And Another Thing | 13 September 2008

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.