was, a widow with a baby. Suddenly, she was actually less of a marital catch than she had been, because anybody else who married her would know they only had a life interest in her estates, because this child from a previous marriage would actually be the one to inherit. But just a couple of months after the birth, Jasper Tudor whisks Margaret off to be inspected by a potential new suitor.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  And she marries again at 1458?

• 12:43Speaker 05

  1458, so that's just a year after Henry's birth, yeah. And so this is Henry Stafford, who's a younger son of the Duke of Buckingham. This is quite nice for Margaret, really, I think, because she actually moves into a more stable... Household for a while, back into the Lincolnshire area, but outside, things are changing dramatically because only a few years after her marriage, as David said, Henry is overthrown, Edward IV becomes king. And this means that Henry Tudor is suddenly without a ward because he had stayed with Jasper in Pembroke. And it's it's kind of unusual because Margaret herself got to stay with her mother. We don't know why he stayed, whether it was Jasper really wanted to hang on to this child to bring them up and influence him. Or whether Margaret actually had been so traumatised, she just didn't want to have anything to do with him.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  Because the curious thing is, she doesn't see him for 10 years, and she could do.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  When he's a boy.

• 13:34Speaker 05

  He's a boy, yes. She doesn't see him through his childhood. And Henry's wardship is then granted to one of Edward's followers, William Herbert. And eventually Margaret goes and sees him, yes, when he's about 10. By now, she must have known she was never going to have any other children. Looks as if she's got over the trauma and realised this is her legacy, is this boy. And that's when she meets up with various people in an attempt to try and get some of his inheritance back. Because of course, when Edward IV took the throne, Henry's rights to his estates and his title were then distributed between Edward IV's, or mostly went to one of Edward IV's brothers. So the trouble is that at the point she starts doing this, it's around the time of Warwick's rebellions. And she keeps asking the wrong people to help. So initially, her political instincts are not too good.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  I think we'll find that changes later on. Katherine Lewis, it's not too much later that she finds herself widowed again. She's only in her twenties. The next husband was Thomas Stanley. How did that change her life?

• 14:34Speaker 04

  We need to just place this in context. So this is at the moment where, we're in 1470 now. So Henry VI has come back to the throne for a year. And then in 1471, Edward IV comes back to the throne. And I think it's important to say, so Edward IV comes back to the throne, Henry VI is killed, Henry VI's son is killed. So from this point onwards, Edward IV's kingship is really very secure, especially after he fathers an heir and a spare, essentially. Meanwhile, Henry Stafford, Margaret's husband, he died.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  In fourteen seventy one in October, he had actually fought at the Battle of Barnett earlier in the year. Margaret, as you said, she's twenty eight when he dies. As a widow, she's entitled to a year of mourning before she would be expected to remarry. But in fact, she remarries within the year. And as you say, she marries Thomas Law Stanley, who comes from a powerful family in the north west of England. The fact that Margaret remarries relatively quickly, we should not take that as evidence that she was cold hearted, that she wasn't distressed by Stafford's death. She's in a very vulnerable situation. She's twenty eight, she's still a very rich catch. If she hadn't arranged her own marriage, and by the way, this is the only one of her marriages

• 15:49Speaker 04

  we can say for sure she organised. If she hadn't organised that marriage, Edward the Fourth may well have compelled her to marry one of his followers as a reward for loyalty. Her son Henry Tudor had been supporting Henry the Sixth. When Edward the Fourth became king, Henry Tudor flees the country, he's living in exile overseas. So, as I say, Margaret's very vulnerable, she needs a protector. Stanley is trusted by Edward the Fourth, he's a really good, practical choice. He's a widower, he has some grown up children of his own. In fourteen seventy one, Edward the Fourth made him steward of the royal household and he's also a member of the King's Council. So, from this point on, Margaret becomes part of the royal Yorkist court.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  And this puts her in a really prime position to start negotiating with Edward for the rights of her son. As Joanna says, at this point, she clearly realises that Henry's her only son. And she wants to ensure two things, she wants him to be able to safely return from exile and she wants him to have title to her lands. We don't know how she went about this with Edward the Fourth. But what we do know is that after ten years, she is successful. Edward the Fourth's policy was always to try and get erstwhile opponents on side. And so I think it might have been a bit of a quid pro quo. Margaret wanted something from him, but he also wanted her to support.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  Him. And in fourteen eighty-two, Edward the Fourth agrees, finally, Margaret has got him to trust her and to trust Henry. So Henry can come home, he can inherit the lands, there's a pardon drawn up. This is also the first time that we have an indication of a possible marriage between Henry Tudor and Edward's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York. So whatever Margaret did, she did it well. However, Edward the Fourth then goes and spoils it all because before this agreement is ratified, Edward the Fourth dies suddenly. Personally frustrating for Margaret, disastrous for the country because it's back in political turmoil again.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  We'll come back to the consequences of the death of Edward the Fourth, but I want to stay in the fourteen seventies, David. Things are going quite well for Margaret in the fourteen seventies, but what's happening to her son Henry at this point? Why has he fled to Brittany? And what does he get up to while he's there?

