In Our Time - Margaret Beaufort

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who, as a child bride, became mother to the boy who would eventually become the first king in the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c1443-1509) was twelve when she married Edmund Tudor, half his age, and gave birth to their son Henry when she was thirteen and Edmund was already dead from the plague. Margaret Beaufort made it her life's work to protect Henry during the Wars of the Roses, which had begun soon before his birth and, as many more obvious successors to the crown died or were killed in the wars, she pivoted to supporting Henry when he became the strongest contender against Richard III. She was to survive Richard III declaring her a traitor and went on to see Henry become Henry VII, the first Tudor king, and herself become the King's Mother. Outliving her son by a few months, she was then to help her grandson Henry VIII succeed and the Tudor dynasty continue.WithJoanna Laynesmith Visiting Research Fellow at the University of ReadingKatherine Lewis Honorary Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lincoln and Research Associate at the University of YorkAndDavid Grummitt Staff Tutor in History at the Open UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Nathen Amin, The House of Beaufort (Amberley Publishing, 2017)Rachel Delman, 'The Vowesses, the anchoresses, and the aldermen's wives: Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Devout Society of Late Medieval Stamford' (Urban History 49, 2022) David Grummitt, A Short History of the Wars of the Roses (revised edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)Michael Hicks, The Wars of the Roses (Yale University Press, 2010)Lauren Johnson, Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025)Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge University Press, 1991)Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women's Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Cornell University Press, 2008), especially the chapter ‘Margaret Beaufort's Literate Practice: Service and Self-Inscription'J.L. Laynesmith, Cecily Duchess of York (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)Susan Powell, The Household Accounts of Lady Margaret Beaufort, 1443-1509 (The British Academy, 2022)Nicola Tallis, Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Matriarch (Michael O'Mara, 2019) Micheline White (ed.), English Women, Religion, and Textual Production, 1500-1625 (Ashgate, 2016), especially ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort’s Translations as Mirrors of Practical Piety’ by Brenda M. Hosington In Our Time is a BBC Studios productionSpanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Margaret Beaufort was almost 12 when the Wars of the Roses broke out in 1455, and she was soon to marry her second husband, Edmund Tudor. age 13 and Edmund was already dead, she gave birth to their son Henry Tudor. It became Margaret's life work to protect Henry and when the chance arose promote his claim to the throne. Seemingly invincible, Margaret was to survive Richard III branding her a traitor

and she saw not only her son become Henry the 7th, but her grandson succeed him as Henry the 8th. With me to discuss Margaret Beaufort, a Joanna Lane Smith visiting research fellow at the University of Reading, David Grammett, staff tutor in history at the Open University, and Catherine Lewis, honorary professor of medieval history at the University of Lincoln and Research Associate at the University of York. Catherine, can I start with you? Margaret Beaufort was born in 1443 when crises of succession affected more or less. everyone. What was her particular family's situation at the time of her birth? Margaret Beaufort was the

daughter of John Beaufort, who was the Duke of Somerset. And her mother was Margaret Beecham, who actually was from a rich gentry family rather than being of a noble background. When Margaret was just shy of her first birthday, her father died. He had just returned from a disastrous military campaign in France, part of what we now called the Hundred Years' War. He was indiscreet. He was indiscreet. and there was even a rumour that he had taken his own life. Margaret was his only child, so that meant that she was the sole heir to his vast estates. He had lands in Somerset, but also in Lincolnshire, Kent and Devon. Now, the annual income from these lands was about £1,000 a year.

To put that into context, an average labourer in this period would probably earn about £2 a year. that's just the income from the lands. So in modern terms, Margaret is a millionaire as a baby. And really this determines the rest of her life, the fact that she's such a rich heiress, and also that she is descended from Edward III because her father was a great grandson of Edward III. She was popular, presumably,

because a lot of people wanted to marry her for her money. Absolutely. So because she was a baby, that meant that obviously she couldn't inherit her father's lands immediately. Now, in situations like this, a baby would become the ward of the king. So that meant the king, and in this case that's Henry the 6th, who was actually Margaret's second cousin. He now has custody of her person, of her lands, and he also has the right to arrange her marriage. Now, this is all very standard practice at the time. It was also standard practice for kings to give these wards to their followers.

and in this case, Henry actually gave Margaret's wardship to his closest advisor. So that's William de la Poul, who was the Earl and then the Duke of Suffolk. Margaret seems to have stayed with her mother, though. She's only a baby. Sometimes wards go and live with their new guardians, as Henry Tudor did, but Margaret stays with her mother. Now, Suffolk, as the 1440s progressed, became very, very unpopular. And by 1450, he knew that his downfall was imminent.

And he was really concerned to make provision for his only child, John, who was his heir. He does this by marrying John to Margaret. Now, Margaret is six. John is seven. So this isn't a real marriage. It's really more of a betrothal. What it means is that they've made a legal agreement that when they reach the age of consent, which for a girl would be 12 and for a boy would be 14, they would indeed be married.

And indeed, Suffolk was quite sensible to make this provision, because around the same time as the marriage, he was indeed arrested, he was charged with treason and corruption. Significantly, one of the charges against him is that the reason why he married John to Margaret is because he thought she was heir to the throne and that this would make John King, because Henry VI didn't have any children at this point. Now, Suffolk ridiculed this. He said, it's against law and reason to think that Margaret is the heir to the throne. And he was right. I mean, this was a spurious accusation, really, because Margaret was descended from Edward III.

