The royal House of Tudor was to owe a great deal to its womenfolk. Indeed, it owed its very existence to a woman, although when, in 1452, Henry VI was moved to bestow the wardship and marriage of Margaret, the nine-year-old Beaufort heiress, on his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor, he can have had no notion that he was assisting at the birth of a new dynasty. Henry, a monarch not normally noted for his worldly wisdom, may have been acting out of simple benevolence. He seems to have felt a strong sense of family obligation towards his young relatives, offspring of his widowed mother’s enterprising second marriage to her Welsh Clerk of the Wardrobe, and had already made himself responsible for their education. His more hard-headed advisers, on the other hand, were probably considering how the support of the Tudor brothers, a promising pair of warriors, could best be secured for the Lancastrian cause at a time when the House of Lancaster was clearly going to need all the support it could get in the approaching struggle with its Yorkist rivals. Edmund and Jasper had been created Earls of Richmond and Pembroke respectively but the custody of Margaret Beaufort was an even greater prize. Not merely was she her father’s heir, and the late John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, had been an extremely rich man; but she was also of the blood royal, a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, third son of the all too prolific King Edward III.
It is not likely that anyone thought of seeking Lady Margaret’s views on these new arrangements for her future. Marriages in royal and noble families were made not in heaven but at the council table, with political or dynastic advantage in mind, and frequently planned when those most closely concerned were still of nursery age. Margaret herself was already contracted to John de la Pole, son of her former guardian the Duke of Suffolk, and being a pious, serious-minded child, the thought of breaking a promise made before God caused her a good deal of heart searching.
According to the story repeated many years later by her close friend John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, ‘being not yet fully nine years old and doubtful in her mind what she were best to do, she asked counsel of an old gentlewoman whom she much loved and trusted’. This lady advised her to pray for guidance to St Nicholas, the patron and helper of all true maidens, and, says Fisher, a marvellous thing occurred. That same night, as he had often heard Lady Margaret tell, while she lay in prayer, calling on St Nicholas, whether sleeping or waking she could not be sure, ‘about four o’clock in the morning one appeared to her arrayed like a bishop, and naming unto her Edmund Tudor, bade her take him as her husband’.
Margaret’s doubts having thus been resolved by the highest authority and the technical impediment of her prior engagement to John de la Pole dealt with by the canon lawyers, the way was clear for what was to turn out to be one of the most fateful weddings in English history. It took place some time in 1455, as soon as the bride had reached the mature and marriageable age of twelve, but whether or not this unusual pairing was a personally happy one is not recorded. Certainly it was brief, for Edmund Tudor died early in November of the following year. Some three months later, on 28 January 1457, his widow, still not quite fourteen years old, gave birth to a son at Pembroke Castle, stronghold of her brother-in-law Jasper.
The first Henry Tudor, so all the chroniclers agree, was a puny infant, and his earliest biographer, Bernard André, gives much of the credit for his survival to his mother’s devoted care. But although the young Countess of Richmond was not, like so many of her contemporaries, destined to see her baby die in his cradle, the repercussions of that murderous family quarrel, conveniently known to history as the Wars of the Roses, were soon to separate mother and child. Things had begun to go very badly for the House of Lancaster, and by the spring of 1461 there was a Yorkist king on the throne. By the autumn, Pembroke Castle and with it Margaret Beaufort and her son were in Yorkist hands, and not long afterwards the wardship of five-year-old Henry had been sold to the Yorkist Lord Herbert of Raglan.
Although it is unquestionably a hard thing for any mother to be parted from her child, it was not an especially unusual occurrence in Margaret Beaufort’s world, and she would have had no choice but to acquiesce. At least she had the consolation of knowing that her son would be ‘honourably brought-up’, since the Herberts were thinking of him as a possible husband for their daughter Maud, and she no doubt made sure of receiving regular reports of his progress. She herself re-married about this time to Henry Stafford, a son of the Duke of Buckingham and yet another descendant of Edward III. Whether or not there was any element of personal choice in this marriage is something else we don’t know, but obviously it was necessary. A wealthy young woman could not do without male protection, and Jasper Tudor, that loyal and active supporter of the Lancastrian cause, was now a wanted man.
Margaret’s second marriage lasted about ten years, but there were no more children. One chronicler was later to feel that it was ‘as though she had done her part when she had borne a man-child, and the same a kynge of the realms’. Perhaps a more likely explanation may be found in the physical effect of parturition on a pubescent girl. Whatever the reason, Margaret never conceived again, and all her life her precious only son was to fill the centre of her universe; all the force of her strong, vital nature being concentrated single-mindedly on the desire for his ‘glory and well-doing’. But it was to be many years before any of her dreams came true, and at one time it seemed as if the separation of mother and son might well be permanent.
