Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty (6 page)
Margaret was still only thirteen when Henry was born, but it is likely that his birth, coupled with the shock of the loss of her husband, caused her to grow up rapidly. Jasper Tudor did not marry until near the end of his life, and Margaret, as the highest ranking lady at Pembroke Castle, would have taken on the role of mistress of the household. In her later life, Margaret developed a great reputation for piety and charity, and it is likely that this was an interest of hers from early in her life.
Most details of Margaret’s character come from her later life, but it is likely that, even during her first widowhood, she had begun to develop into one of the strongest-willed women of her time. In Margaret’s funeral sermon preached by John Fisher, the bishop compared his patron to the Biblical Martha, claiming that she resembled her in a number of aspects of her life. Fisher first compared Margaret to Martha, who was the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus brought back from the dead, in relation to her noble birth and noble character. He claimed that Margaret was:
bounteous and lyberal to every Person of her Knowledge or acquaintance. Avarice and Covetyse she most hated, and sorowed it full moche in all persons, but specially in ony that belong’d unto her. She was also of syngular Easyness to be spoken unto, and full curtayse answere she would make to all that came unto her. Of mervayllous gentyleness she was unto all folks, but specially unto her owne whom she trusted and loved ryghte tenderly. Unkynde she wolde not be unto no creature, ne forgetfull of ony kyndness or servyce done to her before, which is no lytel part of veray nobleness. She was not vengeable, ne cruell; but redy anone to forgete and to forgyve injuryes done unto her, at the leest desyre or mocyon made unto her for the same. Mercyfull also and pyteous she was unto such as was grevyed and wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in Poverty, or sekeness, or ony other mysery.
John Fisher, who admired Margaret and, in his earlier years, had depended on her patronage, obviously presented a very favourable picture of her. Little evidence survives of Margaret’s character before she came to prominence during the reign of Richard III, but her decisive action following the death of her second husband, Edmund Tudor, demonstrate that she was determined. As events surrounding Margaret’s third marriage show, she also had an independence of spirit, although, as John Fisher said, Margaret was loyal to her kin and helped them throughout her life, particularly in her promotion of her son. From the surviving evidence, it is also fair to say that she was not vengeful or cruel, although Fisher certainly omits some of the less attractive sides of her character. It is apparent, for example, that Henry VII’s renowned acquisitiveness was a trait that he inherited from his mother.
Whilst Fisher ignored some of the more forceful aspects of Margaret’s personality, he went into great detail about her piety, for which she was famous. Margaret was devout and, given her mother’s own well-known devoutness, it is likely that this developed in her youth. Fisher claimed that she was ‘to God and to the Chirche full obedient and tractable’. It is also possible to see something of Margaret’s beliefs in the work that she chose to translate and publish after her son’s accession. Her most famous translation project,
The Myrroure of Golde,
was divided into seven chapters, one for each day of the week. Chapter four in particular, which is headed ‘How we ought to dispise and hate the worlde’, perhaps best shows something of the rules by which Margaret attempted to live, and she was later renowned for her ascetic lifestyle. According to the book, which, although not written by Margaret, was chosen by her as a suitable work to translate into English from French, ‘Saint John in his first canonyque shewyth us that we ought not to love the worlde ne the thingis that be in the worlde, and saithe in this maner, love ye not the worlde ne thingys that be therin, yf there be any that loveth the worlde the charite of God is not with hym’.
Margaret took her religious devotion beyond the more conventional piety of some of her peers, and Henry Parker, who was a member of her household during the last decade of her life, later recorded that ‘her grace wolde often say, at her table when she heard that the great turke preuayled so aganest the crysten men, she wolde wyshe that she were a launder to them that shoulde go against them’. Margaret was charitable, and whilst much of her work would have been carried out in the last half of her life when her son was king, she had always been a wealthy woman, and it is likely that she was already engaged in benevolent activities in her youth. Fisher claimed that Margaret was responsible for the maintenance of twelve poor people and that she gave them lodging, food and clothing. She also visited them when they were ill to comfort them and help tend to them. She supported priests and is remembered as the foundress of an alms house built for women near the Chapel of St Anne at Westminster.
