Henry Beaufort

Henry Beaufort was a cardinal, three times chancellor of England, the crown's principal creditor for thirty years, and one of the judges at the trial of Joan of Arc. He was the second of John of Gaunt's children by Katherine Swynford, born illegitimate and legitimated by statute in 1397, which barred the line from the throne but not from anything else. He was bishop of Lincoln at about twenty-three and bishop of Winchester - the richest see in England - from 1404 until his death. The wealth is the point: he lent enormous sums to his half-brother Henry IV and his nephew Henry V, financing the Agincourt campaign among others, and he took the crown jewels and customs revenues as security, which made him unremovable. After Henry V died in 1422 leaving an infant king, Beaufort and the king's uncle Humphrey of Gloucester fought for control of the minority council for two decades, twice coming close to armed conflict in London. He was made a cardinal in 1426, went on crusade against the Hussites in Bohemia in 1429 and diverted the army to France instead, and presided at Rouen in 1431 when Joan of Arc was condemned and burned. He negotiated at Arras in 1435, where the Burgundian alliance that had sustained the English position collapsed. He died in 1447, immensely rich, weeks after the death in custody of Gloucester, which contemporaries connected. Shakespeare gives him a terrified deathbed, which is invention. He was the richest man in England at his death and left a fortune the crown owed much of. His tomb is in Winchester Cathedral. The Beaufort line he belonged to produced Margaret Beaufort and so the Tudors.

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