There was a brief resurgence of Lancastrian fortunes at the beginning of the 1470s, but the so-called ‘Readeption’ of Henry VI lasted less than six months, and the battle of Tewkesbury, fought in May 1471, ended in what looked like final disaster for the Red Rose. Almost overnight young Henry Tudor, now in his fifteenth year, had become the sole surviving representative of the House of Lancaster, ‘the only imp now left of Henry VI’s blood’, and therefore liable at any moment to become the object of his Yorkist cousins’ unfriendly interest. Fortunately Jasper, tough, resourceful and apparently bearing a charmed life, was at hand to spirit the boy away. Uncle and nephew sailed from Tenby on 2 June and reached a precarious haven in Brittany.
For Margaret Beaufort, who had seen the extinction of her family in the slaughter at Tewkesbury and was now cut off from all communication with her son, the next twelve years must surely have been the bleakest period of her life. True, Henry had escaped and had found sanctuary of a sort, but even in Brittany he was not necessarily safe from the long arm of the triumphant Yorkists. There was at least one attempt to bribe his Breton hosts to give him up, and any sudden shift in international pressures could easily result in his expulsion and death. If he survived, it seemed as if the best that could be hoped for was that one day the House of York would feel sufficiently secure to allow him to come home and enjoy his father’s confiscated earldom. Time passed and Edward IV proved a popular and successful king, with two young sons to ensure the continuation of his line. For the exile in Brittany there was nothing to do but wait and hope, while at home his mother waited and prayed. Then, suddenly, everything changed.
At Easter 1483 King Edward died, probably as the result of a cerebral haemorrhage, leaving the thirteen-year-old Prince of Wales to succeed him. Within a matter of weeks the King’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had seized power, declared his two nephews to be illegitimate and confined them both in the Tower for safe-keeping. By June Richard had been crowned and Henry Tudor had become the rival claimant.
We know very little about the ins and outs of the conspiracy woven in favour of the Tudor claim during that summer, but one thing is certain and that is that Margaret Beaufort was one of its instigators. Married now for the third and last time to Thomas, Lord Stanley, head of a powerful Yorkist family and steward of the royal household, she was close to the centre of affairs, and it is tempting to speculate that she may have been among the first to hear the whispers that the princes in the Tower had been murdered by the new king’s hired assassins. Certainly there would have been very little chance for Henry as long as Edward IV’s sons were alive, and whatever the real truth of the matter, it is not disputed that after midsummer no one outside the Tower ever saw either of the children alive again. By the autumn it was being freely rumoured that they were dead, but by that time Margaret’s plans were already in an advanced state of preparation.
Her first step had been to enlist the support of another woman, the widowed queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Edward IV had broken with royal tradition by marrying for love (or, as some said, because the lady was not otherwise available) and socially very much beneath him. The marriage caused considerable ill-feeling at the time and was to give rise to a smouldering resentment among the older nobility and other members of the House of York, who frankly regarded the Queen’s numerous relations as a tribe of rapacious upstarts. Elizabeth herself was never liked. She seems to have had an unhappy talent for making enemies, but her reputation for cold-hearted, calculated greed may not be entirely deserved. In a world where it was every man (and woman) for himself, she can hardly be blamed for taking full advantage of her amazing good luck in catching and holding Edward’s notoriously roving eye.
Now, in the summer of 1483, her luck seemed to have run out. Apart from the tragic loss of her sons, her marriage had been declared invalid and she had been insulted and stripped of her dower rights by the new king. She and her five daughters were holed up in sanctuary at Westminster when Margaret Beaufort opened negotiations, using as emissary a Welsh physician named Lewis who, by a fortunate coincidence, also attended the Queen. The proposition brought by Lewis was for a marriage between one of the Yorkist princesses – preferably the eldest, another Elizabeth – and Henry Tudor. In return, the Queen would promise the support of the Woodville clan in Henry’s bid for power.
The advantages of such a match from the Tudor point of view were obvious. The inclusion of the Yorkist heiress in the new Lancastrian–Tudor claim should go a long way towards satisfying those Yorkists who were already becoming disenchanted with King Richard and alarmed at his ruthlessness. As well as this, any alliance which offered a reasonable prospect of bringing the two factions together and putting an end to the destructive and tedious quarrel which had over-shadowed English political life for so long would be sure of a welcome from the business community, and indeed from all that solid middle section of the population with a vested interest in stability and the maintenance of law and order.
