Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Matriarch

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Before her death Beaufort also left her mark on the early reign of Henry VIII; when her eighteen-year-old grandson chose members of his privy council, it was Margaret's suggestions he took. [64] Death [ edit ] Seward, Desmond (1995). The Wars of the Roses: And the Lives of Five Men and Women in the Fifteenth Century. Constable. ISBN 0-09-474100-X. The bulk of this novel revolves around Margaret’s relationship with her second husband, Edmund Tudor, the step-brother of King Henry VI and a man who was twice her age. It is a relationship that we don’t know much about, but Arnopp shows how gradual and loving it might have been. Although Margaret was not thrilled with the arrangement at first, she did being to develop feelings for her new husband. It was during this time that Margaret finds her inner strength and she becomes pregnant with her only child, a son. Life, unfortunately, takes a turn for the worse for Margaret when Edmund tragically dies and she must face an excruciating labor experience to bring Henry into the world two months later. Margaret’s trauma during Henry’s birth means that she could never have any more children, making Henry the most precious person in her life.

Jones & Underwood, Michael & Malcolm (1985). "LADY MARGARET BEAUFORT". History Today. 35: 23 – via JSTOR. Richardson, Henry Gerald, Sayles, George Osborne (1993). The English Parliament in the Middle Ages. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-9506882-1-5 . Retrieved 25 July 2009. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ( link) Young Margaret is a girl we can each sympathize with, whether we understand her feelings of never being as beautiful as her sister or knowing she is not truly loved by her mother. When she is married off at a painfully early age, I cringed at what I knew was coming for her.Erasmus, in writing about his friend the Bishop, Saint John Fisher, praised Margaret's support of religious institutions and the Bishop, [33] further attesting the simultaneously pragmatic and charitable nature testified in the funerary sermon dedicated by the Bishop himself, as laid out in a following section. She lives on the coast of West Wales where she writes both fiction and non-fiction based in the Medieval and Tudor period. Her main focus is on the perspective of historical women but she is currently writing a novel from a male perspective, that of Henry VIII himself. As the friction between York and Lancaster intensifies 14-year-old Margaret, now widowed, turns for protection to her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor. At his stronghold in Pembroke, two months after her husband’s death, Margaret gives birth to a son whom she names Henry, after her cousin the king. There are so many women's stories missing throughout the historical records. Men, after all, were the ones who wrote things down. It was her connection to a powerful man that gave Margaret Beaufort's life the weight it needed to be documented at all. And what a life it was! In her book, Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty, Elizabeth Norton chronicles the times of the woman who gave birth to Henry Tudor, later to become King Henry VII of England. At age 12, she was married to Edmund Tudor, the son of former Queen Catherine of Valois with her second husband, who was literally twice her age. Despite this gap, she became pregnant before Edmund was slain when fighting for Lancaster against the Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses, leaving her a 13 year-old pregnant widow. The birth was apparently traumatic...despite two subsequent marriages during her potential childbearing years, there's no reason to believe she ever again became pregnant.

In 2013, Amanda Hale portrayed Lady Margaret Beaufort in the television drama series, The White Queen, an adaptation of Gregory's novels, which was shown on BBC One, Starz, and VRT. Gristwood, Sarah (2013). Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses. New York: Basic Books. pp.126–35. Beaufort does not equal evil, or mother of Henry Tudor, super evil. Margeret was actually known as being a pious Lady- and does not seem to have been a natural schemer. During most of the period of the Wars of the Roses she seems to have kept her head down, and genuinely cared for her second, husband Henry Stafford. At the moment of her birth, Margaret's father was preparing to go to France and lead an important military expedition for King Henry VI. Somerset negotiated with the king to ensure that if he were to die the rights to Margaret's wardship and marriage would be granted only to his wife. [6]Rosemary O'Day (26 July 2012). The Routledge Companion to the Tudor Age. Routledge. p.5. ISBN 978-1-136-96253-0. While married to Lord Stanley Margaret endowed the building of chapels in Wales. Like Edward IV and his court, she was also involved with the advances in printing of William Caxton and his successor Wynkyn de Worde, not only as a patroness but for her own acquisition. The first book she commissioned from Caxton in 1483 was the 13th-century French romance Blanchardin et Eglantine, which mirrored fairly closely the match she was forging in secret between her son Henry and Elizabeth of York, with the aid of Elizabeth Woodville, then in sanctuary from Richard III in Westminster Abbey. Six years later, after Richard's defeat by Henry at Bosworth, she commissioned an English translation of the romance from Caxton: it heralded the beginning of a period of Tudor patronage. Apart from encouraging book production and building her own library, Margaret also achieved considerable success as a translator, becoming the first English translator of the Imitation of Christ known by name, as well as translating the fifteenth-century Netherlandish treatise The Mirror of Gold for the Sinful Soul from a French intermediary. [55] Bevan, Richard. "The Kingmaker Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty". A&E Networks . Retrieved 6 December 2021.