• 18:14Speaker 00

  So in fourteen seventy-one, after the Battle of Chelmsford, which is the sort of final defeat of the Lancastrian cause, this is when King Henry's son Edward is killed after the battle. Jasper Tudor, so Henry's uncle, Margaret's brother-in-law, was on his way to Chelmsford and didn't make it in time, basically.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Probably a good thing.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  It was certainly a good thing for Jasper. So what he does, he goes back to, he's got Henry, the young Henry with him, but they go back to Pembroke Castle. And Edward sends an agent, a guy called Roger Vaughan, to try and capture Jasper. Jasper actually captures him and beheads Roger Vaughan. And then Roger Vaughan's son turns up wanting revenge. So at this point Jasper and Henry retreat to Tenby. They stay there for probably a couple of months, awaiting a Yorkist siege and trying desperately to find a way to escape. And they do manage to escape and they head for France. He gets washed up in Brittany. So poor old Jasper and Henry are really left kicking their heels for, for over a decade.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Drinking calvados.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  Drinking calvados and enjoying the hospitality of the Duke of Brittany, while, we hope, Margaret is working on Henry's behalf back in England.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Joanna Lane Smith, back to Edward the Fourth's death.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  He dies aged forty unexpectedly in fourteen eighty-three. And he's succeeded, in theory, by Edward the Fifth, who's one of the princes in the Tower. And without going down the rabbit hole of the princes in the Tower, we know that he lasts a couple of months or whatever before he disappears and their uncle, Richard the Third, claims the throne. So Richard the Third is on the throne. Margaret is negotiating though with the widow of Edward the Fourth, who was also the mother of the princes in the Tower, Elizabeth Woodville. Can you explain the connection between Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort and what Margaret

• 20:16Speaker 03

  is up to at the time?

• 20:18Speaker 05

  Throughout the latter half of Edward the Fourth's reign, Margaret was quite a prominent person in there and so she would have known Elizabeth Woodville, they went to the same events and so forth, she waited on the Queen. But we don't really know how they felt about each other. And then when Richard became king, Elizabeth Woodville was hiding in the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, whereas for the coronation ceremony, Margaret Beaufort was present carrying the Queen's train, Richard the Third's Queen Anne's train, and Margaret's husband was carrying the constable's mace. So it looked like they had completely accepted this new regime. But very quickly, it emerges that the deal that Margaret had hoped she'd made with Edward the Fourth to bring Henry Tudor back was no longer going to happen.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  Within a couple of weeks of the coronation, there's the first rebellion against Richard the Third. Lots of people are arrested for, men are executed for trying to release the princes in the Tower and for writing to Henry and Jasper Tudor. So probably what they were trying to do at this point was get the princes out of London into Brittany, because in Brittany was where Elizabeth Woodville's brother, Edward, and various other people who were loyal to Edward the Fifth had fled to. And so this is the point when clearly there is a Woodville Tudor alliance against Richard the Third, as it were.

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• 23:49Speaker 03

  Hello, Misha Glenny. Before you listen to this episode, I wanted to share some exciting news. You can now watch this episode and all future episodes of In Our Time in full video. Just search for In Our Time on YouTube or watch episodes 28 days early by subscribing to the streaming service BBC Select in the US and Canada.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  How does Margaret get on with Richard III when he's denouncing her son the whole time?

• 24:20Speaker 05

  We don't have enough information to know what's happening there. Presumably, she's actually keeping back and biding her time because a few months after that, there's a much bigger rebellion all across the south of England and into Wales. And initially, it's to try and get the princes in the tower out, but then rumor circulates that the princes are dead and they need a new head for this rebellion. Unfortunately, the sources are so disparate and compromised, it's really difficult to know exactly what was happening. Probably the Duke of Buckingham thought this was his moment to claim the throne, but Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville have other ideas, and we know this bit for certain. Quite possibly because of that earlier discussion about maybe Henry would marry one of Elizabeth Woodville's daughters when he came over, this is the moment to resurrect that.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Because if Henry Tudor married Elizabeth Woodville's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who seems to be now Edward the Fourth's heir, they could bring together both those Yorkists and Lancastrians who were opposed to Richard III. Unfortunately for them, the rebellion is very badly organised and the weather is atrocious. So Henry hasn't actually managed to land in England before it's all collapsed.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  But Catherine, Margaret is backing that rebellion. What's her relationship with the Duke of Buckingham, who's supposedly, I mean, it's called the Buckingham Rebellion, right? What's their relationship?

