Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Mother of All Tudors: Child Bride to Kingmaker

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Ever heard of Margaret Beaufort? Probably not. But whilst her name has been overshadowed by those of her son, grandson and great-grandchildren, her impact on history remains.Lauren Johnson joins Kate for this episode to explain how this woman put the Tudors on the throne. Why was she married aged 12? How did she use marriage to her advantage? And was she as manipulative as she has been portrayed?Lauren's new book is ‘Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker’.This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Thank you for listening to Bertwikster Sheeds, home of as much historical smut as your little hearts can handle. But before we can have any of that said smut, I do have to remind you that this is quite a smutty show, apparently.

Here it is. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adults subjects, and you should be an adult too. and I do have a note here from my producer, hello Sophie, to let everybody know that this is quite a spicy episode. We will be covering themes of child abuse and you just might not want to listen to that one today,

in which case, get out now while you still can and we'll catch you in the next one. Right, on with the show. Henry the 8th. Henry the 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8th. Arguably, one of the most famous names in history. It is, it just is. We don't like him, but he's famous.

In fact, he's so famous. He kind of encompasses the very word Tudor, doesn't he? He is the Tudor, the original. Or is he? Hmm, what about his dad? Henry the 7th, we never hear very much about him. We hear quite a bit about his children, Eddie, Liz and the first Bloody Mary. But there were Henry's before him. And, of course, what about the source of the Tudors, his grandmother, Margaret Beauford, not a Tudor. but a Tudor maker, that's for sure, and certainly quite a formidable woman in her own right, and her fault that now we have a Tudor onslaught, on TV, on podcasts and film, it's everywhere. And we're going to do another one today, so let's get cracking and learn more about Margaret Beauford. Oh, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society with me, Kate Lister.

Matriarch is a bit of a dry word, isn't it? Might it depends how it's being deployed. I wouldn't mind living in a... a matriarchy, that's for damn sure. But if you say matriarch, it kind of brings to mind, I don't know, an elderly woman doing knitting, keeping an eye on everything, doesn't it? Maybe it doesn't. Well, it shouldn't, that's for damn sure. Matriarchs were powerful. And the woman we're talking about today, she wasn't sitting around knitting, or if she was, she was knitting some kind of war plans. All right, that may have been a bit excessive. But from the age of 12, at most, Margaret Beauford was in the corridors of power. And in this episode, Lauren Johnson is going to tell us all about it.

Just think, what the hell were you doing at the age of 12? Yeah, not that. Who was this woman? And where would the Tudors have been without her? Crowns are the ready, everyone. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Lauren Johnson. How are you doing? I'm good. Thank you, Kate. A little bit snoozy, as always. I think that's what I say every time I say hello to you. I'm a bit stupid today. I'm like one of the... Snow White's dwarves. You've got the startled look of an author who's just published a book. Yes, very much. The deer in headlights. How's the feeling? Oh, it's so lovely in lots of ways to have it out in the world. It's a book I've wanted to write for a long time. My one-sided love of Margaret

Beaufort goes back many years. Let's give it its full title, your new book, your new brain baby. It is Margaret Beaufort Survivor Rebel Kingmaker. Good title. Thank you. I mean, there were lots of adjectives at various points, as you can imagine. I love the stories of titles of books of like, was that, what was that the first one? What was the story there? There's normally, Madd stories about editors getting involved.

Yeah, yeah. This was about four years and 15 people's worth of thinking around this. At one point, I think it was called Margaret Beaufort, the winner takes it all, but I was in an Abba phase. I quite like that one. But there will be people listening to this going, who, what's happened, Margaret Beaufort, Abba, what's going on? I'm going to start with my opening question,

is Margaret Beauford, who was she and when did you first come to meet her? She is a 15th century noblewoman, and that was all I sort of vaguely knew about her, to be honest. I came across her when I was doing my A-levels many moons ago. And I was a bit bored, if I'm honest, doing my history A-level. The Wars of the Roses just, it seemed like a lot of arcane, you know, titled people who were named after bits of the countryside, fighting in other bits of the countryside and changing sides every two minutes and they were all men.

That was what I was getting from the books I had. And one day I came across a reference in one of the books to the mother of the Earl of Richmond who, you know, you just think 15th century noblewoman, you have the image essentially of what Margaret looks like, you know, in her famous portraits, very dower, very old. And I found out that when she gave birth to the future Henry the 7th, founder of the Tudor dynasty, that she was 13.

Holy mother of fuck. What? Yeah. That's phase one, Kate. Phase one is that she was 13. I feel like I need to find the police. I wish someone had. Fug.

Phase two is her husband who had impregnated her, you know, at 13, was already dead of the plague, having been involved in a siege of a castle in Wales. And she was just sort of like completely alone, pretty much, not completely alone. She's still a noble woman. She's got servants. but completely isolated from the people she cared about in this like war-torn plague zone with this tiny baby who is ultimately her only child.