Elizabeth Woodville was ready to co-operate – naturally enough, since Margaret Beaufort’s suggestion brought her not only a glimmer of hope for the future but also a possibility of revenge – but the two mothers could do nothing without money and men. Fortunately Margaret at least was not short of money or of the means of raising it, and she had begun to employ her trusted steward, Reginald Bray, on the delicate task of canvassing support for her project among ‘such noble and worshipful men as were wise, faithful and active’. She’d also been doing a little canvassing of her own. Some time that summer, as the Lady Margaret was travelling from Bridgnorth on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Worcester, she happened to encounter the Duke of Buckingham on his way to Shrewsbury and, so the story goes, at once took the opportunity of begging him to intercede with the King on her son’s behalf, for she earnestly desired that he might be allowed to come home. It’s not likely that Buckingham misunderstood this touching maternal plea, made on the excuse of the close blood tie between them (the Duke had been the nephew of Margaret’s second husband and was a Beaufort on his mother’s side). At any rate according to the traditional account, it was shortly after this convenient wayside meeting that he decided to throw his very considerable weight behind the unknown quantity of Henry Tudor. This was a curious decision for a man who, until very recently, had been one of Richard of Gloucester’s strongest supporters and who could himself have made quite a convincing bid for the throne. But then, if we knew what actually passed between Margaret Beaufort and Henry Stafford on the road from Bridgnorth to Worcester that summer day, we should know a great deal more about the intense personal and political manœuvring which preceded the change of dynasty.
Couriers bearing news, instructions and large sums of cash were now slipping unobtrusively across to Brittany, while Margaret waited for her son to justify her unswerving faith in him. But she was playing a dangerous game. Before the end of September the King had got wind of what was going on, and by the middle of October the coup had collapsed. The Duke of Buckingham was captured and executed, and Margaret might well have suffered a similar fate, had not Richard been reluctant to antagonize the influential Stanley family. This, at least, is the explanation usually given for the fact that the Lady Margaret escaped the normal punishment of those caught plotting against the State. Instead, she forfeited her property, which was transferred to her husband for his lifetime, and Thomas Stanley was ordered to keep his wife under better control in future, removing her servants and making sure that she could not pass any messages to her son or her friends, nor practise against the King. All this, says Polydore Vergil, was done, but although Margaret’s outside activities might have been curtailed, she continued to work on her husband, and when at last Henry landed in South Wales in August 1485, he was pretty well assured of the Stanleys’ support. This was of great importance, as the family owned vast estates in Cheshire and the West Midlands, and while admittedly they waited until the last possible moment before committing themselves, it was the Stanleys’ intervention which turned the scales at the battle of Bosworth.
Unfortunately we have no record of the first meeting between mother and son after the triumph of Bosworth, but it seems reasonable to assume that it was not long delayed. Certainly Henry Tudor showed a very proper recognition of the enormous debt he owed his mother. Thomas Stanley was rewarded with the earldom of Derby, and the first Tudor Parliament restored to Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, the estates confiscated two years before. As well as this, she was granted the wardship of young Edward Stafford, son and heir of her late ally the Duke of Buckingham, and a life interest in numerous manors and lordships. The Parliament of 1485 also conferred upon her the rights and privileges of a ‘sole person, not wife nor covert of any husband’, thus giving her control of her huge fortune ‘in as large a form as any woman now may do within the realm’. ‘My lady the King’s mother’, as she was usually styled, had therefore become an extremely rich and important personage, allowed to sign herself Margaret R and, for all practical purposes, honorary Queen Dowager. Bearing in mind the vital biological and political part she had played in establishing the new dynasty, this seems fair enough but, as far as Margaret was concerned, it’s probably safe to say that her real reward had been the moment when she saw ‘her son the King crowned in all that great triumph and glory’. Her friend John Fisher was to recall how she wept copiously throughout the ceremony, explaining that ‘she never was yet in that prosperity, but the greater it was the more she dreaded adversity’. It was a natural reaction after all those years of anxiety, disappointment and fear, but there was to be no more adversity for Margaret Beaufort, and three months later she saw another of her long-cherished plans come to fruition. On 18 January 1486 Henry Tudor fulfilled the pledge he had given in the aftermath of the abortive coup of 1483 and married Elizabeth, King Edward’s daughter – a union which all sensible people devoutly hoped would mark the end of the Wars of the Roses.