• 25:41Speaker 04

  They are, as everybody else is in this court, they are relations. But as Joanna's already said, it's not really clear what's going on here. Buckingham had a claim to the throne himself, so he may have risen in interest of his own claim. There is a suggestion perhaps that Margaret, and indeed Elizabeth, encouraged him in this, you know, encouraged him to think, this is your moment, this rebellion is for you. But actually, their real objective was for Henry Tudor to become king. And although it's called Buckingham's Rebellion, Margaret Beaufort, in the aftermath of this, was held to be one of the people most responsible for it. And this is the moment, of course, at which she is actually found guilty of treason against Richard.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  So there's a bill in Parliament, essentially, which says she has committed high treason against Richard, although the bill does say that she will not suffer the full punishment, and that implies execution. And people have often said, oh, well, she was lucky not to be executed. But I don't actually think her life was ever in any danger, because while it's true that women in 16th century England were executed for treason, in 15th century England, it was extremely rare for women to even be accused of treason. And the only two comparable instances that we have of women being found guilty of treason, they were punished in exactly the same way that Margaret was, which is, like Margaret, they had all of their lands and possessions confiscated, and they were placed under house

• 27:09Speaker 04

  arrest. And in Margaret's case, the house arrest is under her husband, Thomas Stanley. And Richard is very clear that the reason that the full punishment hasn't been given to Margaret is because he trusts Stanley, because he was loyal throughout. Now, I think sometimes, again, people say, this is lenient. Oh, well, she got off with having all of her lands and possessions taken away from her. But we have to remember that Margaret is a woman who, throughout her life, she'd essentially been a woman of independent means. This move now makes her completely dependent on her husband. She's not allowed to have contact with any of her friends, any of her servants. She can't materially support Henry Tudor.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Even her plate is confiscated, her household plate, so that she doesn't send it to him in France, so that he can fund another invasion. And I think that there's a level on which psychologically this must have been really devastating to her sense of self. She's entirely dependent on Stanley. He'll probably die before she will, because he's several years older. When he dies, all of the lands that have been passed on to him will revert to the crown. So she'll be dependent on Richard III. Richard III is probably not going to give her much to live on. This is, this is utter humiliation. And I think we have to remember that we know it all worked out in the end and that her son did become king, but she had no idea of that.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  I don't think anyone in late 1483 would have expected that Henry would win. And when he did win, it was utterly against the odds.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Just very briefly to any of you, do we know when Margaret starts to see her son as a potential future monarch?

• 28:53Speaker 05

  I think we'd say it's at the time of Buckingham's Rebellion. That's at the point when she believes that Edward V is dead. That's the point.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  And, and, and many other people as well, I think that's the point. And Joanna's already mentioned that this is really only because he's almost the last man standing, but he is clearly the one that people now feel that all of this disparate opposition to Richard can coalesce around.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Okay, so it coalesces when we reach the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, made famous, of course, and so many things by Shakespeare, which is where we really see the value for Margaret in marrying Thomas Stanley. What was the role of Thomas Stanley and his brother William Stanley in the Battle of Bosworth?