And like just the bare bones of that, you know, imagine I was 16, 17 being like, wow, when she was my age, she had a four-year-old and the four-year-old was handed over to one of the Yorkist responsible for the death of her husband. Like it was just so movie epic. I just fell in love with her at that moment, to be honest. And I always wanted to tell more of her story and then more of the story of the other women in the Wars of the Roses

as I came across them. And she is astonishing. It's just the unlikeliest story that you begin there and you end up with her being the mother and then grandmother of the Tudor dynasty. She survives to see Henry VIII safely on the throne and then dies eating a swan. Amazing.

So it's not true what they say about teen mums, is it? That's, she is the living, the living proof. Oh my God. Well, okay, I'm not surprised that you've been fascinated by her. So that is a very quick introduction to this woman. But let's, 13. Fuck. Like, you're not, we're going to get to this.

I'm now stuck on this, on this bit, but we'll build up to it. Well, I was too. Don't worry. I think most people are. Holy moly. And that was her second marriage also. That's the other thing. No.

Yeah. All they're fucked up, aren't they? They are. And what's really fascinating as well, like I was a bit obsessed with Henry the 7th as well. And I thought his story was quite amazing. You know, he grows up without a father, this father's dead before he's born. But actually, so does Margaret. Her father dies when she is less than a year old.

She's brought up by a strong mother, again, very sort of redolent story. And just the fact that you have these two sort of like slightly weird little individuals in the 15th century navigating it and coming together and being. driven apart and coming together and being driven apart and eventually ruling an entire kingdom. I mean, kind of between them, because Margaret is a real powerhouse as well. It's incredible. So she's the mum of the first Tudan king in a sort of a nut shell. And we know how that all got there, sort of a bit Richard the third and a bit stabby.

But let's take it back with her long, long, long life before she became his mum all of 13 years. Holy shit. Like what is her background? Where did she come from? You said she's a noble woman, so I assume she's not like roughing it around a council estate or anything. What was her? How does she even get in line to be given birth to kings? I mean, like a lot of people in the 15th century, she's descended from Edward III. Aren't we all? You know, I mean, I'm not, but pretty much everyone you meet in the 15th century is. But she has descended through an illegitimate line, the

Beaufort line that goes back to John of Gaunt, having an affair with Catherine Swinford, his servant. So they're a Lancastrian family, but they're a a little bit sort of in and outside of the elite. They are part of it. They're part of the royal family kind of, but they're also not officially part of it. There's a whole parliamentary statute that says they can't, you know, claim the throne for themselves. Because John have gone knocked up his servant. That's why. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the legitimacy that they get, the, and it's like a papal legitimacy, a parliamentary legitimacy, happens when their eldest child is like 20. So, very after the fact. And Margaret's descended.

from that line through her father who like I say dies before she's won. So a father of whom she probably has like maybe a sense memory and that is it. She does not know him at all. And he dies under a cloud, certainly, maybe under slightly suspicious circumstances. There are rumours later that he might even have taken his own life. He is certainly in disgrace. He's had a completely disastrous military campaign that he comes back from France just like and effectively is banished.

at the time that Margaret's mother, another Margaret, unfortunately everyone is called Margaret in this story. She is pregnant with another child. So, like, again, Margaret Beaufort's mother is someone who I feel like has not been given her due attention and interest either. It's the mother who kind of keeps them, keeps Margaret Beaufort safe from this horrible beginning. Marrying at 13, like, all right, she's a noble woman.

She's got legitimacy, although it's got a slight, you know, like people might be whispering about it and raising their eyebrows. I was at court, but, you know, they're there. Marrying at 13. Tell me about that. Was that unusual for the time? What on earth was anyone thinking? Her getting married wasn't that unusual. So she gets married at 12, which is the legal age of consent for girls. For boys, it's 14. Her husband is not 14. Her husband is in his late 20s, so substantially older than her. Oh, for fuck's sake. Oh, no. And he really is, he's just dangling for the money because she's got a lot of landed estates, a lot of cash through her lands

and also this potential blood claim to the throne. He wants those and in order to get them, the best thing that he can do is impregnate her quickly because even if the child dies, even if she dies, he is then going to have a claim on her estates. But like you say, this is not normal behaviour. This is a really mercenary act on his part. What people usually do, even if they're married very young, and they might be arranging marriages from when they're babies, you know, is they wait until a girl, and I use the word girl advisedly, is physically able to have a child safely.

So we're talking 16, I think 20 is the average age of first child for most aristocratic women in this time. So this is really young. I mean, even the fact that Margaret Beaufort had periods is quite unusual. Like, obviously it's a bit difficult to know, isn't it? But the demographic studies there are seem to suggest that puberty was later in the middle ages. Interesting. So I feel like about 14 was sort of a fairly common age to be starting your periods.