But so were pretty much every other noble at the court. Now, Suffolk actually ends up being he's convicted, he's exiled. As he's leaving the country, he gets murdered. So that means that Margaret, her person, her lands, her marriage all reverts back to the king. And now the king can give her, if he wishes, to somebody else instead. So that marriage to Suffolk's son goes away. And it's worth pointing out that Margaret went on to be married another three times, but she herself never acknowledged the marriage to John De LaPole as a real marriage. It was a null. So that's not a divorce. It means the marriage had never existed in the first place.

Now, David Gremitt, this may come as surprising, coming from someone who is very comfortable with the politics and history of the Balkans. but I find the Wars of the Roses absolutely baffling. Can you tell me why they broke out in 1455 and who the main forces are beyond the houses of York and Lancaster? Okay, so I think we can say the cause of the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455 is Henry the 6th. So Henry had come to the throne in 1422, aged just nine months.

He had reigned for over 30 years by 1455, and during that time he had really proven himself inadequate in almost every aspect of kingship. He had big boots to fill because of course his father had been Henry V and it's Henry V who had conquered Normandy and won the Battle of Agincourt. By 1450, Normandy had fallen and three years later, Gascany, the other large territory under English control, had also fallen. and Henry the 6th was held widely to blame for this. Not so much that he himself had failed, although I think there is a sense that he had, but more importantly, the people who he had chosen to advise him had failed.

We've already heard about one of them, William Dillipal, Duke of Suffolk, but there were others, and that was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Now, obviously that's the same family. Edmund is Margaret's uncle. and he becomes the King's chief counsellor after Suffolk's death in 1450. The other player, of course, who we haven't mentioned yet, is Richard Duke of York, the most powerful nobleman in England. He had distinguished himself in the wars with France, but in 1450 he was in Ireland.

He was the king's lieutenant in Ireland, and his great rival, Edmund Beaufort, who was the king's lieutenant in Normandy, had presided over that debacle. In 1453, Henry VI has an acute bout of mental illness, and it's at this point that York really makes his first claim to be the protector of the realm, to govern England when Henry is incapacitated. And one of the things that he demands in 1453 and continues to demand it as we go through 1454 into 1455 is the removal of Edmund Beaufort. Now, Henry won't agree to that. and in April 1455 at the Battle of St. Albans, the Royal Forces clash with the Duke of York, and Edmund Beaufort is murdered.

Now, alongside Edmund Boffert, also murdered the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford, two really powerful northern lords. On the other side, with the Duke of York, are the Nevels, and that's the Earl of Salisbury and the Earl of Warwick. How long does Henry VI last? So Henry VI, let's say, becomes king in 1422. he's removed for the first time in March 1461.

He then wanders around the north of England and Scotland for a few years before he's captured and put into the tower in 1465. And then in 1470, the Earl of Warwick, who we've just mentioned, actually switches sides and supports Henry the 6th over Edward the 4th. Now, that year when the Wars of the Roses break up with the Battle of St. Albans, 1455, Margaret marries Edmunds. Tudor. Whose idea was that? So Henry the 6th has decided that he needs to provide for his half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor. He gives them titles, so Edmund becomes the Earl of Richmond,

and Jasper becomes the Earl of Pembroke. As well as lands that they're granted, it's also important for Edmund to get married, and he's granted the wardship of the young Margaret. And rather than seeking a bride for her elsewhere, he marries her himself. And I think nobody really could have perhaps expected, and Henry VI may not have expected what happens next. Well, Joanna, Lanesmith, let me ask you what does happen next. It's not long before she gives birth. Why was this such a life-changing moment for her, apart from the obvious? Yeah, giving birth, it's always life-changing, but for Margaret, it's absolutely on another scale, I think. In the long term, it's because the baby she gives birth to, Henry Tudor has this astonishing future ahead of him

because so many of the male descendants of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, are either killed in battle or murdered or executed. One of them is mysteriously thrown overboard on the English Channel. So it turns out that he emerges as a potential claimant to the English throne, and that of course shapes Margaret's life and legacy. In the short term, it's hugely traumatic for her. she's 13 by the time he's born but by that point as you've mentioned

she's already a widow because Edmund Tudor died of plague so Jasper Tudor took her to his castle at Pembroke and that's where she gave birth apparently it was very traumatic it's possible that the region she never had any more children was because the birth was so difficult but you can only speculate on that so yes there she was a widow with a baby suddenly she was actually less of a marital catch than she had been

because anybody else who married her would know they only had a life interest in her estates because this child from a previous marriage would actually be the one to inherit. But just a couple of months after the birth, Jasper Tudor whisks Margaret off to be inspected by a potential new suitor. And she marries again at 1458? 1458, so that's just a year after Henry's birth, yeah. And so this is Henry Stafford, who's a younger son of the Duke of Buckingham. This is quite nice for Margaret, really, I think, because she actually moves into a more household for a while back into the Lincolnshire area. But outside, things are changing dramatically because only a few years after her marriage, as David said, Henry is overthrown, Edward

the Fourth becomes king. And this means that Henry Tudor is suddenly without a ward because he had stayed with Jasper in Pembroke. And it's kind of unusual because Margaret herself got to stay with her mother. We don't know why he stayed, whether it was Jasper really wanted to hang on to this child to bring them up and influence him or whether Margaret actually had been so traumatised she just didn't want to have anything to do with him. Because the curious thing is, she doesn't see him for 10 years and she could

do. When he's a boy? He's a boy, yes. She doesn't see him through his childhood. Henry's wardship is then granted to one of Edward's followers, William Herbert, and eventually Margaret goes and sees him yes, when he's about 10. By now she must have known she was never going to have any other children. It looks as if she's got over the trauma

and realised this is her legacy is this boy and that's and she meets up with various people in an attempt to try and get some of his inheritance back. Because, of course, when Edward Vorth took the throne, Henry's rights to his estates and his title were then distributed between Edward the fourths, or mostly went to one of Edward the fourth's brothers. So the trouble is that at the point she starts doing this, it's around the time of Warwick's rebellions, and she keeps asking the wrong people to help. So initially, her political instincts are not too good.