• 29:40Speaker 00

  Henry lands at Milford Haven towards the beginning of, of August, 1485. And with him, he has this small band of the English rebels, basically, who had been with him since 1483. He's also managed to buy a very handy group of French mercenaries. Anyway, they march across Wales into England. And they're shadowed by an army led by Thomas Lord Stanley. And they head towards the Midlands. Richard is in Nottingham and they end up around Bosworth. I think one of the, the, the problems for me really is we tend to think of the Stanleys being sort of ambivalent in their loyalties. Thomas Lord Stanley probably is. His son is, is held a hostage by Richard.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  He's, you know, I think there's, you know, genuine conflicted loyalties. Sir William, on the other hand, isn't. Richard has declared Sir William a traitor before Bosworth and that's a really important point. What happens at Bosworth, however, I think has less to do with the Stanleys than we sometimes think. It's often said that Richard is defeated by the treason and treachery of the Stanley family. In fact, the latest research that's been done on the battle shows that Richard is defeated principally by a combination of clever generalship and the biggest factor in any medieval battle, which is luck. Henry's captain, the leader of his army, is a guy called John Devere, who's the Earl of Oxford.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  And Oxford is a really fantastic military commander and he leads an attack against the main force of Richard's army, which is led by John Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. And he's winning that fight. At which point Richard sees that Henry is surrounded by only a small group of men. It's often thought, again, often said that Richard's charge at Bosworth is opportunity. So, you know, he sees the opportunity and he goes for it. I don't, again, I don't think that's true. I think this is something that Richard had always thought about. You know, he was there wearing his armour on his horse with a hundred or 200 men, ready to charge. This was the chivalric thing to do. If he had the opportunity to best Henry in personal combat, that's what he did. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out for him.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  So Henry's victory at Bosworth is really unexpected, but it's not really, I think, due to Stanley treachery.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Joanna Lane Smith. So it's 1485, all of a sudden, Henry Tudor is Henry VII. Margaret sees her son crowned king. How powerful does that make her?

• 32:09Speaker 05

  It makes her very powerful, and that is absolutely normal for the mother of a king. Usually, of course, kings' mothers had previously had a career as a queen, but even Edward IV's mother was powerful in the first few years of his reign. Margaret, of course, is really unusual because she's still married. And in the past, there hadn't been a king whose mother was married to somebody of high status like Thomas Lord Stanley, who Henry gives the title Earl of Derby to. So it's quite important for Henry to work at the balance of power here. And what he does is has in Parliament arranges for Margaret to be declared fam sole, which means legally independent, so that she can control her own lands.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  Of course, he really allows Stanley to hang on to quite a few of her lands. But then Henry gives a lot of extra lands to Margaret, so that she's got almost as much landed income as Edward IV's mother had. And over time, various resources, she ends up wealthier than Edward IV's mother had been. So as a landholder, she's really powerful just in that case. But of course, she's also got the role at court. And she is unusually influential as the mother of a married king. Normally, the mother would step back when the king got married. Margaret never has that little window of influence because Henry can only be king if he marries Elizabeth of York. So she's there from the beginning. And there were reports that Margaret was oppressing the queen. But when you dig into these, you find they're coming from men who either

• 33:37Speaker 05

  across that they've not been able to have access to the queen and they're blaming Margaret, or they're from men who are not getting as much access and trying to make out, well, she's not very important, so it doesn't matter that I don't have any influence. In reality, they commission books together, they promote people's careers together, they arrange for Catherine of Aragon's household, they help with arrangements for when she's coming over to marry Prince Arthur. Really poignantly, together they petition Henry VII not to send his daughter, another Margaret in fact, to James of Scotland when she's too young, they're afraid that he will hurt her, given Margaret's own background. You can see why they're working that together.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  And Katherine Lewis, what's in it for Henry, having his mother so close to him at this point?

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Henry was raised to be a great nobleman, to be a great landowner, but he wasn't raised to be king. He had visited the English court once in 1470 for about a week, and then, as we've heard from David, he spent 15 years living abroad. He has no idea really, from first-hand experience, how the English court works. His mother, as we've said, had been living at the English court for well over a decade. She'd occupied a number of important ceremonial roles there. So she's ideally placed to advise him on its institutions, its personnel and its processes. And we know, for example, that in all of the royal residences, Margaret's quarters were positioned near to the kings.

• 35:06Speaker 04

  And this, I think, tells us something about the fact that there was a close relationship between them eventually, albeit that when he was young, he barely saw his mother. But I think this tells us something about having her within reach, so that he can ask her advice on anything. And I think crucially, this is a private way of asking for her advice. So she could have had all sorts of influence behind the scenes that we don't necessarily know of, but I don't think we should see this as nefarious. And it's actually quite difficult to judge specific areas that she had influence on. I think it would depend on the matter at hand. So, for example, in relation to family matters, he did consult her, and particularly after Elizabeth of York died in 1503.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  I mean, the obvious person to talk to then is his mother, the children's grandmother. Another area that Margaret seems to have been given special responsibility for is court protocol and court ceremony. So we know that a series of ordinances or rules for the court were issued in Margaret Beaufort's name. And these are all about the dress that ladies at court should wear during periods of mourning. And they're very strict about the attire that is appropriate to women at different social levels, so that the visual distinction of rank can be maintained. And this seems like exactly the kind of thing that Margaret would have been the expert on. And also ceremonial, we've heard that she was heavily involved in the celebrations