And she evidently must have started earlier because as soon as she's getting her periods, it seems she is pregnant. Wow. What did a mum say about all this? Just to help yourself off you go, have a lovely time. What on earth is going on? No, it's kind of the tragedy of it, I think. think. My impression is very strongly that her mother was trying to protect Margaret because we know that there had been this sort of specific contract made between Margaret's parents and the

King, who's King Henry the 6th at this time, that if he died during this military campaign he was off on, that the baby Margaret would be kept by her mother, that she would be looked after by her mother, rather than, as was completely within the King's rights, her being removed from her mother and just handed off to some other random guardian who wanted her land. So there's that to begin with, and then there's multiple sort of instances of Margaret's mother protecting her children because she has several other marriages and several other children in which she's doing it legally, she's doing it a bit unscrupulously. We know that Margaret and her mother have a very long and it seems affectionate relationship

for the whole of Margaret's life. So I think almost certainly what happened here is that there was this like collusion, probably among men, would be my suspicion, powerful men around King Henry the 6th, who went, this is the marriage,

this is the time it's going to happen, Edmund Tudor, you just take your child bride, off you go to Wales, we'll just deal with it and the mother has to accept it because now this child is 12, so it's absolutely fine.

And I don't think that her mother wanted it. It is possible that Margaret might have been like, oh, well, I'm 12, I'm old enough to deal with this situation. Like, possible, I guess, I guess. So who's this husband then, apart from him being in his late 20s? Tell me, tell me who he is so I can hate him properly. He's someone I always wanted to like. I was very annoyed when I found out more about him. Oh, no.

He's called Edmund Tudor. There are, how to put this. So yet another illegitimate, like, half-siblings situation. We've got the Beaufort's illegitimate half-siblings of a Lancastrian way back in time. Then under Henry the 6th, we get yet more illegitimate half-siblings of him because his mother, Queen Catherine Valois, once French princess, wife of Henry the 5th, in later life, remarries her servant, Owen Tudor, who is a Welshman, and has a number of children with him, including Edmund and including Jasper Tudor, who goes on to be very

important under the Tudors. Jasper Tudor, right. I never heard of him. Yes. And Edmund and Jasper, because of this Welsh lineage with their father, they kind of take over some of the sort of Lancasterian overlordship of some parts of Wales during Henry the 6 reign. Like we've talked about Henry the 6th, really ineffective king. Everyone else kind of has to do the actual business of running things. He's confronted with the House of York sort of vying for position and York has quite a lot of Welsh power as well. So the Tudors are sort of ratcheted in to try and counter that and assert Lancasterian dominance.

So that's what Edmund Tudor is there to do, basically. And he's kind of given this wealthy child bride almost as a sort of like, here you go, this is your sweetener. Off you go and fight the Yorkist. Okay. But he's not royal yet. Not officially. If he's royal at all, it's through his mother who is French. And as we know in England, that obviously means nothing.

It doesn't mean a damn thing. All right. So I just can't imagine this at the age of 12 getting married. So she gets pregnant very, very quickly. I mean, if you found any evidence that anyone at the time was going, that's a bit of fucking weird, or is just all of that lost to us? Not at the time, but what there are is quite a lot of kind of telling titbits from later in Margaret's life, both by her and by her confessor, John Fisher, who is one of the major sources for,

her sort of interior life really. He writes a lot about her thoughts, her feelings, her expressions. And he makes this, what I find to be quite a creepy speech. I think it's meant to be funny, but it's a bit creepy in like 1506. So Margaret by then is in her 60s. And he does a speech to her at Cambridge, her and Henry the 7th. And he says, oh, look at this little lady here. She's so tiny when she gave birth. She was even smaller still, if you can imagine it. It seemed like a miracle that's so tinier body could bring forth a child at all. So that immediately suggests not only that everyone could see she was a tiny and probably had been a very slight child when she was married, but also that I suspect there was a

general understanding of it, because I don't think he'd be saying something like that in a public forum if she hadn't enabled him to do that in some way, if she hadn't maybe made a joke of it. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Yeah, that would be. There's a few references actually in other places to her sort of joking about how small she is compared with, especially the Yorkists. The Yorkists are all really tall. They're like, you know, it's like if you went to London Fashion Week, if I was there, this sort of little, little wide dwarf looking up at goddesses. That's how Margaret sees herself. You'd have only said that if that was a joke that was already in currency at the time, I think, wouldn't he? Yeah.

Do you have any information about the pregnancy and the birth itself? Because, like, she's 13. She's not developed for this. No, it's very frustrating because the short answer is we don't have that information. The longer answer is, again, reading between the lines, it seems to have been, I mean, I would say, traumatic. I use that term advisedly. I suspect psychologically and physically, deeply damaging. Again, John Fisher makes references later to how afraid Margaret was at this time that she was afraid that her baby in her womb would get the plague that had killed his father. she was afraid of everything that was going on at the time, like I say, very small. There's also an interesting reference later in Margaret's life when she has a granddaughter who's

going to get married, Margaret Tudor, who goes on to marry the King of Scotland. And both Margaret Beaufort and her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth of York, the Queen, they both intervene to stop Princess Margaret being sent to her husband too early. And it's very specifically said, like, they don't want her to go because she's quite underdeveloped for her age. again, like Margaret Beaufort had been, and they worry that if she went to Scotland, her husband couldn't restrain himself and he would hurt her. Right, okay.

