She joined Henry on his public progress through England for a few months but, in June 1421, a year after their marriage, Henry departed again for France. From there, they sailed to Dover and Catherine was crowned at Westminster Abbey in February 1421. They were married in May 1420 and, in December, made a triumphal entry into Paris. She was, by all accounts, quite beautiful and vivacious. Charles promised that, upon his death, Henry would inherit the French throne to show his good faith and secure Henry’s claim, he was wed to Catherine. His triumph at Agincourt in 1415 inspired one of Shakespeare‘s greatest plays, Henry V, and led Charles VI to sue for peace. He was fifteen years her senior and, even in life, recognized as one of England’s greatest kings. ![]() At the age of eighteen, Catherine had wed that great warrior-king Henry V. Catherine of Valois was the youngest daughter of Charles VI of France and Queen Isabelle. His ancestry was even more colorful than her own.Įdmund Tudor was the eldest son of a princess of France and Queen of England and her Welsh attendant. Her new husband was the earl of Richmond. Henry VI wanted to wed her to his half-brother Edmund Tudor so, at the age of twelve, she was married again. Suffolk was murdered in May 1450 and in early 1453, the marriage between Margaret and John de la Pole was annulled.Ī child of ten, she was a pawn once more. Since she was a great heiress, she was betrothed while still a child to John de la Pole, the son and heir of Henry VI’s chief minister, the marquess of Suffolk.Ī conspiracy followed which alleged that Suffolk was planning to place Margaret and his son on the throne if Henry VI died childless there is no proof but it indicates how important Margaret’s royal blood was, even tainted with her grandfather’s illegitimacy. Margaret, however, was the sole heir to the dukedom of Somerset and its vast holdings. Her mother, meanwhile, married again – this time to Lionel, Lord Welles, and survived another four decades. It was rumored that he committed suicide. John had led yet another disastrous military expedition to France and ended up dying in Dorset a few days before her first birthday. Margaret, his only child, was born on she never knew her father. Margaret Beaufort’s father John succeeded to the earldom of Somerset in 1418 and, after a life of military embarrassment (including seventeen years in a French prison), he married Margaret Beauchamp, daughter of Sir John Beauchamp of Blestoe.Ī year after their marriage, John was created duke of Somerset. Certainly no act of government could alter the fact that the Beauforts had been born illegitimate and Henry IV’s declaration regarding the succession is equally ambivalent – after all, what practical effect could it guarantee? When their fellow kinsman Henry IV Bolingbroke came to the throne, he confirmed this act of legitimacy but added a stipulation that the Beauforts should never succeed to the English throne (1407). After the marriage, their children were declared legitimate by an act of Parliament in 1397 (during Richard II’s reign). The Beauforts were so named because Margaret’s grandfather had been born in Beaufort Castle in Champagne his mother was Gaunt’s mistress and later became his third wife. Gaunt’s eldest legitimate son was the first Lancastrian king of England. His royal blood came from women – his mother, Margaret Beaufort, was the granddaughter of John Beaufort (died 1410), the eldest of the bastard sons of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. He knew, none better, that such a claim would be flimsy at best. Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne was never based on ancestry alone. In fact, it was only when Richard duke of York usurped the throne from his young nephew Edward (son and heir of Edward IV) that Henry Tudor became a viable candidate for king. He had spent years in exile and campaigned tirelessly to win support for his claim to the English throne. ![]() He also needed the legitimacy of his wife’s claim to the throne. Despite his victory at Bosworth, the exiled nobleman who took the name Henry VII needed the support of those sympathetic to the defeated Yorkist cause. The union was both symbolic and necessary. ![]() Thus, the two warring houses were joined in marriage. After winning the throne of England, he wed Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter of the dead Yorkist king Edward IV. The Lancastrians triumphed under the leadership of a 28-year-old exile named Henry Tudor. The Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485 was the last armed confrontation between Lancastrians and Yorkists, those two factions that had fought for decades in The Wars of the Roses. If Henry VII’s reign was to usher in ‘smooth-faced peace, with smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days’, few could have predicted it in 1485.
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