• 36:30Speaker 04

  surrounding the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur. In fact, Catherine of Aragon was hosted at Margaret Beaufort's house in London. Before the princess arrived, Margaret spent hundreds of pounds refurbishing the house. Apparently, the banqueting chamber was hung with rich tapestries suspended from a thousand gold rings. She laid on amazing entertainments, minstrels, actors and a juggler. And the crucial thing here is that this marriage was extremely important to Henry VII, because it was international recognition of his rule and of his dynasty. And so I think the fact that he gives Margaret Beaufort this really central role in the celebrations shows how much he trusted her and how much she could be relied on to throw

• 37:13Speaker 04

  a good party to impress people, essentially.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  So she's hugely influential during Henry VII's reign, and she outlives him. He dies in 1509. How important is she then for the succession? Prince Arthur is already out of the game, and so it's Henry VIII. What role does she play in that transition?

• 37:36Speaker 00

  Again, this is another episode in Margaret's life, I think, which is quite mysterious. So Henry VII's death is kept secret for 48 hours. This is something that only really came to light quite recently. And it seems that the subterfuge takes place because of a court coup. In his final years, Henry had become very avaricious, and his two ministers, Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson, had been exercising Henry's financial rights, his feudal rights, to oppress the king's subjects. And at the end of his reign, there's a sort of an aristocratic coup led by Bishop Fox, perhaps, and Thomas Howard, who's the Earl of Surrey, but also involving those intimate

• 38:19Speaker 00

  body servants of Henry VII in his privy chamber. And it seems that Margaret is aware of this. So Margaret plays her role in keeping the death of her son secret for 48 hours to allow that seamless transition succession of the young Henry VIII. So, right at the beginning of the reign, Margaret, I think, in some ways it might be seen as the kind of apogee of Margaret's power, always in the background, never really there because of her role as a woman, because of her role, you know, the gendered role that's expected of her, her influence is behind the curtain, if you like. But at that key moment, it seems that Margaret was in on that plot.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Joanna Lane Smith, can you take us back a few years? During Henry's reign, she'd been living at Colly Weston, between Peterborough and Leicester, if I remember rightly. She's separated from her husband, she's taken a vow of chastity. What's her life like there? It sounds as though it's become rather austere.

• 39:14Speaker 05

  I know, I don't think it's at all austere, actually. Yes, she had taken her vow of chastity. And yes, it was much more modelled on a, like a religious lifestyle in terms of the number of services that happened through the day. But she built Colly Weston beautifully, opulently. It was a celebration of Tudor dynasty. There were orchards planted and gorgeous gardens, gardens with sort of gated access, gardens specifically for Elizabeth of York. And we can see that she is a really important hostess to people at Colly Weston, particularly, actually, she has a number of distressed gentlewomen, as it were, who are part of the household, who lived there for quite some time. But she's also famously gives a wonderful, huge celebration when her, the same granddaughter, Margaret, that she'd

• 39:57Speaker 05

  petitioned for earlier, when she finally does go up to Scotland, the whole court comes up and stays at Colly Weston for amazing celebrations again. She is also essentially the King's representative in the East Midlands. Her counsel and she oversee legal cases in the area, quite surprising legal cases sometimes that you would have thought would have gone to a church court or somewhere else. There's actually a jail at Colly Weston. For the purposes, she's a really major force politically in the area, as well as it being a place that was sort of an opportunity to show off the Tudor dynasty being magnificent, but also the piety, that is a really important part of it. She has a really important relationship with the Guild of St Catherine at Stanford, and she supports the religious women there,

• 40:41Speaker 05

  supports the Ankeresses there. She's got this really rich life going on, to be honest, because this is also the time when her relationship with John Fisher is flourishing, the patronage that comes out of that, translating French devotional works into English and so forth.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  Yes, Catherine, she's quite a patron of culture and creator of culture herself, isn't she?