So, I mean, to me, that really suggests that there is an understanding that birth and sex within marriage can be damaging. Yeah, yeah. I've forgotten that her husband died of the plague. You said that just there. So she's also a widow at 13. And was it the plague, like the black death that he died of?

Or it might have been a jail fever as well because he was imprisoned after having been involved in this siege. But yeah, we're not completely sure. She is very worried about the plague for the rest of her life, which to be honest. I mean, we've all lived through a pandemic. I feel quite worried about plagues at this point in my life. Fair. Fair, not a problem there. I'll be back with Lauren and Margaret after this short break.

So who is this baby then? This poor little girl who has been forced to give birth? husband's dead. I'm not sad about that, to be completely honest, but who was this baby? This baby is Henry Tudor. There is a later myth that perhaps he was going to be named Owen after his grandfather, who presumably is a godfather as well, and that Margaret intervened and said, no, he should be named after the king, you should be named after the people I'm related to. Not completely clear if that's a bit of sort of retrospective, you know, connecting Henry to the king to kingship in general. It's not totally clear. But I think it's...

It is believable because what we know is that within about two months of giving birth, which is both according to like church custom and also, let's be honest, medical guidance, I suspect, about the earliest you can be getting up and around and moving independently. So like as soon as possible after giving birth, Margaret leaves this baby Henry and goes and arranges and marriage to someone else. Why is she doing that? Because one of the things I have learned from speaking to many, many, many different historian, and he did my own research. Being a widow was awesome.

That's like the best bit. That's like you get married. You have to put up with a little bit of like, oh, God, huffing and puffing. Or in Margaret's case, flat out abuse. But then he dies and you get everything. And then you can just be like, no, actually, I'm all right. I'm too sad to marry again. I'm just too sad to do it.

So why is she decided she wants to get married again? You're right that in most cases being a widow is brilliant in this era. I think, and maybe this is a little bit early for that, but certainly later in the world, Wars of the Roses. It's actually a bit dangerous to be a widow or sometimes to be married to an exile, so a husband who's still alive but has rebelled and then gone into exile. Because women are supposed to, in this period, be protected from the actions of their husbands. So if a husband, for instance, is a tainted, that is he's condemned as a traitor, all of his stuff is forfeit, women's possessions

are supposed to be protected. But we see time and again throughout the Wars of the Roses that that does not happen, that there are little legal loopholes or that people just intervene and take stuff from them, that women are put into the care of, care, inverted commas, of guardians, effectively jailers, to be honest, other lords who are monitoring them, who are stopping them from having any involvement in, you know, the legal or the political actions of their relatives in helping rebel against the crown, basically. And because Margaret is so wealthy throughout her whole life, and because she has this blood connection, distant as it is, I think she recognises that she is in a really vulnerable position.

And I also suspect that she was like, I have had something awful happen to me. It's been imposed on me. I am not going to let that happen again. I'm going to take control of things. Realistically at this point, the best way that I can protect myself and this baby, who doesn't have a father,

so is in exactly the same position I was for my entire life. The best way I can do that is to have a patron, basically, to have a political ally with someone from a family that's got power of its own. So who does she go for? She goes for a very little known individual called Harry Stafford, someone so unimportant that no one even really knows when he was born. That's an interesting joke. Crucially, though, he is the son of the Duke of Buckingham. And the Duke of Buckingham, I mean, there are only, what, like three dukes in England at this time. anyway. It's one of the highest ranking, sort of almost princes of the kingdom.

Okay. And he is also one of the last people who is still kind of trying to keep the Wars of the roses in check. He's got connections on both sides, York and Lancaster. He has been around Henry the 6th since Henry was a baby king. And so he is one of the only people who can kind of intervene and try and keep control. And again, this is really interesting that Margaret chooses that family. So it's not an out and out-and-out-Lancasterian family. It's not out-and-out-Yorkist. it's someone in the middle because she's like that way, whatever happens, we're probably going to be all right. And the other, I think, big sell of Harry Stafford is that by marrying him, Margaret gets to go back to the territories that she grew up in because his lands are also in Lincolnshire, in and around Lincolnshire. So that means effectively what I see her doing is she's almost like cutting the Tudor ties completely.

As far as we know, she leaves Henry in Pembroke Castle. or she goes away and lives with her new husband. And crucially, she's living right next to her mother, her half-siblings, where she grew up, a place of safety and security. And I think that as well is part of the attraction of this marriage that she is able to thereby, like, just restore a bit of protection and comfort to her life. That makes sense. All right, it's not a completely hairbrained scheme then.

She's still so young. She's still, like, what, 14 at this point? Yeah, 14, 3 times married. Much smarter than I was of 14, quite frankly. I don't want to say what was the Wars and the Roses because we don't have enough time for that. But can you attempt to give us a sort of an overview of what was happening at this point? It was just chaos, wasn't it?