I think we'll find that changes later on. Catherine Lewis, it's not too much later that she finds herself widowed again. She's only in her 20s. The next husband was Thomas Stanley. How did that change her life? We need to just place this in context. So this is at the moment where we're in 1470 now. So Henry the 6th has come back to the throne for a year.

And then in 1471, Edward V.4th comes back to the throne. And I think it's important to say, so Edward the 4th comes back to the throne. Henry the 6th is killed, Henry the 6th son is killed. So from this point onwards, Edward the 4th kingship is really very secure, especially after he fathers an heir and a spare, essentially. Meanwhile, Henry Stafford, Margaret's husband, he dies in 1471 in October. He had actually fought at the Battle of Barnet earlier in the year.

Margaret, as you said, she's 28 when he dies. As a widow, she's entitled to a year of mourning before she would be expected to remarry. But in fact, she remarries within the year. And as you say, she marries Thomas Law Stanley, who comes from a powerful family in the northwest of England. The fact that Margaret remarries relatively quickly, we should not take that as evidence that she was cold-hearted, that she wasn't distressed by Stafford's death. She's in a very vulnerable situation. She's 28.

She's still a very rich catch. If she hadn't arranged her own marriage, and by the way, this is the only one of her marriages we can. and say for sure she organized. If she hadn't organised that marriage, Edward VIII may well have compelled her to marry one of his followers as a reward for loyalty. Her son, Henry Tudor, had been supporting Henry VIII. When Edward VIII became king, Henry Tudor flees the country. He's living in exile overseas. So as I say, Margaret's very vulnerable. She needs a protector. Stanley is trusted by Edward VIII. He's a really good practical choice. He's a widower. He has a widower. He has a has some grown-up children of his own. In 1471, Edward VIII made him steward of the royal

household, and he's also a member of the King's Council. So from this point on, Margaret becomes part of the Royal Yorkist Court. And this puts her in a really prime position to start negotiating with Edward for the rights of her son. As Joanna says, at this point, she clearly realizes that Henry's her only son. And she wants to ensure two things. She wants him to be able to safely return from exile and she wants him to have title to her lands. We don't know how she went about this with Edward VIII. But what we do know is that after 10 years,

she is successful. Edward Vorth's policy was always to try and get erstwhile opponents on side. And so I think it might have been a bit of a quid pro quo. Margaret wanted something from him, but he also wanted her to support him. And in 1482, Edward VIII, agrees, finally, Margaret has got him to trust her and to trust Henry. So Henry can come home,

he can inherit the lands, there's a pardon drawn up. This is also the first time that we have an indication of a possible marriage between Henry Tudor and Edward's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York. So whatever Margaret did, she did it well. However, Edward VIII then goes and spoils it all because before this agreement is ratified, Edward VIII dies suddenly. Personally frustrating for Margaret, disastrous for the country, because it's back in political turmoil again. We'll come back to the consequences of the death of Edward VIII. But I want to stay in the 1470s, David. Things are going quite well for Margaret in the 1470s. But what's

happening to her son Henry at this point? Why has he fled to Brittany and what does he get up to while he's there. So in 1471, after the Battle of Chukesbury, which is the sort of final defeat of the Lancasterian cause, this is when King Henry's son Edward is killed after the battle. Jasper Tudor, so Henry's uncle, Margaret's brother-in-law, was on his way to Chooksbury and didn't make it in time, basically. Probably a good thing.

It was certainly a good thing for Jasper. So what he does, he goes back to, he's got Henry, the young Henry, with him, but they go back to Pembroke Castle. and Edward sends an agent, guy called Roger Vaughn, to try and capture Jasper. Jasper actually captures him and beheads Roger Vaughan. And then Roger Vaughan's son turns up wanting revenge. So at this point, Jasper and Henry retreat to Tenby. They stay there for probably a couple of months, awaiting a Yorkist siege and trying desperately to find a way to escape.

And they do manage to escape, and they head for France. He gets washed up in Brittany. So poor old Jasper and Henry are really left kicking their heels for over a decade. Drinking Calvados. Drinking Calvados and enjoying the hospitality of the Duke of Brittany. While we hope Margaret is working on Henry's behalf back in England. Joanna Lane Smith, back to Edward Vorth's death. He dies aged 40 unexpectedly in 1483 and he's succeeded in theory by,

Edward V, who's one of the princes in the tower. And without going down the rabbit hole of the princes in the tower, we know that he lasts a couple of months or whatever before he disappears, and their uncle, Richard III, claims the throne. So, Richard the 3rd is on the throne. Margaret is negotiating, though, with the widow of Edward VIII, who was also the mother of the princes in the tower, Elizabeth Woodville.