Although Margaret was constantly aware of the dangers of the political situation in England, at Pembroke, she would have been shielded from much of what was happening, and spending time with her son, the year after his birth might have been amongst the most peaceful of her life. As a widow and a wealthy heiress, however, Margaret knew that her peace was unlikely to last and that there was a constant danger that the King would force a new husband upon her. Within weeks of Henry’s birth, Margaret had already decided to take decisive action, and by March or April of 1457, she had arranged her third marriage and promised that it would take place once the prescribed year of mourning for Edmund Tudor had come to an end. Unusually, Margaret selected her third husband herself, with only the advice of her brother-inlaw, Jasper Tudor, to guide her.
Although, with Henry’s birth, Margaret had an heir for her estates, as a wealthy widow, she was still an attractive proposition. Any man that she married could look forward to a life interest in her lands, and it was only a matter of time before she married for a third time. Margaret was very aware that a husband was likely to be selected for her, as had happened on two previous occasions, if she did not take decisive action herself.
The obvious candidate for Margaret’s third husband would have been Jasper Tudor, with whom she lived and who had an active interest, as Henry’s uncle, in providing for his welfare. It is unclear whether this possibility ever crossed Margaret’s and Jasper’s minds, but if it did, they took no steps to try to achieve the marriage. Such a marriage would have placed the pair firmly within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity as far as the Church was concerned, as, through Margaret’s marriage to Edmund, she and Jasper had become officially brother and sister. Such a prohibition was not insurmountable, and dispensations could be, and often were, obtained from the Church to allow a match. Margaret’s own grandson, Henry VIII, for example, would later obtain a similar dispensation to marry his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. Given the fact that Margaret had borne Edmund a child, it is likely that the relationship between Margaret and Jasper would have been considered additionally close. There was therefore no guarantee that they would have received a dispensation, and if they ever thought of the match, they may have considered that the difficulties were too great to be ignored. Alternatively, they may simply have had no interest in marriage to each other, although it is very unlikely that Margaret met her third husband much before their wedding. Love, physical attraction and compatibility were very far from Margaret’s thoughts when she began to contemplate a third marriage only weeks after the birth of her son, and both she and Jasper were determined to find her a husband who would protect Henry’s interests.
Traditionally, women who had given birth underwent the ceremony of churching forty days after they had given birth, signalling their return to society. Henry was born on 28 January 1457, and in March, almost as soon as Margaret had been churched, she and Jasper travelled together from Pembroke to the Duke of Buckingham’s manor of Greenfield, which was near Newport. Margaret and Jasper obviously felt that time was of the essence in the selection of her third husband, and they discussed the possibility of a match with the duke’s second son, Henry Stafford. Terms were agreed quickly, and a dispensation for the marriage was granted on 6 April by the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. Henry Stafford was around twenty years older than Margaret and in his early thirties when the match was arranged. As a younger son, he had little income, and a marriage with Margaret was an excellent one for him. Margaret is unlikely to have met
Henry Stafford before the marriage was discussed, but she knew he was, in many ways, an appropriate choice for her. The couple were related twice. Stafford was a descendant of Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward III and, like Margaret, he therefore had a claim to the throne. His mother, Anne Neville, was the daughter of Margaret’s great aunt, Joan Beaufort, a considerably closer connection and one that meant that a dispensation was required. It is probable that Stafford was selected by Margaret and Jasper as a suitable husband due to the power of his father, Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham: he was the only peer in England who could hope to rival his brother-in-law, Richard, Duke of York.
