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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 10th September 2008

Should a widowed mother aged thirteen be a saint?

When is too old? When too young? Almost every day I hear a story of someone, at the height of his power and energy, being compulsorily retired at 60. Or there is a fuss because a girl wants to get married at 15. I recall that Lydia, youngest of the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice, was 15 when she ran off with the miscreant Wickham. She prided herself on the fact that she was taller than her siblings and was obviously precocious. When it came to the point the problem was not her age but getting Wickham to marry her. An underage girl is a moveable feast.

I have been reading about the fascinating case of Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509), who might fairly be described as the founder of the Tudor dynasty. She was both the beneficiary and the victim of outrageous fortune. She was, besides being a considerable heiress, the great-great-granddaughter of Edward III, and thus had a title to the throne. Indeed, she might have become queen regnant herself, and a very fine monarch she would have made. As it was, her father died when she was not yet two, and she was thus a valuable ward, passed from hand to hand among the great. While an infant, she was nominally married, for financial reasons, to John de la Pole, heir to the first Duke of Suffolk, though this required a papal bull to be valid, as they were within the prohibited degrees of relationship. This marriage was dissolved, again (I think) for financial reasons. When she was nine, she was put in the custody of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and his brother Jasper, who also got possession of her deceased father’s lands. Edmund decided to marry her, and did so, in 1455, when she was either 12 or 13. This marriage was consummated, for she became pregnant. About three months before the child was born, her husband died. On 28 January 1456, Margaret was delivered of the future Henry VII. She was still only 13. An unprotected single mother of 13, and an heiress too, was a tempting target, and Margaret was married twice more, the second time to Lord Stanley, later Earl of Derby. At various times she was under house arrest. She was proscribed by Parliament and had her lands confiscated under Richard III, and I suppose was lucky not to have her head chopped off by him. Her son, an outlaw, was abroad. But all ended well when he won the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, being joined in the course of it by her then husband, Stanley, whose desertion of Richard III helped to decide the outcome. Richard was killed, and her son became king as Henry VII, by rights of battle to some extent but chiefly by descent through her.

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Cis

September 15th, 2008 4:22pm

This essay is a blot in your copybook, Mr Johnson. The suggestion that Richard III might have executed Margaret Beaufort is wholly unjustified. Proscription and confiscation of estates was the accepted way to make it harder for the family of a traitor to support them, at least until Margaret's son and grandson took the throne. They set about pre-empting the risk of opposition by eradicating all possible alternative claimants with a positively twentieth century vigour, culminating in Henry VIII's execution of the aged Margaret de la Pole. If Richard had been half so ruthless, we would be living in a different England.

P Conway

September 16th, 2008 7:53pm

I wonder how sympathetic the pope would be to making the grandmother of Henry VIII a saint? Hmm.

What is meant by this?:

"a common mediatrix and took right great displeasure to them"

Harry StJohn

October 8th, 2008 1:54pm

Dear Mr Johnson
I was sent your article which I much enjoyed - you have an interesting case but whether she was a saint I cannot say
someone certainly ought to make a programme about her - what she achieved in her life was amazing
There is a book written by two Cambridege dons(Messrs MK Jones and MG Underwood) about Margaret Beaufort called the Kings Mother.An interesting read. She was an extraordinary woman and an early example of feminists as she did things other women did not dare or were not allowed to do - like hold manoraial courts etc etc
I have a particular interest in the lady, as her mother was originally married to an ancestor of ours, so the StJohns of that era and later, claimed consanguinity to the Tudor dynasty - rather pretentiously but why not!! - all those years later my grandfather was called Tudor and it is my third name!!If you haven't already been, go to StMary's Church, Battersea or at StMary's, Lydiard Tregose near Swindon, and you will get a good idea how much the StJohns played this Tudor card.