Can you explain the connection between Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beauford and what Margaret is up to at the time? Throughout the latter half of Edward the Fourth reign, Margaret was quite a prominent person in there and so she would have known Elizabeth Woodville. They went to the same events and so forth.

She waited on the Queen. But we don't really know how they felt about each other. And then when Richard became king, Elizabeth Woodville was hiding in the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, whereas for the coronation ceremony, Margaret Beaufort was present carrying the Queen's train, Richard the Third's Queen Anne's train, and Margaret's husband was carrying the constable's mace. So it looked like they had completely accepted this new regime. But very quickly, it emerges that the deal that Margaret had hoped she'd made with Edward, the fourth, to bring Henry Tudor back, was no longer going to happen. Within a couple of weeks of the coronation, there's the first rebellion again. against Richard III. Lots of people are arrested for men are executed, for trying to release the princes in the tower, and for writing to Henry and Jasper Tudor. So probably what they were

trying to do at this point was get the princes out of London into Brittany, because in Brittany was where Elizabeth Woodville's brother, Edward, and various other people who were loyal to, Edward the 5th had fled to. And so this is the point when clearly there was a Woodville-Tudor alliance against Richard the 3rd, as it were. How does Margaret get on with Richard the third when he's denouncing her son the whole time? We don't have enough information to know what's happening there. Presumably she's actually keeping back and biding her time because a few months after that, there's a much bigger rebellion all across the south of England and into Wales. And initially, it's to try and get the princes in the tower out,

but then rumour circulates that the princes are dead and they need a new head for this rebellion. Unfortunately, the sources are so disparate and compromised. It's really difficult to know exactly what was happening. Probably the Duke of Buckingham thought this was his moment to claim the throne, but Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Woodville have other ideas, and we know this bit for certain. Quite possibly because of that earlier discussion about

maybe Henry would marry one of Elizabeth Woodville's daughters when he came over. this is the moment to resurrect that because if Henry Tudor married Elizabeth Woodville's eldest daughter Elizabeth of York, who seemed to be now, Edward IV's heir, they could bring together both those Yorkists and Lancastians who

were opposed to Richard the 3rd. Unfortunately, for them, the rebellion is very badly organised and the weather is atrocious, so Henry hasn't actually managed to land in England before it's all collapsed. But Catherine, Margaret is backing that rebellion.

what's her relationship with the Duke of Buckingham who supposedly, I mean it's called the Buckingham Rebellion, right? What's their relationship? They are, as everybody else is in this court, they are relations. But as Joanna's already said, it's not really clear what's going on here. Buckingham had a claim to the throne himself, so he may have risen in interest of his own claim. There is a suggestion perhaps that Margaret and indeed Elizabeth encouraged him in this, you know, encouraged him to think, this is your moment, this rebellion is for you, but actually their real objective was for Henry Tudor to become king. And although it's called Buckingham's Rebellion, Margaret Beaufort, in the aftermath of this, was held to be one of the people most responsible

for it. And this is the moment, of course, at which she is actually found guilty of treason against Richard. So there's a bill in Parliament, essentially, which says she has committed high treason against Richard. although the bill does say that she will not suffer the full punishment, and that implies execution. And people have often said, oh, well, she was lucky not to be executed. But I don't actually think her life was ever in any danger, because while it's true that women in 16th century England were executed for treason, in 15th century England, it was extremely rare for women to even be accused of treason. and the only two comparable instances that we have of women being found guilty of treason, they were punished in exactly the same way that Margaret was,

which is like Margaret, they had all of their lands and possessions confiscated and they were placed under house arrest. And in Margaret's case, the house arrest is under her husband, Thomas Stanley. And Richard is very clear that the reason that the full punishment hasn't been given to Margaret is because he trusts Stanley, because he was loyal through. throughout. Now, I think sometimes, again, people say this is lenient. Oh, well, she got off with having all of her lands and possessions taken away from her. But we have to remember that Margaret is a woman who, throughout her life, she'd essentially been a woman of independent means. This move now makes

her completely dependent on her husband. She's not allowed to have contact with any of her friends, any of her servants. She can't materially support Henry Tudor. Even her plate is confiscated, her household plate so that she doesn't send it to him in France so that he can fund another invasion. And I think that there's a level on which, psychologically, this must have been really devastating to her sense of self. She's entirely dependent on Stanley. He'll probably die before she will, because he's several years older. When he dies, all of the lands that have been passed on to him will revert to the crown. So she'll be dependent on Richard the Third.

Richard the 3rd's probably not going to give her much to live on. This is utter humiliation. And I think we have to remember that we know it all worked out in the end and that her son did become king. But she had no idea of that. I don't think anyone in late 1483 would have expected that Henry would win. And when he did win, it was utterly against the odds. Just very briefly to any of you,

Do we know when Margaret starts to see her son as a potential future monarch? I think we'd say it's at the time of Buckingham's a rebellion. At the point when she believes that Edward V is dead, that's the point. And many other people as well, I think that's the point. And Joanna's already mentioned that this is really only because he's almost the last man standing. But he is clearly the one that people now feel that all of this disparate opposition to Richard can coalesce around. Okay, so it coalesces when we reach the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, made famous, of course, and so many things, by Shakespeare, which is where we really see the value for Margaret in marrying Thomas Stanley. What was the role of Thomas Stanley and his brother, William Stanley, in the Battle of Bosworth?