Elizabeth of York, another woman to whom the Tudor dynasty owes a large debt of gratitude, was not quite twenty-one at the time of her marriage-an unusually advanced age for a king’s daughter to be still unwed. As a child, Elizabeth had been betrothed to the King of France, but this arrangement had fallen through, and her father’s death, followed by the upheavals of the Gloucester take-over, had drastically affected her prospects.
If it was accepted that a hereditary title could be transmitted through the female line (and Henry Tudor’s hereditary title, such as it was, devolved entirely from his mother), then the Yorkist branch of the Plantagenet tree was the senior and, as Edward IV’s eldest surviving child, Elizabeth’s claim to be queen in her own right was infinitely stronger than Henry’s to be king. There was nothing in English law to prevent a woman from occupying the throne, but in the political climate of the late fifteenth century such an idea would obviously have been unthinkable, and there is no evidence that the Yorkist heiress herself ever resented the subordination of her rights to the Lancastrian claimant. Indeed, according to a contemporary ballad, The Most Pleasant Song of Lady Bessy, Elizabeth, horrified at the thought of being forced into marriage with her uncle Richard, summoned Lord Stanley and begged him to help the exiled Henry to come home and claim his right. When Stanley hesitated-he was afraid of Richard and besides it would be a deadly sin to betray his King – Bessy flung her headdress on the ground and tore her hair ‘that shone as the gold wire’, while ‘tears fell from her eyes apace’. Lord Stanley was touched by her distress, but still he hung back. ‘It is hard to trust women,’ and Bessy might let him down. He also protested, rather feebly, about the difficulties of communicating with Henry. He himself cannot write and dare not confide in a secretary. But dauntless Lady Bessy was ready for him. She can read and write, if necessary in French and Spanish as well as English, and she will act as scrivener. Deeply impressed by the talents of this ‘proper wench’, Stanley gave in and, late that night, alone together in Bessy’s chamber and fortified by wine and spices, they concocted a series of letters to Stanley’s friends and to ‘the Prince of England’ in Brittany. It was Bessy who found a trusty messenger, Humphrey Brereton, and she was presently rewarded by a love letter from Henry, telling her that he will travel over the sea for her sake and make her his queen.
The Song of Lady Bessy, which was probably written by Humphrey Brereton, a squire in the Stanley household, contains a number of authentic touches and a good deal of poetic licence. All the same, it’s quite possible that Elizabeth may have been in touch with Henry at some point in the months before Bosworth and may have sent him a message of encouragement by one of the secret couriers going over to France. Although she had never seen him, she would, of course, have heard glowing reports from Margaret Beaufort, and in any case – whether or not there was ever any truth in the story that King Richard was contemplating marrying his niece – Elizabeth of York seems to have come to the conclusion that a Tudor triumph offered the best hope of a secure and honourable future that she could reasonably expect.
Henry has often in the past been accused of deliberately delaying his wedding in order to forestall any suggestion that he owed the throne to his wife, but although the marriage was certainly of great political importance, the new King’s title could in no way be strengthened by his wife’s. It was the second generation of Tudor monarchs which would benefit from this union of ‘the two bloodes of high renowne’, and Elizabeth’s real usefulness would depend quite simply on her fecundity. The Yorkist princess had been rescued from the power of her wicked uncle, and the reproach of bastardy, laid on her by Richard’s government, had been removed by act of Henry’s first Parliament. She had been raised to the dignity of queen consort. Her mother had been rehabilitated and her sisters suitably settled. In return she was expected to be fruitful and thus ensure the future of the new royal line. By contemporary standards, it was a perfectly fair bargain.
There can be no question that Elizabeth understood her historic role, and she was to fill it nobly. She became pregnant immediately, and in September 1486 her first child, Prince Arthur, ‘the Rosebush of England’, was born a month prematurely at Winchester amid universal relief and rejoicing. There was a gap of three years before another living child arrived, a daughter christened Margaret, whose dynastic value was to equal that of the grandmother for whom she was named. Eighteen months later came another son, Henry, and the following year, 1492, another daughter, Elizabeth. A third daughter, Mary, was born in March 1495, and a third son, Edmund, in February 1499.