• 41:01Speaker 04

  She is, absolutely, yes. And she's a very important patron of early English printers. So William Caxton is usually regarded as the first English printer, and Margaret Beaufort commissioned a couple of works from him, including an English translation of a French romance called Blanchardin and Eglantine, in which, interestingly, the heroine Eglantine is actually a sovereign queen who is shown to be a very effective ruler. And I can't help thinking that that's one of the reasons that Margaret Beaufort was interested in this romance, or that it appealed to her, because this is a reflection of her own life and experience. Most of the works, though, that Margaret commissioned from Caxton and other early printers were religious texts of various kinds, some instructional and

• 41:43Speaker 04

  some more devotional and contemplative. And Margaret clearly recognised the potential of the printing press for the wide dissemination of what we might call spiritually uplifting and improving texts. This is part of her wider educational interests. So she founds two colleges at Cambridge as well. She founds Christ's College and St John's College. She doesn't only commission these works. As Joanna has said, she actually translates two French devotional works into English herself. One of them is part of The Imitation of Christ, which was a massive bestseller in the Middle Ages, and it's still very, very popular today.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  And it's interesting because Margaret's status as a writer, and indeed as a published writer, these works- were published in her own lifetime. This isn't so well known about her as other aspects of her life. And I think that's partly because she translated texts from French to English. Unlike Catherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry the Eighth, she didn't produce an original composition of her own. But that's to downplay the nature of translation. It's never just copying an original. It's always an act of interpretation. And in fact, if we compare the French originals with Margaret's English version, we can see that there are ways in which she has expanded or adapted the text to make it more comprehensible,

• 43:06Speaker 04

  to make it more engaging for an audience that is not scholastic, is not highly educated, but who are ordinary literate laypeople.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  David, she sounds like such a big personality. When she dies in 1509, so soon after her son, what's the reaction? How do people respond to Margaret's life?

• 43:29Speaker 00

  Margaret's death is so soon after, just a couple of weeks really, isn't it? After the coronation of Henry the Eighth. And Henry the Eighth's coronation had been this huge celebration of a new style of kingship, a new Renaissance style of kingship. There's lots of poems saying how wonderful it is that Henry the Seventh's dead and Henry the Eighth is now king. Margaret's death is a little bit overshadowed by that at the time. And in some ways, Margaret's death marks the closure of that period in English history. There's a real sense, I think, of endings with Margaret's death. What we do have, though, is this remarkable sermon by John Fisher. So John Fisher was, first of all, her confessor in her household.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  He goes on to be chancellor of University of Cambridge, he's bishop of Rochester. And he has this really fulsome sermon in which he praises her as the model noblewoman, the model mother, the model queen. So it's her sense of piety, which we've talked about, her sense of probity and integrity that comes across very much, I think, in that sermon. And I think she is recognised by Fisher and later by Henry Parker, who's writing in The Reign of Mary, as a real matriarch of the Tudor regime. The Tudors wouldn't be here, we wouldn't all be celebrating the peace and stability that the Tudor rule has brought us, were it not for Margaret.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  And Joanna, one more thing from you. How has her reputation changed over the centuries? Because she's not a terribly well-known figure now, is she? And yet she was so influential.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  I think for a long time, she was particularly remembered by the people at Cambridge for her piety, not just the colleges and the printing, but also what John Fisher spoke about, the hair shirt and the weeping and kneeling in prayer. But more recently, there's been a lot of work on the household administration and so forth. There's evolved two very different Margretts, to be honest, because there's a Margaret in historical fiction, who's this manipulative, scheming woman who's determined to get her son on the throne as soon as possible and will stop at nothing, even murder. And then there's the Margaret that historians try and put forward and say, yes, she was a very determined administrator and so forth, but she is this very impressive woman, the first English woman in print, and a generous

• 45:46Speaker 05

  woman to all these people in her household, and a very loyal woman, and astonishingly resilient.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  My thanks to Joanna Lane Smith, Katherine Lewis and David Grummitt. Next week, the microorganisms Archaea, which thrive where other life forms can't survive, and their part in the evolution of the cells in our bodies. Thanks for listening.

• 46:08Speaker 09

  And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Misha and his guests.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  What have we missed out from Margaret's life? I ought to preface it by saying, I thought she was, I mean, I was convinced that she was a very astonishing and astute political figure, as well as somebody who clearly struggled with a lot of domestic, difficult domestic issues from the year dot, really.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Looking at Margaret, if you like, from the outside, as a political historian who hasn't studied noble women in the 15th century, or queens particularly, and I'm just struck by how she manages to combine, really effectively, the role of a lord. So whilst she's at Colly Weston, even whilst she's running the household up in the North West in the 1470s, the Stanley household, the Stanley estate, she must have played a really... Effective role as the governor of that household, running a noble estate. And yet we have this woman who is also this remarkably learned, pious, you know, that act of translation. Translation is at the heart of the humanist project, isn't it?

