Margaret Beaufort

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.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Joanna Laynesmith 2 episodes
  Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading
• Katherine Lewis 7 episodes
  Honorary Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lincoln and Research Associate at the University of York
• David Grummitt 2 episodes
  Staff Tutor in History at the Open University

Reading list

• The House of Beaufort
  Nathen Amin (Amberley Publishing, 2017) Google Books →
• The Vowesses, the anchoresses, and the aldermen's wives: Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Devout Society of Late Medieval Stamford
  Rachel Delman (Urban History, 2022)
• A Short History of the Wars of the Roses
  David Grummitt (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) Google Books →
• The Wars of the Roses
  Michael Hicks (Yale University Press, 2010) Google Books →
• Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker
  Lauren Johnson (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025) Google Books →
• The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby
  Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
• Reading Families: Women's Literate Practice in Late Medieval England
  Rebecca Krug (Cornell University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• Cecily Duchess of York
  J.L. Laynesmith (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) Google Books →
• The Household Accounts of Lady Margaret Beaufort, 1443-1509
  Susan Powell (Liverpool University Press, 2022) Google Books →
• Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Matriarch
  Nicola Tallis (Michael O'Mara, 2019)
• English Women, Religion, and Textual Production, 1500-1625
  Micheline White (ed.) (Ashgate, 2016) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Margaret of Anjou
  
  24 May, 2018 940 History of Europe
• Catherine of Aragon
  
  13 Feb, 2025 940 History of Europe
• The Tudor State
  
  26 Oct, 2000 940 History of Europe
• Holbein at the Tudor Court
  
  15 Oct, 2015 750 Painting
• The Battle of Bosworth Field
  
  26 Apr, 2012 940 History of Europe
• Eleanor of Aquitaine
  
  28 Jan, 2016 940 History of Europe
• The Death of Elizabeth I
  
  15 Oct, 2009 900 History
• Mary, Queen of Scots
  
  19 Jan, 2017 940 History of Europe
• The Monarchy
  
  10 Jun, 1999 940 History of Europe
• Thomas Becket
  
  14 Dec, 2017 270 History of Christianity

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: m002s3dq

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002s3dq

Auto-category: 942.04 (History of England and Wales: 1399-1485)