The King’s mother had retired from political life once her object had been achieved, and, while her daughter-in-law was occupied with the all-important business of filling cradles, Margaret Beaufort turned her attention and her considerable organizational talents to domestic matters, laying down a series of Ordinances designed to ensure the smooth running of the royal household. Like most grandmothers, she was greatly concerned with the welfare of her grandchildren, but this grandmother had more reason than most to take a keen interest in the continuance and well-being of the family she had founded, and the first of her directives covered the preparations to be made ‘against the deliverance of a queen’.
As soon as the mother-to-be had decided where she wished the event to take place, a suite of rooms must be got ready and ‘hanged with rich arras’. The lying-in chamber itself was to be completely hung with tapestry, walls, ceiling and windows, ‘except one window, which must be hanged so as she may have light when it pleaseth her’. The floor was to be ‘laid all over and over with carpets’ and a royal bed installed. The ‘furniture appertaining to the Queen’s bed’ included a mattress stuffed with wool, a feather bed and a bolster of down. The sheets were to measure four yards broad by five yards long, and there must be two long and two square pillows stuffed with fine down. The counterpane should be of scarlet cloth, furred with ermine and trimmed with crimson velvet and rich cloth of gold; while the whole outfit was to be garnished with silk fringe in blue, russet and gold and topped with crowns embroidered in gold and, of course, the royal arms. Luxury on this scale was naturally beyond the reach of the average family, but every household, excepting the very poorest, could provide a feather pillow and some additional comforts for the woman in childbed.
My lady the King’s mother went on to describe the procedure to be followed when the Queen ‘took her chamber’ – that is when she retired from public gaze, usually about a month before the actual birth. After hearing divine service in a chapel ‘well and worshipfully arrayed’ for the occasion, she would hold a reception in her ‘great chamber’ for the lords and ladies of the Court, and the company would be served with wine and spices. After this, the two lords of highest rank present would escort her to the door of the inner chamber and there take leave of her. ‘Then’, wrote Lady Margaret, ‘all the ladies and gentlewomen to go in with her, and none to come into the great chamber but women; and women to be made all manner of officers, as butlers, panters, sewers, etc.’ From now on, everything needful would be brought to the outer door of the great chamber and there received by the women officers.
Again, this sort of elaborate ceremonial was reserved for royal and noble households, but in every stratum of society childbirth was regarded as an exclusively female affair. When the accoucheur, or man-midwife as he was rather scornfully referred to, began to make his appearance during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he met with considerable hostility from more conventional midwives, who furiously resented this encroachment on their preserves.
At Court the great ladies of the realm gathered as of right to attend the Queen through her ordeal, but in every walk of life a lying-in was a social occasion when all the neighbourhood wives would assemble to ‘make good cheer’ and support and encourage the woman in labour. The knowledge that the party could so easily end in tragedy doesn’t appear to have dampened anyone’s spirits. Death was, after all, an everyday occurrence and physical pain an integral part of everyone’s experience.
Assuming things went well, the next event to be provided for was the christening and this normally took place within a few days of birth – infant life was too uncertain to permit of any unnecessary delay. A royal christening was a state occasion, with the church lavishly decorated throughout and the necessary lords spiritual and temporal in attendance. Lady Margaret noted that these personages, plus those appointed to be godparents or gossips, should be lodged near the place where the Queen was delivered so that they would be ready and waiting to accompany the young prince or princess to church. In pre-Reformation days, it was customary to immerse the naked infant in the font, so a screened ‘travers’, or closet, must be prepared with a ‘fair pan of coals’, plenty of cushions and carpets and a supply of warm water, where the baby could be undressed and if necessary washed – whatever happened, he must not catch cold. After the baptism – and with her unremitting eye for detail Margaret Beaufort decreed that the font must be well raised, so that the congregation would have a good view of the proceedings and not be tempted to press too close – a lighted taper was put into the child’s hand and it was carried to the high altar to be confirmed by the officiating bishop. ‘All which solemnities accomplished,’ it was returned to the travers to be dressed again, while the godparents were served with refreshments and the christening gifts presented. Then the procession formed up again and the newly-christened prince or princess, carried by a duchess, was brought home ‘in such sort as it was carried to the church, saving that the torches must be lighted, and a cloth of estate borne over it’. The christening gifts were delivered to the Queen, and the baby was brought in to receive her blessing before being taken back to the nursery. Parents were not much in evidence at a christening. This was the godparents’ occasion, and, in any case, the mother was scarcely in a condition to leave her bed.
