Margaret Beaufort
Margaret Beaufort (
May 31 1443 -
June 29 1509) married four times and had only one child who became
Henry VII of England. She was the daughter of
John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, granddaughter of
John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset and great-granddaughter of
John of Gaunt and his mistress
Katherine Swynford; following Gaunt's marriage to Katherine, their children (the Beauforts) were legitimized, but their descendants were barred from ever inheriting the throne.
Margaret's first marriage, to John de la Pole, took place in 1450, when she was still a child, but was annulled after a short time. Her second cousin Henry VI had as yet no children, and considered naming her his heir. He married her to his half-brother, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Edmund was the eldest son of the king's mother, dowager Queen Catherine (the widow of Henry V) by her illegal (and so legally invalid) second marriage to a Welsh squire in her household, Owen Tudor. Thus, in one of the great ironies of history, Margaret's son Henry, the Lancastrian claimant to the throne at the end of the Wars of the Roses -- the one who won it all and united the two houses by marrying the Yorkist princess Elizabeth of York -- had plenty of royal blood but no legal claim to the throne.
Edmund died while she was only thirteen and pregnant with their son. The difficult birth left her unable to have any more children.
Nevertheless, Lady Margaret soon married her third husband, Sir Henry Stafford, son of the 1st Duke of Buckingham. Following his death in
1471, she took a vow of chastity, but this did not prevent her from marrying
Thomas, Lord Stanley, some time between
1473 and
1482. Stanley, who had switched sides repeatedly during the
Wars of the Roses, chose to double-cross King
Richard on the battlefield at the
Battle of Bosworth Field in
1485 and so throw the victory to Margaret's son Henry Tudor. Stanley was later made
Earl of Derby, which made Margaret Countess of Derby, and she was still the
dowager Countess of Richmond. She was known for her education and her piety, and her son is said to have been devoted to her.
In 1502 she established the Lady Margaret's Professorship of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
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