It was Game of Thrones, basically. Yeah, it's pretty much Game of Thrones. But with, let's keep it really simple. White Rose of York, red rose of Lancaster. Henry VI is Lancastrian, so he's the Red Rose. the Duke of York, Richard Duke of York, White Rose. And they spend about 10 years just sort of like, I mean, fanning around really, just, you know, the odd battle here, the odd attack there.

It just sort of escalates and escalates and escalates until finally during the time that Margaret is married to Harry Stafford. Henry the 6th is deposed, he's driven out of the kingdom. And Richard Duke of York's son, teenage son, Edward Earl of March, becomes King Edward VIII. Right. And very swiftly, Margaret and pretty much all of her relatives make peace with Edward VIII and are like, right, that's fine, he's the guy now. We're all Yorkists.

Smart. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Then how do we get from this to her being a kingmaker? Because it seems like she could have just sat back and just gone, look, we're all Yorkists. This is all great. I'm just going to sit over it and do some needlework. But that doesn't seem to be what fate has got in store for her.

No. I mean, again, the Wars of the Roast. are such an absolute mess. I mean, like, I would say, yeah, I would have said shit show. So we get to like 1469 to 71. I'm not even going to go into detail, but everyone swaps back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And Margaret tries to be a sort of a little political manipulator.

She tries to engineer it so that she is able to get control of her son again so she can restore his estate. Oh yeah, where's he in all of this? Sorry, no. He's just in Pembrokeshire. Right. Okay. Don't worry about it, Kate.

He's living in Wales. He's fine. He's fine. He's fine. Well, this is the thing. So I do want to kind of emphasize it really is that at this point in time, Margaret has not been involved in his life. He is, what, like 11 years old almost by the time she actually, as far as we know, meets him again. Like she leaves him in Wales.

She goes to Lincolnshire. She resurrects her relationship with her family. she just forgets all about him. And I suspect she is thinking, oh well, that's all behind me. Now I'm going to have a normal, air quotes, marriage. I'm going to have children with this husband, and they will be the people I'm going to kind of invest a bit more energy in because they'll be around.

And instead, what happens is that she doesn't have any more children. We don't know if it's a choice. We don't know if it is just a sort of legacy of the trauma of the birth that she's had. My suspicion is that that whether physically or psychologically it just wasn't possible and that she had hoped for children and it's only when she starts to think

hmm, okay, I don't think this is going to happen that she resurrects a relationship with her son and that that's when she starts to be a bit more present in his life. Jesus. Just getting a letter from your mum aged about 12 just going out, remember me? Oh God, that's so weird. Well, she might have been sending letters. To be fair, we don't have loads of.

of detail for the first few years of the 1460s. But it does seem like the first time she goes back to Wales and sees him is 1467. So he would have been 10 years old at that point. She, the mothers suck. Right. Okay. But is she politically involved at this point? I mean, think about the War of the Rose again, we can't go into it. We're going to have to move past this quite quickly. Is that like, as much as I'm joking that she could have just sat down and, you know, just sat this one out, I don't think you could really. It was so all-encompassing and so messy and such a complete and utter disaster. It's a bit like saying that you could sit Brexit out. It's like you can't. It's there. Like you're either for or you're against. Like it's going to get you. So how was she involved in this?

I think she tries to sit it out for a while. I think the trouble is, is, and like, again, this is the complexity of it is we're talking about a span of time that's 20 to 30 years. And within that time, her opinions completely changed. So for most of that period of time, firstly, she's very hands. off. Then when she remembers she has this son and would like to have a relationship with him, she decides that, I mean, really all she wants is for him to get what's his right, which is the earldom of Richmond, which has been taken away and given to someone else while he's a child. That's her concern. And then in 1471, he goes into exile because the Yorkists start to seem quite threatening towards the Lancasterian, so he flees overseas, and she just doesn't see him for

11 years basically. But she never loses sight of the fact that in order for him to come back and to have any sort of future in England as a noble man, he has to make peace with the ruling regime and then he needs to get this earldom back. Like that is, that's her aim, is to sort that out for him. Okay. Okay. And she manages to do it in around, well, not quite manages. She almost, she's on the very precipice of having sorted all of this out in 1482. She makes a deal with Edward the fourth of York, that Henry can come back if he makes peace, he'll be completely safe. And I should say by this point, most of the Lancasterians have been killed one way or another, you know, by fair means and foul during the Wars of the Roses.

He is starting to be one of the very few who is left alive. But he's just in France, just like on a massive gap here, a Brittany. Brittany, right, okay. Is he doing anything that's threatening when they said that you've got to make peace if you want to come back? Was he writing nasty letters to the king? No, I think that's. I think that's why Edward V. Fourth is willing to make a deal with Margaret for Henry's return

is because Henry Tudor is sort of the model citizen really. His uncle has been locked in Harlech Castle for years defending the Lancasterian cause. There's other people who have been breaking out of prisons and leading armies. Henry's never done any of that. He's like he just wants a quiet life, I think, probably. But at the point that Margaret finally manages to make a deal that would secure Henry's safe return with his life safe and his ability to kind of take up his position as Earl of Richmond, Edward VIII dies. And everything goes to hell in a handcartes.