Lady Margaret’s concern for her grandchildren did not end with baptism, and she laid down careful rules for the management of the royal nursery. There was to be a Lady Governess or Lady Mistress to supervise the wet nurse and the dry nurse, who had under them three assistant nurses or cradle rockers. The loyalty and reliability of these intimate personal attendants was vitally important, and their oaths of service were therefore to be administered by the Chamberlain of the Household in person, while the yeomen, grooms and other lesser servants who waited on the nursery must all be sworn ‘in the most straitest manner’.
A key member of the nursery staff was, of course, the wet nurse, who must be healthy, clean in her person and habits and of unimpeachable character, for it was generally believed that an infant imbibed its nurse’s morals or lack of them along with her milk. The royal wet nurse was a privileged person, and her food and drink were assayed (that is, tasted as a precaution against poison) ‘during the time that she giveth suck to the child’; but Lady Margaret insisted that there should be a physician on duty to oversee her at every feed to make sure she was doing her job properly and not adding any unsuitable titbits to her charge’s diet. The habit of employing a wet nurse was by no means confined to royal circles – most city-dwellers who could afford to do so would put their babies out to nurse in the country, hoping they might stand a better chance of survival away from the stench and noise and general nastiness of the streets. Wet nurses, incidentally, were sometimes used to nourish the old and toothless as well as the young and toothless – a somewhat gruesome but undeniably practical arrangement.
The royal babies spent most of their time in a wooden cradle, a yard and a quarter long and twenty-two inches broad, lying under a scarlet coverlet furred with ermine. The nursery equipment also included a ‘great cradle of estate’, much larger and more imposing and heavily encrusted with silver and gilt, in which the latest infant could be shown off to visitors. But in her list of ‘necessaries as belong unto the child’, Margaret Beaufort did not overlook such humble items as ‘a great pot of leather for water’ and ‘two great basins of pewter’ for the baby’s washing and, of course, the usual quantities of soft furnishings – curtains, wall-hangings, carpets and cushions – all intended to help keep out the icy draughts which whistled through the grandest houses.
Despite the anxious care lavished on Henry VII’s children, my lady the King’s mother, her son and daughter-in-law were to know the sorrow of seeing the little Princess Elizabeth die at three years old and Prince Edmund at sixteen months; while there was at least one other child, a boy, born alive, who did not survive to be named. Death which preyed on babies, often in the shape of some form of enteritis, was no respecter of rank or dignity.
During the early years of the reign, Lady Margaret was much in evidence at her son’s Court. We know she was present at Winchester for the birth and christening of her first grandchild. She was there to see Henry’s triumphant entry into London after his victory at Stoke in November 1487 – strictly speaking the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. She was present at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and at most of the elaborate feasts and shows with which Henry Tudor was at pains to impress the world at large and demonstrate that the new dynasty had come to stay.
Politically, of course, Margaret was still valuable – the sight of her tall, stately, coroneted figure accompanying the King and Queen at public functions serving to remind people that Henry was no mere upstart, that the blood of Edward III and ‘time honour’d Lancaster’ flowed in his veins too. On the more personal side, there’s no reason to suppose that my lady the King’s mother was not human enough to be enjoying herself and, in a dignified way, revelling in the sight of her beloved son’s continuing success. It’s true that some unkind people hinted that the Queen was being deliberately pushed into the background but, although Elizabeth of York may sometimes have found her formidable mother-in-law a trifle overpowering, there’s no evidence to suggest that relations between the two ladies were ever anything but affectionate.
In any case, Margaret Beaufort had many other preoccupations which, as time went by, took up more and more of her attention. As well as actively supervising the complicated business of administering her own vast estates (and she never hesitated to resort to litigation in defence of her just rights), she was responsible for the equally enormous possessions of her ward, the young Duke of Buckingham: a responsibility which must have been faithfully discharged, since the Duke counted as one of the richest men in England when he reached his majority. Buckingham and his younger brother were brought up in Lady Margaret’s household, where, according to the usual custom, she established a little school of handpicked companions to share their education, and in 1493 wrote to the Chancellor of the University of Oxford asking leave of absence for one Maurice Westbury whom she wished to employ as their tutor.
The list of her charitable works and benefactions is a long one. ‘Poor folk to the number of twelve she daily and nightly kept in her house, giving them lodging and drink and clothing, visiting them often, and in their sickness comforting them and administering to them with her own hands, records John Fisher; but probably Margaret Beaufort is best remembered for her patronage of the University of Cambridge where, guided by Fisher, himself a Cambridge man, she made generous endowments to the newly re-founded Christ’s College and herself founded St John’s.