Henry lands at Milford Haven towards the beginning of August, 1485, and with him, he has this small band of the English rebels, basically, who had been with him since 1483. He's also managed to buy a very handy group of French mercenaries. Anyway, they march across Wales into England, and they're shadowed by an army led by Thomas Lord Stanley. And they head towards the Midlands. Richard is in Nottingham, and they end up around Bosworth.

I think one of the problems for me, really, is we tend to think of the Stanley's being, of ambivalent in their loyalties. Thomas Lord Stanley probably is. His son is held a hostage by Richard. He's, you know, I think there's, you know, genuine conflicted loyalties. Sir William, on the other hand, isn't. Richard has declared Sir William a traitor before Bosworth, and that's a really important point. What happens at Bosworth, however, I think has less to do with the Stanle's than we sometimes think. It's often said that Richard is defeated by the treason and treachery of the Stanley family. In fact, the latest research that's been done on the battle

shows that Richard is defeated principally by a combination of clever generalship and the biggest factor in any medieval battle, which is luck. Henry's captain, the leader of his army, is a guy called John Devere, who's the Earl of Oxford. And Oxford is a really fantastic military commander, and he leads an attack against the main force of Richard's army, which is led by John Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. and he's winning that fight.

At which point Richard sees that Henry is surrounded by an only small group of men. It's often thought again, often said that Richard's charge at Bosworth is opportune. He sees the opportunity and he goes for it. Again, I don't think that's true. I think this is something that Richard had always thought about. He was there wearing his armour on his horse with 100 or 200 men ready to charge. This was the chivalric thing to do if he had the opportunity to best Henry in, personal combat, that's what he did. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out for him. So Henry's

victory at Bosworth is really unexpected, but it's not really, I think, due to Stanley treachery. Joanna Lane Smith, so it's 1485, all of a sudden Henry Tudor is Henry the seventh. Margaret sees her son crowned king. How powerful does that make her? It makes her very powerful. And that is absolutely normal for the mother of a king. Usually, of course, King's mothers had previously had a career as a queen, but even Edward IV's mother was powerful in the first few years of his reign. Margaret, of course, is really unusual because she's still married. And in the past, there hadn't been a king whose mother was married to somebody of high status

like Thomas Law Stanley, who Henry gives the title Earl of Derby too. So it's quite important for Henry to work at the balance of power here. And what he does is has in Parliament arranges for more, Margaret to be declared famed soul, which means legally independent, so that she can control her own lands. Of course, he really allows Stanley to hang on to quite a few of her lands, but then Henry gives a lot of extra lands to Margaret, so that she's got almost as much landed income as Edward VIII's mother had, and over time, various resources, she ends up wealthier than Edward VIII's mother had been. So as a landholder, she's really powerful just in that case.

but of course she's also got the role at court. And she is unusually influential as the mother of a married king. Normally the mother would step back when the king got married. Margaret never has that little window of influence because Henry could only be king if he marries Elizabeth of York. So she's there from the beginning. And there were reports that Margaret was oppressing the queen. But when you dig into these,

you find they're coming from men who either across that they've not been able to have access to the queen and they're blaming Margaret, or they're from men who are not getting as much access and trying to make out, well, she's not very important, so it doesn't matter that I don't have any influence. In reality, they commission books together, they promote people's careers together,

they arrange for Catherine of Aragon's household, they help with arrangements for when she's coming over to marry Prince Arthur. Really poignantly, together they petition Henry the 7th, not to send his daughter another Margaret, in fact, to James of Scotland when she's too young, they're afraid that he will hurt her, given Margaret's own background. You can see why they're working that together. And Catherine Lewis, what's in it for Henry having his mother so close to him at this point? Henry was raised to be a great nobleman, to be a great landowner,

but he wasn't raised to be king. He had visited the English court once in 1470 for about a week. And then, as we've heard from David, he spends 15 years living. abroad. He has no idea, really, from first-hand experience, how the English court works. His mother, as we've said, had been living at the English court for well over a decade. She'd occupied a number of important ceremonial roles there. So she's ideally placed to advise him on its institutions, its personnel and its processes. And we know, for example, that in all of the royal residences, Margaret's quarters were positioned near to the Kings. And this, I think,

tells us something about the fact that there was a close. relationship between them eventually, albeit that when he was young, he barely saw his mother. But I think this tells us something about having her within reach so that he can ask her advice on anything. And I think crucially, this is a private way of asking for her advice. So she could have had all sorts of influence behind the scenes that we don't necessarily know of, but I don't think we should see this as nefarious. And it's actually quite difficult to judge specific areas that she had influence on. I think it would depend on the matter. hand. So, for example, in relation to family matters, he did consult her, and particularly after