And I think like that's what we need to understand about Margaret at this point. Had Henry come back from Brittany before he died? Or was this like he gave up the ghost in negotiations? The deal is made. I think Henry is still suspicious that it is not actually going to keep him safe. and then within nine months, Edward is dead. So, yeah, Henry the 7th by this point, still on the continent. The Wars of the Roses kicks off again and it starts to become, I mean, just so labyrinthine

in the political shenanigans that are going on at this point. But effectively, as we know, Richard Duke of Gloucester takes the throne instead of Edward the fourth's children. The princes disappear in the tower The princesses, one of whom was kind of earmarked To marry Henry Tudor, they all disappear into Westminster Abbey in Sanctuary So like there's no real inducement there for Henry to come back and marry them now And Margaret is like, what?

I had this great idea, guys. What have you done? You fucked it up. Oh my God. Oh, she must have been screaming. Yeah, I was this close to sorting it out. It's like when there, when the. King died just going, did he leave any notes? Did he mention anything to any?

Shit. Yeah. Was there, was there just maybe a parchment that he'd scribbled a picture on? Fuck. All right, okay. H.T.4, Lizov York. Oh, you'd be fuming. You'd be so angry. All right, okay. So he's dead. She's cross. He's still in Brittany. How does she get him back? How does she get him back? That is a question. And I'm not going to go into the

whole Prince is in the Tower stuff, obviously. But it is, like, it is an important backdrop to everything that's going on and why Margaret behaves the way she does. I mean, there's a bit of a tacit threat to her and her then husband, who is a different man called Thomas Stanley in 483, because Richard Duke of Gloucester has had quite a fractious relationship with Thomas Stanley. They've had run-ins in the past, most recently in the wars in Scotland, like there were real issues only a year before. So yeah, Stanley's not necessarily one of Richard the third's major supporters, but he is very good at sort of, maneuvering himself back into people's good graces.

So he manages to like persuade Richard that he can be useful. Margaret Beaufort, I get the impression is just sort of sitting and seeing what happened. Just waiting. Just waiting to see what it occurs. Keep your powdered dry. That's what my mum says. Keep your powder dry. And then I personally think this is my interpretation.

Other interpretations are available. Controversial. That the prince is in the tower if they are not dead by summer 1483. most people think they are. They've gone to live on a nice farm in a different state with some people are going to look after them. That's what's happening. But yeah, that's not the prevailing feeling at the time.

Most people seem to think these princes have died. They've gone. Richard the third has killed them. And that's not okay. That's the very short version of events. That's a fair assumption. Yeah, I think Margaret is in the camp of people who are like, I don't think you should have killed your nephews, actually.

I'm not really sure I want to do business with you. And as she's looking around and she's seeing, okay, Richard the 3rd isn't really going to help me with my plan. Henry's never going to make it home at this rate. And he's nearly 30. What's he doing? Nearly 30, letting his mum sort of everything out for him. Just drinking cider.

When they talk about the invisible labour of women, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Yes, exactly so. And, I mean, to cut a long story short, I think Margaret is thinking, well, I'm not happy about this. We know that other members of her family are definitely opposed actively against Richard because they've got links to Edward the fourth's household. They're not happy about what's happened to the princes in the tower. They think Richard should be got rid of and someone should replace him. If it can't be the princes because they're dead, well, then who is it going to be?

And Margaret, in her little tick, tick, tick, tick, tick brain is like, hmm. So it needs to be someone who can like ally all of these different factions who are trying to kill each other. I know someone who's been abroad for 10 years and therefore hasn't been involved with any factions. It needs to be an adult man because they're probably going to have to fight. Oh, I know someone who's an adult man. And it needs to be someone who has some sort of blood connection to the throne. So like ding, ding, ding. She's like, Henry Tudor, this is it.

Boom. But like I really want to emphasize this was not the plan all alone. long. This is the plan because of what Richard the 3rd does in 1483. He makes this situation and Margaret is just trying to like get her family safely through it. Unfortunately, the way she does that is she leads this, well she doesn't lead, she engineers a big rebellion.

Henry Tudor leads it. He nearly gets killed because he comes like to the very shores of England on a boat. He's waving at people on land. They all go, hello, we're your friends. He's like, something seems a bit off. He sails back to the continent. and Margaret is effectively imprisoned because the rebellion totally fails. Oh, that was a rebellion, him coming over on his boat waving. Yeah.

Well, I mean, there were lots of other people doing the actual rebellion. Yes. Unfortunately, like, just everything. Everything went wrong. I mean, there's just no way to even go into it. Like, the weather's against them. The Duke of Buckingham's over here doing something. Another, like the West Country is doing something.