But although Margaret was a highly intelligent and literate woman – she had been well grounded in French and often regretted she had not made more of her opportunities to study Latin – her interest in such matters never extended to promoting higher education for girls. She encouraged the printer Wynkyn de Worde to bring out books of devotion in the vernacular but remained largely untouched by the rising tide of questing intellectual excitement beginning to sweep through Christendom. Her purpose in founding colleges and endowing readerships was simply that the universities should have the means of adequately performing their primary task of training an efficient and well-educated clergy. Always devout, Lady Margaret commonly spent several hours of each busy day in prayer and meditation, hearing four or more Masses on her knees, and before she went to bed at night never failed ‘to resort to her chapel and there for a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions’. Always a sparing eater, she observed fast days meticulously and during Lent would restrict herself to one fish meal a day. According to John Fisher, she was also in the habit of wearing a hair shirt or girdle on certain days of every week ‘when she was in health’. The author of the Italian Relation of the Island of England noted that many Englishwomen carried long rosaries in their hands and that those who could read would take the Office of Our Lady to church with them, reciting it verse by verse with a companion; but although most of her contemporaries were careful in the outward observance of their religious duties, Lady Margaret’s piety was deeply-felt devotion on a grand scale. Next to her son, her religion was undoubtedly the most important thing in her life.
As she grew older and more and more immersed in her various charitable and business affairs, my lady the King’s mother was seen less often at Court, but she seldom missed any big family occasion. Certainly she was in town in November 1501 for the wedding of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and the Spanish Princess Catherine of Aragon. Once again she ‘wept marvellously’ throughout the splendid ceremony in St Paul’s Cathedral, but this time, unhappily, Lady Margaret’s perennial dread that adversity would follow triumph proved well founded, for within six months Arthur was dead at the age of fifteen.
The loss of their precious elder son and heir came as a terrible blow to his parents, and we have a poignant glimpse of Queen Elizabeth attempting to comfort her husband, reminding him that his mother ‘had never no more children but him only and that God had ever preserved him and brought him where he was’. They still had a fair prince and two fair princesses, and there might yet be more. ‘We are both young enough’, said Elizabeth gallantly. She was now in her thirty-eighth year and after seven pregnancies could reasonably have felt she had more than done her duty in this respect, but it seems that for Henry’s sake she was ready to begin all over again if necessary – a gesture which in itself suggests a bond of tender affection, if not real love between them.
Meanwhile the three surviving children were growing up, and January 1502 had seen the betrothal of Margaret, elder of the two fair princesses, to King James IV of Scotland. The ceremony took place at Richmond Palace, Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, acting as James’s proxy, and in the presence of her parents, her brother and sister and a notable assemblage of bishops, lords and ladies, Margaret, ‘wittingly and of deliberate mind, having twelve years complete in age in the month of November last past’, solemnly plighted her troth, vowing to take ‘the said James, King of Scotland, unto and for my husband and spouse, and all other for him forsake during his and mine lives natural’. The trumpeters blew a fanfare, the minstrels struck up ‘in the best and most joyfullest manner’, and the Queen took her daughter by the hand and led her to the place of honour at a banquet laid out in the royal apartments in recognition of her altered status.
Margaret was now officially regarded as a married woman and addressed in public as Queen of Scotland, but another eighteen months were to pass before she left home, and during that time tragedy struck again at the royal family. In February 1503 Elizabeth of York was brought to bed of her eighth child, a girl christened Katherine, but it killed her, and the baby for whom she had given her life ‘tarried but a small season after her mother’.
The Queen had always been a popular figure – ‘one of the most gracious and best beloved princesses in the world in her time being’ – and she was genuinely mourned. She never took any active part in politics and probably never wanted to, but in her own sphere her influence seems to have been entirely benign. To her contemporaries she embodied all the most admired female virtues, being a chaste, fruitful and submissive wife, a loving mother, a dutiful daughter, an affectionate sister and a pious, charitable Christian. She is said to have been beautiful, and probably she was a pretty woman – the Yorkists were a handsome family, and Elizabeth Woodville must certainly have possessed considerable physical attractions. Fortunately, though, her daughter inherited none of the dowager’s less admirable characteristics and, from the scanty personal information available, a picture emerges of what is usually described as a very feminine woman – placid, warm-hearted, sweet-tempered and generous, but naturally indolent, totally without ambition, happy to let others take the lead (and the responsibility) and perfectly content in her own small family world. In the often still dangerously tense political atmosphere, this was precisely what the new dynasty needed, and by her negative as well as her positive qualities Elizabeth of York undoubtedly helped to provide a stabilizing element.