Elizabeth of York died in 1503. I mean, the obvious person to talk to then is his mother, the children's grandmother. Another area that Margaret seems to have been given special responsibility for is court protocol and court ceremonial. So we know that a series of ordinances or rules for the court were issued in Margaret Beaufort's name. And these are all about the dress that ladies at court should wear during periods of mourning. And they're very strict about the attire that is appropriate to women at different social levels so that the visual

distinction of rank can be maintained. And this seems like exactly the kind of thing that Margaret would have been the expert on. And also ceremonial. We've heard that she was heavily involved in the celebration surrounding the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur. In fact, Catherine of Aragon was hosted

at Margaret Beaufort's house in London. Before the princess arrived, Margaret spent hundreds of pounds refurbishing the house. Apparently the banqueting chamber was hung with rich tapestries suspended from a thousand gold rings. She laid on amazing entertainments, minstrels, actors and a juggler. And the crucial thing here is that this marriage was extremely important to Henry the 7th because it was international recognition of his rule and of his dynasty. And so I think the fact that he gives Margaret Beaufort this really central, role in the celebrations, shows how much he trusted her and how much she could be relied on

to throw a good party to impress people, essentially. So she's hugely influential during Henry the 7th reign, and she outlives him. He dies in 1509. How important is she then for the succession? Prince Arthur is already out of the game, and so it's Henry the 8th. What role does she play in that transition? Again, this is another episode in Margaret's life, I think, which is quite mysterious. So Henry the 7th's death is kept secret for 48 hours.

This is something that only really came to light quite recently. And it seems that the subterfuge takes place because of a court coup. In his final years, Henry had become very avaricious. And his two ministers, Edmund Dudley and Sir Richard Empson had been exercising Henry's financial rights, his feudal rights to oppress the king's subjects. And at the end of his reign, there's a sort an aristocratic coup, led by Bishop Fox perhaps, and Thomas Howard, who's the Earl of Surrey, but also involving those intimate body servants of Henry the 7th in his privy chamber. And it seems that Margaret is aware of this. So Margaret plays her role in keeping the death of her son secret for

48 hours to allow that seamless transition, succession of the young Henry VIII. So right at the beginning of the reign, Margaret, I think, in some ways it might be seen as the kind of apagy of Margaret's power, always in the background. Never really there because of her role as a woman, because of her role, either the gendered role that's expected of her. Her influence is behind the curtain, if you like. But at that key moment, it seems that Margaret was in on that plot. Joanna Lane Smith, can you take us back a few years? During Henry's reign, she'd been living at Collie Western between Peterborough and Leicester, if I remember, rightly. She's separated from her husband. She's taken a vow of chastity. What's her life like there?

It sounds as though it's become rather austere. I know. I don't think it's at all austere, actually. Yes, she had taken her vow of chastity. And yes, it was much more modelled on a, like a religious lifestyle in terms of the number of services that happened through the day. But she built Collie Weston beautifully, opulently. It was a celebration of Tudor dynasty. There were orchards planted and gorgeous gardens, gardens with sort of gated access, gardens specifically for Elizabeth of York. And we can see that she is a really important hostess to people at Collier Western, particularly actually she has a number of distressed gentlewomen, as it were, who are part of the household, who live there for quite some time.

But she's also famously gives a wonderful, huge celebration when her, the same granddaughter Margaret that she'd petitioned for earlier, when she finally does go up to Scotland, the whole court comes up and stays at Collie Western for amazing celebrations again. She is also essentially the King's representative in the East Midlands. Her council and she oversee legal cases in the area, quite surprising legal cases sometimes that you would have thought would have gone to a church court

or somewhere else. There's actually a jail at Colley Weston for the purposes. She's a really major force politically in the area as well as it being a place that was sort of an opportunity to show off the Tudidinid dynasty being magnificent, but also the piety, that is a really important part of it. She has a really important relationship with the Guild of St Catherine at Stanford, and she supports the religious women there, supports the anchoress there.

She's got this really rich life going on, to be honest, because this is also the time when her relationship with John Fisher is flourishing, the patronage that comes out of that, translating French devotional works into English and so forth. Yes, Catherine, she's quite a patron of culture and creator of culture herself, isn't she? She is absolutely, yes. and she's a very important patron of early English printers.

So William Caxston is usually regarded as the first English printer. And Margaret Beaufort commissioned a couple of works from him, including an English translation of a French romance called Blanchardin and Eglantine, in which, interestingly, the heroine, is actually a sovereign queen who is shown to be a very effective ruler. And I can't help thinking that that's one of the reasons that Margaret Beaufort was interested in this romance or that it appealed to her. because this is a reflection of her own life and experience.

Most of the works, though, that Margaret commissioned from Caxston and other early printers were religious texts of various kinds, some instructional and some more devotional and contemplative. And Margaret clearly recognised the potential of the printing press for the wide dissemination of what we might call spiritually uplifting and improving text. This is part of her wider educational interests. So she found two colleges at Cambridge as well. She found Christ's college and St John's College. She doesn't only commission these works.

As Joanna has said, she actually translates two French devotional works into English herself. One of them is part of the imitation of Christ, which was a massive bestseller in the Middle Ages. And it's still very, very popular today. And it's interesting because Margaret's status as a writer and indeed as a published writer, these works were published in her own lifetime. This isn't so well known about her as other aspects of her life. And I think that's partly because she translated text from French to English. Unlike Catherine Pard, the sixth wife of Henry VIII, she didn't produce an original composition of her own. But that's the downplay, the nature of translation. It's never just copying an original. It's always an

act of interpretation. And in fact, if we compare the French originals with Margaret's English version, we can see that there are ways in which she has expanded or adapted the text to make it more comprehensible, to make it more engaging. For an audience that is not scholastic, is not highly educated, but who are ordinary literate lay people. David, she sounds like such a big personality. When she dies in 1509 so soon after her son, what's the reaction?