Everyone's completely uncoordinated in 1483. So the rebellion totally fails. Right. Okay. And Margaret's in jail. Oh, no. Yeah. She's in like Aristot jail. Right. And not like Wormwood scrubs then. No, she's living in her husband's house, but she's not allowed her servant.

She's not allowed to send messages. She's legally, you know. Right, okay. She's not allowed to raise any money. And the thing that would be really offensive to her is that pretty much all her lands are taken away. So she has nothing. It's all taken away. It's Stanley gets to keep it for his lifetime, I should say.

that's an important difference for his lifetime and he's 10 years older than her. When he dies, everything is lost. That's what she's looking at at this point. So, I mean, effectively, she's like, well, now I have literally nothing to lose. Nothing to lose now. Right, yeah. Me and Henry haven't got anything. So, I mean, we might as well try again.

And that is what they do in 1485. And in the interim, I think it's really important to remember that as much as Margaret is sort of, you know, locked away, probably somewhere in the northwest of England. The people she's connected to, you know, the merchants who've been stocking her household, the various messengers who've been working for her, the priests who go roving around all over the country, all of those people are still active. They are still moving about, some of them back and forth across the channel as well. It's really difficult to reconstruct because, like, of necessity, it's kept totally secret at the time.

but you really get this sense in the after effects of 1485 that Margaret has kind of been this little spider in this vast like economic web basically of people she is connected financially to so many people and by bonds of loyalty and connected over generations because by this point she's in her 40s and as we mentioned she's been a wife since she was 12 so she has so many links to so many people who like

who owe her that she is able just to like slowly gather in these favours like, oh, could you just, could you just lend me a little bit of money? I tell you what, don't send it to me. Could you just send it maybe to Calais? And then in Calais, it gets sent on to someone else. And then it gets sent to Henry. People are fleeing the country. And where do they go?

They go to Henry. So like as much as her movements are restricted, she is undoubtedly still raising money for Henry, which is enabling him to raise an army, come back and fight. I hope he's doing some work as well. I hope this isn't just all his mum doing all of this for him. No, to be fair to Henry, he's doing a lot of work as well. I think it's probably a bit of a difficult situation he's in.

But he's not really remembered as being very charismatic Henry the 7th, but there must have been something about Henry that he was able to coalesce 500 people, is like a conservative estimate of the number of exiles who have joined him in France by this point he's moved. Okay. Go Henry. And to be able to be like, yes, I will, I will reclaim this kingdom. Like, it is rightfully mine. All of you gather to me.

I couldn't be bothered with that. Could you be bothered with that? Could you be bothered with that? Like, just, I'll stay in Brittany. That's, I'd never have been a great historical figure. That's why. People like me never made the history books. I'm just going, now you're all right.

Yeah, I mean, it's difficult, isn't it? Because like, they have such a different worldview, these aristocrats. They have such a sense of like, this is mine. I should claim it. Whereas, you know, I'm like, oh, I don't want to impose. Could I, could you give me a tiny amount of money for my work, please? I'm like, you know, Bob Cratchett. I'll be back with Lauren and Margaret after this short break.

All right, so what happens next? She's in jail, but she's obviously wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. Henry is amassing exiles and then and then, There must be a push. There must be a right. This is it. This is Go-Day. Yeah. He manages also, to be fair to Henry, he manages to get a lot of support from the French court and French soldiers and Scottish soldiers as well, slightly inexplicably. He makes it all the way to Wales, not England. He lands in Wales. He progresses through Wales, gets towards what is Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. And at this point, it is still completely unclear if Margaret's husband is going to, to help him or not. And this is quite pivotal because Margaret's husband and his family have,

I mean, tens of thousands potentially of soldiers who they can call on to help Henry. So he really needs them. And Stanley is just the absolute master of like, nah, I think I'll sit this one out, actually, guys. Don't worry about it. But, and again, I think this testifies a bit to Margaret's influence. We know that her stepson, George Lord Strange, we know her brother-in-law, Sir William Stanley, other members of the Stanley and Savage families, they do go over to Henry as soon as he lands, they are in his army, or in

George Oral Stranger's case held hostage. Bit of a side note. So, like, there is enough of a wellspring, effectively, of support that at a crucial moment in the Battle of Bosworth, which, again, just to emphasise, is Henry the 7th, Henry Tudor's first ever battle

that he fights in? Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. 28? Yeah. He may have turned up to one he was 12, but like this is the first one he's fighting in. And he somehow manages to get the Stanleys to come over to him. They play a fairly inglorious part in the whole proceedings and just sort of go around massacring people. Richard the third rides his horse directly at Henry, tries to kill him, tries to take out the enemy instead is himself killed. And suddenly, pretty unexpectedly, I think, to a lot of people, Henry Tudor is king. And Margaret is now the

mother of the king. I mean, I'm not sure if anyone saw that coming. I mean, they must have hoped. They must have hoped, but there must have been a real... They were not ready. You can literally see them in sort of the accounts that they're keeping, just scrabbling around being like, has anybody got any velvet?