• 47:20Speaker 00

  And, you know, this is, this is the thing that transforms England in the late 15th century, these acts of translation. And Margaret is there right at the, right at the centre of this.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Presumably in the 1470s, when things were relatively calm, she needs to fill up her time.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  And the study and devotion is one way of doing it, I guess.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  It is, and I think we shouldn't see that the piety that Joanna has spoken about is in any sense antithetical with her status as a, as a female lord. And one of the things that I would like to say about Margaret Beaufort is that she was in many ways exceptional, of course she was, you know, we, we've heard of all the ways in which her, her, her life is quite extraordinary. But I think we need to be careful of overemphasising that sense of her as being exceptional. Because if we think about female lords, there were a lot of women in late medieval England who, who ran estates. I mean, her own mother, Margaret Beecham, interestingly, was also her father's sole heir. And although we don't know for sure, I think we can be fairly certain that Margaret Beecham

• 48:22Speaker 04

  would have trained Margaret Beaufort in how to manage this incredible estate that she had inherited. And, and women in general had to be ready to do that because their husbands may often be absent on business or on military campaign. Or if you're a widow, your, your husband is obviously permanently absent. And I think that this, this has been one of the real thrusts of a lot of the recent scholarship on queenship, that we mustn't overemphasise this idea that women being involved in politics or women being involved in land management is out of the ordinary. You know, for people living in 15th century England, this, this would have been really quite normal. And I, I mean, I was wondering, Joanna, maybe you could say a bit more about Cicely Neville, because she's such a great comparison, and I think it helps to prove that point, that

• 49:06Speaker 04

  Margaret isn't the only one by any means.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Who is Cicely Neville?

• 49:09Speaker 05

  Cicely Neville is Edward IV and Richard III's mother. So she's in this same position of not having been a queen, but she's a king's mother. And she's very wealthy and she is a really important landholder. But, and she sort of creates the role for king's mother, really. The title, the king's mother, that, that actually becomes a kind of an official title, which it hadn't before, and then, and Margaret. Takes that up, it does look like she's modelling herself on Cecily in many ways, to be honest. There's the change in the signature to a more queenly signature, making sure that she's using the royal arms on her seal. These are things that Cecily had done too, and putting forward a very pious image as well.

• 49:45Speaker 05

  So, somebody draws up for Cecily, probably at Cecily's instruction, a list of her, how she perfor-, how her daily life goes. The mass, when she gets up, what's mass and what's, what services are said throughout the day. And when John Fisher describes Margaret, it sounds, it's, it's more impressive. Absolutely, yeah. But it sounds very similar that they've sort of got this notion. And, and this actually, you know, it comes from the kind of courtesy books they'd have read, you know, Christine de Pizan. Yeah. Treasure of the City of Ladies tells women how to do this. So you could see their modelling on that. And I think also, I mean, that Cecily and Margaret also do seem to have a good relationship, which is, which is interesting, given the complexity of their, their sons fighting each other.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Cecily bequeaths some quite personal books to Margaret in her will.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  Are, are they in that situation, once she's had a son, she knows that her estate is ultimately going to go to her son. But with the intervening marriages, is it possible for, say, her husband to gamble away her entire estate or to lose it? I mean, or is she guaranteed? It seems to me such a precarious position to be in when you know that a marriage involves handing over all your worldly goods to the person you're marrying.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  But the precarity also, of course, comes from just the precarity of fifteenth century life. So, so we say, yeah, she's got a son, but at any point, that son could predecease her. As happens, you know, with Henry VII and Arthur, you know, Henry, Henry Stafford dies very young.

• 51:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  So, so, so, so every nobleman in a noble family has, has that precarity built into it. So, so there is no certainty.

• 51:29Speaker 05

  But the estates too, that, that is an issue. So, when Richard Duke of York is short of money, he starts mortgaging and selling some of the lands he had previously promised to Cecily in her widowhood. So, so yes, they, they could lose some of the estates. And I think one of the things about Margaret is that she does get accused of being quite acquisitive, pushing for estates that she has a very dubious claim to.

• 51:53Speaker 05

  But actually, all the noble men are doing it too, and her mother gets accused of it as well. But for women especially, there's not so many other opportunities to increase your income. A man can take on a paid role and women can't. So I think it's quite unfair that Margaret's got this acquisitive reputation.

• 52:09Speaker 03

  So we know that Richard III gets his desperately bad rap from Shakespeare and the popularity of Shakespeare. Who accounts for Margaret's poor reputation later on? Is there any one work which did it for her?