How do people respond to Margaret's life? Margaret's death is so soon after just a couple of weeks really, isn't it, after the coronation of Henry the 8th. And Henry the 8th's coronation had been this huge celebration of a new style of kingship, a new Renaissance style of kingship. There's lots of poems saying how wonderful it is that Henry the 7th's dead and Henry the 8th is now king. Margaret's death is sort of a little bit overshadowed by that at the time. And in some ways Margaret's death marks the closure of that period in English history. There's a real sense, I think, of endings with Margaret's death. What we do have, though, is this remarkable sermon by John Fisher.

So John Fisher was, first of all, her confessor in her household. He goes on to be Chancellor of University of Cambridge. He's Bishop of Rochester. And he has this really fulsome sermon in which he praises her as the model noble woman, the model mother, the model queen. So it's her sense of piety, which we've talked about, her sense of probity and integrity. That comes across very much, I think, in that sermon.

And I think she is recognised by Fisher, and later by Henry Parker, who's writing in the reign of Mary, as a real matriarch of the Tudor regime. The Tudors wouldn't be here. We wouldn't all be celebrating the peace and stability that the Tudor rule has brought us, were it not for Margaret.

And Joanna, one more thing, from you, how has her reputation changed over the centuries? Because she's not a terribly well-known figure now, is she? And yet she was so influential. I think for a long time she was particularly remembered by the people at Cambridge for her piety, not just the colleges and the printing, but also what John Fisher spoke about, the hair, shirt and the weeping and kneeling in prayer. But more recently there's been a lot of work on the household administration and so forth. There's evolved two very different margaret's, to be honest, because there's a Margaret in historical fiction, who's this manipulative scheming woman who's determined to get her son on the throne as soon as possible. and we'll stop at nothing, even murder.

And then there's the market that historians try and put forward and say, yes, she was a very determined administrator and so forth, but she is this very impressive woman, the first English woman in print, and a generous woman to all these people in her household, and a very loyal woman, and astonishingly resilient. My thanks to Joanna Lane Smith, Catherine Lewis and David Grummit. Next week, the microorganisms are cair,

which thrive where other life forms can't survive and their part in the evolution of the cells in our bodies. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Misha and his guests. What have we missed out from Margaret's life? I ought to preface it by saying, I thought she was, I mean, I was convinced

that she was a very astonishing and astute political figure as well as somebody who clearly struggled with a lot of domestic, difficult domestic issues from the year dot, really. Looking at Margaret, if you like, from the outside, as a political historian who hasn't studied noble women in the 15th century or Queens particularly. And I'm just struck by how she manages to combine really effectively the role of a lord. So while she's at Colley Weston, even while she's running the household up in the northwest in the 1470s, Stanley Household, the Stanley Estate, she must have played a really effective role as the governor of that household, running a noble estate. And yet we have this woman who is also this remarkably learned, pious, you know, that act of translation. Translation is at the heart of the humanist

project, isn't it? And, you know, this is the thing that transforms England in the late 15th century, these acts of translation. And Margaret is there right at the, right at the same to have this. Presumably in the 1470s when things were relatively calm, she needs to fill up her time. Yeah. And the study and devotion is one way of doing it, I guess. It is. And I think we shouldn't see that the piety that Joanna has spoken about is in any sense antithetical with her status as a female lord. And one of the things that I would like to say about Margaret Beaufort is that she was in many ways exceptional. Of course she was. You know, we've heard of all the ways. in which her life is quite extraordinary.

But I think we need to be careful of over-emphasising that sense of her as being exceptional. Because if we think about female lords, there were a lot of women in late medieval England who ran estates. I mean, her own mother, Margaret Beecham, interestingly, was also her father's sole heir. And although we don't know for sure, I think we can be fairly certain that Margaret Beecham would have trained Margaret Beaufort

in how to manage this incredible estate that she had inherited. And women in general had to be ready to do that because their husbands may often be absent on business or on military campaign or if you're a widow, your husband is obviously permanently absent. And I think that this has been one of the real thrusts of a lot of the recent scholarship on queenship that we mustn't over-emphasise this idea that women being involved in politics or women being involved in land management is out of the ordinary. You know, for people living in 15th century England, this would have been really quite normal.

And I mean, I was wondering, Joanna, maybe you could say a bit more about Sicily Neville because she's such a great comparison. And I think it helps to prove that point that Margaret isn't the only one by any means. Who is Sicily Neville? Cicely Neville is Edwin and Richard III's mother. So she's in this same position of not having been a queen, but she's a king's mother. And she's very wealthy and she is a really important landholder. And she sort of creates the role for King's Mother, really. The title, the King's Mother, that actually becomes a kind of an official title, which I hadn't before.

and Margaret takes that up. It does look like she's modelling herself on Cecily in many ways, to be honest. There's the change in the signature to a more queenly signature, making sure that she's using the royal arms on her seal. These are things that Cecily had done too. And putting forward a very pious image as well. So somebody draws up for Cecily, probably at Cecil's instruction, a list of how her daily life goes.

when she gets up what mass and what services are said throughout the day and when John Fisher describes Margaret's it sounds it's more impressive but it sounds very similar that they sort of got this notion and this actually

it comes from the kind of courtesy books they'd have read Christine de Pizard Treasure of the City of Ladies tells women how to do this so you can see their modelling on that and I think also I mean that Cecil and Margaret also do seem to have a good relationship which is interesting given the complexity of their sons fighting each other,

Cessaly bequeaths some quite personal books to Margaret in her will. Are they in that situation? Once she's had a son, she knows that her estate is ultimately going to go to her son. But with the intervening marriages, is it possible for, say, her husband to gamble away her entire estate or to lose it? I mean, or is she guaranteed?

