Margaret Beaufort

April 2, 2026·54 min·5 clips

Margaret Beaufort was almost 12 when the Wars of the Roses broke out, and she was soon to marry her second husband.

Host Misha Glenny convenes Joanna Lane-Smith of Reading, David Grummitt of the Open University, and Catherine Lewis of Lincoln to discuss Margaret Beaufort. Born in 1443, Margaret inherited her father John Beaufort's estates as sole heir, making her a medieval millionaire in the cradle. Her wardship went to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, who briefly married her to his son John before being murdered and leaving her free again. Aged 12 she married Edmund Tudor; at 13 she was widowed and gave birth to Henry Tudor at Pembroke under Jasper Tudor's protection in a birth so traumatic it may have ended her fertility. She married Henry Stafford and lived quietly in Lincolnshire while the Wars of the Roses raged. Edward IV seized the throne in 1461, and Henry Tudor's wardship went to William Herbert, so Margaret did not see her son for 10 years. Widowed again in 1471, she quickly married Thomas Stanley, entering Edward IV's Yorkist court and eventually negotiating a deal for Henry's return that was scuppered by Edward IV's sudden death. Under Richard III she joined forces with Elizabeth Woodville, helping organise the failed Buckingham Rebellion in 1483. Parliament attainted her for treason, but she was placed under house arrest rather than executed. After Henry's victory at Bosworth in 1485, which David Grummitt attributes to John de Vere's generalship rather than Stanley treachery, Margaret became an unusually powerful king's mother, declared femme sole by parliament and holding more land than Edward IV's mother had. She governed the East Midlands from Collie Weston, kept a jail there, took a vow of chastity while separated from Stanley, and was a patron of William Caxton, founded Christ's and St John's colleges at Cambridge, and translated part of The Imitation of Christ from French. She helped keep Henry VII's death secret for 48 hours to enable a coup against Dudley and Empson and a smooth succession to Henry VIII, dying only weeks later in 1509. John Fisher, her confessor, preached the funeral sermon that remains the principal source on her life.

As heard by us

A sharp Tudor prehistory that treats Margaret Beaufort as a survivor of dynastic danger and political confinement.

Margaret Beaufort comes through as a hard-used survivor of the Wars of the Roses, but not simply as a passive figure waiting for Tudor triumph.

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Want a Tudor origin story with real political weight?

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