The marriage had evidently been agreed by April when the dispensation was arranged, and it is likely that the terms of the marriage settlement were agreed at the same time. Details of these do not survive, but in his Will, which was made in August 1460, Stafford’s father bequeathed ‘to my son Henry cccc marks, to him and to my daughter Margaret, countess of Richmond, his wife’. It is likely that this 400 marks had been promised at the time of the marriage settlement and represented Henry Stafford’s contribution to marital funds. It was a relatively small sum, and it is clear that Margaret’s main motivation for the match was not financial support. Following the meeting at Greenfield, she returned to Pembroke Castle to spend the conventional year in mourning for Edmund Tudor and to start to raise her son. With the marriage agreed and with Buckingham’s powerful protection, she was aware that there was no need to hurry the wedding.
Margaret finally married Henry Stafford on 3 January 1458, a few months before her fifteenth birthday. References to Henry Stafford, like those relating to so many important figures in Margaret’s life, are scarce, as her third husband made little impact on the political situation in England. What evidence there is suggests that the marriage was a happy one. Both Margaret’s parents-in-law referred to her as their daughter in their Wills, and whilst the Duke of Buckingham’s bequest to his son and daughterin- law was probably intended to fulfil his obligations under the couple’s marriage contract, the bequest of Margaret’s mother-inlaw, which was of books to ‘my daughter Richmond’, was more personal. The Duchess of Buckingham was also fond enough of her daughter-in-law to lend her some of her valuable books, with accounts from Henry Stafford’s receiver noting that Margaret ordered her servant, William Bailey, to return them, presumably when she had finished reading them. Henry Stafford’s own Will survives; it was written after over thirteen years of marriage and shows the depth of feeling that existed between the couple:
Henry Stafford, knight, son to the noble Prince Humphrey, late Duke of Bucks, October 2d, 1471. My body to be buried in the College of Plecye. To buy xii marks worth of livelode by year, to be amortized for the finding of an honest and fitting priest to sing for my soul in the said college for evermore clx l.; to my son-in-law the Earl of Richmond, a trappur, four new horse harness of velvet; to my brother John Earl of Wiltshire, my bay courser; to Reynold Bray, my Receiver General, my grizzled horse; I bequeath the rest of my goods to my beloved wife Margaret Countess of Richmond, whom I likewise constitute my executrix.
Stafford’s Will shows the regard in which he held Margaret, and it is likely that his reference to her as his ‘beloved wife’ was genuine. Margaret’s feelings for Henry Stafford do not anywhere survive, but the marriage lasted considerably longer than her first two marriages, and she does appear to have been content. A further indication that the couple were close can be seen from the fact that they regularly travelled together. In the late 1460s, for example, they made a leisurely journey from the Midlands to London, stopping at a number of places on the way, including Huntingdon, Royston, Ware and Waltham. The couple then spent three months in London before moving on to Woking, a manor that would become their main home together. The couple made regular visits to London throughout their marriage, as well as making progresses around their extensive estates, and it is clear, from this regular travel, that they enjoyed being in each other’s company.
Soon after their marriage, Margaret and Henry Stafford set up home at Bourne in Lincolnshire, a manor that belonged to Margaret. This was a considerable distance from Pembroke, where Margaret had been living with her son. Although evidence is scant, it does not appear that she retained custody of her son. On 8 January 1458, in what was likely to have been a response to Margaret’s marriage, Henry VI granted Henry Tudor’s wardship jointly to Jasper Tudor and the Earl of Shrewsbury. Henry was certainly living at Pembroke Castle in 1461, and it is likely that he did not leave to live with his mother following her marriage, although it is clear that his mother and stepfather visited him. After a few years of marriage, Henry would also have taken on even greater significance for Margaret and Henry Stafford, as it would have become evident that they would have no children together. Stafford’s bequest of some horse equipment to Margaret’s son, which is one of only three bequests made to individuals, suggests that he was fond of his stepson and that he filled something of the gap left in Henry’s life by the death of Edmund Tudor.