It seems to me such a precarious position to be in when you know that a marriage involves handing over all your worldly goods to the person you're marrying. But the precarity also, of course, comes from just the precarity of 15th century life. So we say, yeah, she's got a son. But at any point, that son could pre-deceece her, as happens with Henry the 7th and Arthur. You know, Henry Stafford dies very young.

So every nobleman and noble family has that precarity built into it. So there is no certainty. But the estates too, that is an issue. So when Richard Duke of York is short of money, he starts mortgaging and selling some of the lands he had previously promised to Cecily in her widowhood. So yes, they could lose some of the estates. And I think one of the things about Margaret is that she does get accused of being quite acquisitive, pushing for estates that she has a very dubious.

claim to, but actually all the noble men are doing it too. And her mother gets accused of it as well. But for women especially, there's not so many other opportunities to increase your income. A man can take on a paid role and women can't. So I think it's quite unfair that Margaret's got this acquisitive reputation. So we know that Richard III gets his desperately bad rap from Shakespeare and the popularity of Shakespeare. Who accounts for Margaret's poor reputation later on?

Is there any one work which did it for her? I'm going to single out here the television series, The White Princess, because this is the one that shows Margaret, not only ordering the murder of the princes in the tower, but also personally murdering Jasper Tudor, with whom she's having an affair for good measure. And I would say that that has really, as Joanna said, it's done an awful lot to turn her into this kind of one-dimensional,

monstrous embodiment of female failings. And to come back to a point that Joanna's made, there's a misogyny of language going on here because a lot of what Margaret did, going back to the real Margaret now, is exactly the same as the kind of activities that Noblemen did. But because she's a woman, the language used to describe her is very different. And we see this with politically active women as well. We didn't mention Margaret Vanjou, Henry the Sixth's wife. But when she gets involved in politics, it's meddling and it's ambition and it's aggressive. and sometimes there's been that same sense with Margaret Beaufort as well.

There was that really fascinating thing that you highlighted about the translation of the devotional, about how she doesn't translate. Oh, the passage that she cut out? Yes. Yes. That's really fascinating. Can you explain that? Yeah.

I thought that was a remarkable observation. Yeah, in one of the works that she translates, so I mentioned the imitation of Christ, there's another one that's called the Mirror of Gold for the Sinful Soul. and it's basically a text all about recognizing that one is utterly sinful, that one needs to do penance and prepare for death and judgment. And as was quite normal in this kind of text, there's a lot of emphasis within it on the vileness of the body.

And the original text talks about the vileness of the body from conception, because conception comes from lust, which is a sin. Exactly. Now, in the French original, the blood that feeds the fetus is described as being infected from the beginning because of this sin, infected and menstrual. And the French original goes on to say that menstrual blood has a disastrous effect on the environment.

So it kills grass and it causes dogs to get rabies. I'm not joking. This is literally what the text says. And it's on the authority of philosophers and clerics. This is very common medieval misogyny. If you look at Margaret's English translation, she says that the blood of the fetus is infected but she leaves out the word menstrual.

And I can't prove this, of course, but I'm sure that she read that and was just offended by the inherent misogyny of what it says about menstrual blood and the harmful effects of menstrual blood. And it's one of these rare occasions where we get some insight into Margaret's mind because with all of the people that we've been talking about,

as you've gathered, we have precious little evidence or real insight into their personality or characters, which is very frustrating. But that's one of the reasons why you have all this speculation, and you can have the good Margaret and the completely villainous Margaret at the same time. David, one final question for you. You mentioned translation was at the heart of the humanist project.

How much interaction would there have been between an educated woman like Margaret Beaufort and what was going on in the rest of Europe, particularly in Italy, at the time. I don't think we have a full library of Margaret's books by any stretch, do we? But we know some of the books that we read. I mean, you know, Catherine's given some examples. I think it's really important to realise, too, that at Henry the Seventh's courts, Italians are really important. So there's been a lot of work done on the work of Italian poets. And of course, Bernard Andre, the very famous court historian, Polydor Virgil. All these Italians are coming over to Henry the 7th, England.

And it really does, for me, it's this hugely transformative era. The last sort of, you know, a couple of decades of the 15th century is when late medieval England is transformed into this kind of renaissance realm. And books are exploding at this point.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's devotional books, it's works of history. Romances. Romances. Roman histories. You know, so much. And sermons. Margaret arranges for

Wink into word to publish the sermon from Henry the 7th's funeral. Yeah. Which also means, I'm sure, that she knew that Fisher's sermon about herself would also be published. Yeah. Well, I think on that note of Perspicacity on her part, it's time for a cup of tea, which we can probably all do with, because we appear to be all beset by colds of one form or another. Does I want honey and lemon or tea in coffee? A tea would be lovely.

Tea would be lovely. Tea for me, please. Four teas. Four teas. Super. Brilliant. In our time with Misha Glennie is produced by Simon Tillotson, and it's a BBC Studios production.

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft turns out to be flawed? In 1999, four apartment buildings were blown up in Russia. Hundreds killed. But 25 years on, we still don't know, for sure, who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. Because these bombs, they're part of the origin story of one of the most powerful men in the world. Vladimir Putin.

I'm Helena Merriman and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss first time round? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen first on BBC Sounds.