Henry honoured his wife with a splendid state funeral. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, with her sister, Lady Katherine Courtenay, acting as chief mourner, while the King ‘departed to a solitary place to pass his sorrow’. The Queen’s death, says one account, ‘was as heavy and dolorous to the King’s highness as hath been seen or heard of’, but Henry could not afford the luxury of mourning for long. The daily grind of government had to go on, and that summer the young Queen of Scotland was due to travel north to begin her married life. The King escorted his daughter as far as his mother’s house at Collyweston in Northamptonshire, where Margaret Beaufort now spent most of her time, and here the goodbyes were said. The bride was to make the rest of her wedding journey in the charge of the Earl and Countess of Surrey, who would be responsible for handing her over to her husband.
There was no sentimental cult of youth in the sixteenth-century world – life was altogether too short and too uncertain – and few concessions were made to immaturity. Margaret, still three months short of her fourteenth birthday, was admittedly young to be married and a queen, but by no means exceptionally so. Her father, and society at large, regarded her as an adult and expected her to behave as one.
The marriage was, of course, entirely a matter of political convenience, intended to seal a treaty of alliance which, it was hoped, would end the ancient feud between England and her nearest neighbour, loosen the almost equally ancient Franco-Scottish connection – always a source of trouble and danger to England – and secure the vulnerable northern frontier. Henry had been negotiating this treaty for a number of years and regarded its completion as something of a triumph. Such considerations as those that his daughter had never seen her future husband, that he was at least fifteen years older and known to be keeping a mistress, were not felt to be relevant. The King of Scotland was a gentleman, and there was no reason to suppose that he would not treat his wife with proper courtesy and respect. As for Margaret, she was making an honourable marriage, a career for which she had been trained from babyhood, and now it was up to her to make a success of it.
The time, indeed, was approaching when the second generation of royal Tudors would have to take over the family business. The King never really recovered from the shock of losing his elder son and his wife within the space of ten months. He aged visibly after the Queen’s death, and his health began to fail. He lived for another six years, but when he died, in April 1509, ‘of a consuming sickness’, at the age of fifty-two, he was already an old man.
His mother did not long survive her own ‘sweet and most dear king’ and all her worldly joy. Margaret Beaufort was now in her sixty-sixth year, a considerable age by contemporary standards, but her health, even in her last years, seems to have been better than her son’s, for she was still active and kept all her faculties to the end. She came up to London to see her eighteen-year-old grandson crowned, staying in the Abbot’s House at Westminster for the occasion, and there, at the beginning of July, she died. Her death, coming in the midst of a hectic round of post-coronation festivities, attracted comparatively little attention, though she was, of course, buried with all proper respect alongside her son and daughter-in-law in Henry VII’s Chapel in the Abbey, the new Queen, Catherine of Aragon, seeing to most of the arrangements, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, preaching the funeral sermon at a solemn Requiem Mass.
Fisher did full justice to his old friend’s memory. ‘She had in a manner all that is praisable in a woman, either in soul or body,’ he declared; ‘she was of singular wisdom and a holding memory; a ready wit she had to conceive all things, albeit they were right dark. In favour, in words, in gesture, in every demeanour of herself, so great nobleness did appear that whatever she spoke or did, it marvellously became her.’ Fisher went on to speak of her generosity, her kindliness and her unfailing good manners. ‘Of marvellous gentleness she was unto all folk, but specially unto her own, whom she loved and trusted right tenderly.… Merciful also and piteous she was unto such as were grieved or wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in poverty or any other misery.’ The Bishop felt that the whole country had reason to mourn her passing:
the poor creatures that were wont to receive her alms …; the students of both the Universities, to whom she was as a mother; all the learned men of England, to whom she was a very patroness; all the virtuous and devout persons, to whom she was as a loving sister; … all good priests and clerics, to whom she was a true defendress; all the noble men and women, to whom she was a mirror, an example of honour; all the common people of this realm, for whom she was in their causes a common mediatrix, and took right great pleasure for them.
Fisher, of course, was prejudiced, but even so there is no doubt that my lady the King’s mother was a great lady in the best sense; deeply conscious of the duties and responsibilities attached to wealth and high position, and tirelessly conscientious in discharging them. Dignified, gracious and good, there is no doubt that by her life and work she did much to establish popular respect and esteem for the royal House she had founded.