Margaret Beaufort

Margaret Beaufort was married three times before she was fourteen, gave birth to the future Henry VII at thirteen, and spent the next twenty-eight years manoeuvring to put him on the throne. Her claim to the crown came through John of Gaunt's legitimated Beaufort line, which had been barred from the succession by a clause whose legal force was arguable, and it was the only Lancastrian claim left standing after 1471. The birth nearly killed her and she had no further children. She kept her son alive through the Yorkist years by a combination of submission and useful marriage - her fourth husband, Thomas Stanley, was Richard III's steward - while corresponding secretly with Elizabeth Woodville to arrange the marriage of Henry to Elizabeth of York that would unite the claims. Richard III attainted her for treason after Buckingham's rebellion in 1483 and, instead of executing her, gave her property to her husband and put her in his custody, which turned out to be a serious mistake: the Stanleys stood aside at Bosworth in 1485 and then intervened against him. She signed herself Margaret R afterwards, took a vow of chastity while still married, and held a legal status of femme sole allowing her to own and litigate independently. She endowed professorships at both Oxford and Cambridge that still exist, founded Christ's College and St John's College at Cambridge, and financed William Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde. She outlived her son by two months and oversaw the accession of her grandson Henry VIII. Her tomb effigy in Westminster Abbey is by Torrigiano. Her confessor John Fisher preached the funeral sermon and was executed by her grandson twenty-six years later. She translated devotional works from French. The Lady Margaret Professorships of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge are the oldest endowed chairs in England.

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