• 52:24Speaker 04

  I'm going to single out here the television series The White Princess. Because this is the one that shows Margaret not only ordering the murder of the princes in the tower, but also personally murdering Jasper Tudor, with whom she's having an affair, for good measure. And I would say that that has really, as Joanna said, it's done an awful lot to turn her into this kind of one dimensional monstrous embodiment of female failings. And to come back to a point that Joanna's made, there's a misogyny of language going on here because a lot of what Margaret did, going back to the real Margaret now, is exactly the same as the kind of activities that noble men did. But because she's a woman, the language used to describe her is very different. And we see this with politically active women as well.

• 53:08Speaker 04

  We didn't mention Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI's wife. But when she gets involved in politics, it's meddling and it's ambition and it's aggressive. And sometimes there's been that same sense with Margaret Beaufort as well.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  There was that really fascinating thing that you highlighted about the translation of the devotional, about how she doesn't translate.

• 53:29Speaker 04

  Oh, the passage that she cut out?

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Yes, so.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  That's really fascinating. Can you explain that?

• 53:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  Because I thought that was a remarkable observation.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, in one of the works that she translates, so I mentioned The Imitation of Christ, there's another one that's called The Mirror of Gold for the Sinful Soul. And it's basically a text all about recognizing that one is utterly sinful, that one needs to do penance and prepare for death and judgment. And as was quite normal in this kind of text, there's a lot of emphasis within it on the vileness of the body. And the original text talks about the vileness of the body from conception. Because conception comes from lust, which is a sin.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  The original sin.

• 54:06Speaker 04

  Exactly. Now, in the French original, the blood that feeds the fetus is described as being infected from the beginning because of this sin, infected and menstrual. And the French original goes on to say that menstrual blood has a disastrous effect on the environment. So it kills grass and it causes dogs to get rabies. I'm not joking. This is literally what the text says. And it's on the authority of philosophers and clerics. This is very common medieval misogyny. If you look at Margaret's English translation, she says that the blood of the fetus is infected, but she leaves out the word menstrual. And I can't prove this, of course, but I'm sure that she read that

• 54:49Speaker 04

  and was just offended by the inherent misogyny of what it says about menstrual blood and the harmful effects of menstrual blood. And it's one of these rare occasions where we get some insight into Margaret's mind, because with all of the people that we've been talking about, as you've gathered, we have precious little evidence or real insight into their personality or characters, which is very frustrating. But that's one of the reasons why you have all this speculation and you can have the good Margaret and the completely villainous Margaret at the same time.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  David, one final question for you. You mentioned translation was at the heart of the humanist project. How much interaction would there have been between an educated woman like Margaret Beaufort? And what was going on in the rest of Europe, particularly in Italy at the time?

• 55:43Speaker 00

  I don't think we have a full library of Margaret's books by any stretch, do we? But we know some of the books that we read. I mean, Catherine's given some examples. I think it's really important to realise too that at Henry VII's court, Italians are really important. So there's been a lot of work done on the work of Italian poets. And of course, Bernard Andre, the very famous court historian, Polidora Virgil. All these Italians are coming over to Henry VII England. And it really does, for me, it's this hugely transformative era. The last couple of decades of the 15th century is when late medieval England is transformed

• 56:26Speaker 00

  into this Renaissance realm.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  And books are exploding at this point.

• 56:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. And it's devotional books, it's works of history.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Romances.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Romances, Roman histories, you know, so much.

• 56:40Speaker 05

  And sermons. Margaret arranges for Winkin de Word to publish the sermon from Henry VII's funeral.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  Which also means, I'm sure, that she knew that Fisher's sermon about herself would also be published.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Well, I think on that note of perspicacity on her part, it's time for a cup of tea, which we can probably all do with because we appear to be all beset by colds of one form or another.

• 57:07Speaker 10

  Does anyone want honey and lemon or tea and coffee?

• 57:10Speaker 03

  A tea would be lovely.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  A tea would be lovely.

• 57:12Speaker 03

  Tea for me, please.

• 57:14Speaker 10

  Four teas.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Four teas.

• 57:15Speaker 10

  Thank you.

• 57:16Speaker 09

  In Our Time with Mischa Glenny is produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios production.

• 57:24Speaker 10

  If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft turns out to be flawed? In 1999, four apartment buildings were blown up in Russia, hundreds killed. But 25 years on, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. Because these bombs, they're part of the origin story of one of the most powerful men in the world, Vladimir Putin. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss first time round? The History Bureau, Putin and the Apartment Bombs.

• 58:09Speaker 10

  Listen first on BBC Sounds.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Hello, Misha Glennie here. Did you know you can get episodes of In Our Time 28 days early with a subscription to the BBC website and app? Just head to bbc.com/subscribe to find out more.