Because has anybody got a flag? He looks rubbish. We need him to be king. I'm fucking hell. All right, so he's king, Richard, and I know there'll be Ricardians listening, so, you know, sorry for you all. He's dead and gone

and Henry is the fucking king Oh my God Margaret must have been pleased She was, yes And I think Henry was probably pleased That Margaret was there Because he comes into this kingdom Like I say

He's lived either in France, Brittany or Wales His entire life He has never spent time in the English court He's got no idea how things work really Wow He needs someone who is an insider For all this stuff And Margaret is

She has been at court for years and years she knows how things run. She knows what Henry should do. And because she is a woman, a lot of what she is doing is behind the scenes. It's not recorded. But I would be absolutely astonished if she isn't there being like, okay, so this guy here, we don't trust him. Don't invite him to your party. Actually, maybe invite him, but put him somewhere where he's not going to sit next to this other person and cause trouble. Yeah. Okay. I mean, we know she's arranging marriages because that's kind of an acceptable thing for a woman to do at this time. But I think it's a It is undoubted that she is helping Henry rule the country,

almost from the first moment that he is king. Does she have a happy life from here on out? I mean, I know there's a lot of debate around, was this the plan the entire time? Was she scheming this from her earliest days as a child bride? But now it's here. Did she have a good time? Yeah, I think so.

Good. Excellent. Right. Okay. Well played Margaret. That's the end. No. It is undoubtedly. quite difficult. So this is 1485, Henry the 7th and Margaret lived to 5009. And throughout that time there's more rebellions. There's more things to overcome. There's pretenders. There's there are troubles. God. People can't just leave well enough alone, can they? My God. I know. And Margaret, I think,

she sort of, she is part of the court for a very long time. And then as soon as she is able, I think, she sort of withdraws and she becomes what's called a vow. which means you have a living husband but you're effectively operating independently. And she goes... It's ruling the Midlands. I don't. It'd be good, wouldn't it? Yeah. It's almost like being a nun,

which is why in her pictures she always looks like a nun, but you don't have to have a dead husband. And that's the key really is that her husband very inconveniently just doesn't die. So they have to keep him on side and yet also Margaret would really like to have some power of her own, please. So then as a final question, I'd be pretty well played, Margaret, all throughout this.

You can't, you know, you can't deny that. Is her reputation, because her reputation is as this sort of scheming, manipulative, Circe Game of Thrones, Machiavellian type of sneaky woman. Is that well deserved? I don't think so. I really don't. And again, it's a thing we do with historical people, isn't it? Is we see them as something static.

And it's like, this is a person who lived for 60 plus years. obvious, and their circumstances totally changed during that period. Obviously what they wanted and who they were altered over time. And I think it is absolutely absurd to imagine that you have a 13-year-old who's just given birth in traumatic circumstances, who looks at her baby and it's like, I know what you're going to be one day. Ridiculous, especially at that point in time, there's no way anyone would think that this kid is going to be the ruler of the kingdom. There's too many people. And like I said earlier,

I just don't think it comes about until Richard III's actions make it an imperative for Margaret's survival and her son's survival. I think that's what does it. And then in later life, she's in a really weird situation

because she's the king's mother, but her husband's still alive. And so she has to navigate that, which means that I think maybe people have a slightly weird idea about her power or that she's exerting too much power or she's too independent.

or she's too influential on the king. And again, like, the accusations that she's too influential on Henry come quite far into his reign. It's by the time that other people are starting to die off. And she sort of has to step up and help him because, you know, the wars of the roses lot are all gone. Lots of his advisors and the people who were in exile with him are dead. Like, who else is going to help? She does.

And I also think, like, she is not this sort of, I don't know, like this tiger mum, mother-firm. from hell sort of figure. She's quite detached from Henry for quite a lot of his life. And I suspect felt very guilty about it and was trying to prove her affection and her worth to him once he was actually in, you know, the same country as her. And I think that was kind of the foundation of their relationship. Is it, to me, it's really beautiful because it's two adults coming together and being like, you, I have a lot of respect for. you prove yourself to me over and over again,

there's something in you that is also in me. And I think it is a really beautiful relationship, actually. And I think it's been twisted into a bit of a, I don't know, either an Edipal or a, you know, a weirdly obsessive one. And I don't think it is that at all. Lauren, you have been marvellous to talk to. Thank you so much for introducing me and a whole other people to Margaret Beauford. Give us the full title of the book again.

It is Margaret Beaufort, Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Not the rich of the third people, leave her alone, right? You just go and do something else. Just be nice to me, please. Historyloren.com.uk is my website where there are various events and other things related to the book going on. And also I'm on social media, mostly as at history underscore Lauren. Amazing. Thank you so much. And the best of luck with the book, it looks amazing.

Thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Lauren for joining me. And coming up with the new year, we are looking at the filthiest people in history in more ways than one. And to keep up to date, don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is, you get your podcasts. If you would like us to explore a subject or if you just fancied saying hello and a happy new year, you can email us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again,

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