Lady Margaret Beaufort – Grandmother of Henry VIII, Countess of Richmond and Derby1443-1509. Wife, land agent, astute politician, Queen Mother and patron. Lady Margaret is best known as foundress of both St. John’s and Christ’s Colleges, Cambridge.
Lady
Margaret had a keen mind and had much success in accumulating land which
gave her the wherewithal to devise a sophisticated estate plan.
She was a key player in establishing the Tudor line. Her family were an illegitimate branch of the House of Lancaster.
Her second husband was King Henry VI’s half-brother Edmund TUDOR, the son of an obscure Welsh squire who had married Queen Katharine, French widow of Henry V.
After 1471 she was the most “dangerous” surviving Lancastrian, and played a decisive role in putting together the coalition that propelled her son, Henry Tudor, to the throne in 1485.
There is a large body of research available about Lady Margaret as well as a book written by the Chief Archivist, St. John’s College, Cambridge, who gave more details about her will:
“Lady Margaret Beaufort did not name St. John’s College in her original written will, but her wish was verbally expressed, and the will as proved on 22 October 1512 contained a memorandum by her executors of her intention to establish the College.
She had however before her death in 1509 already made an agreement with her stepson James Stanley the Bishop of Ely for the transformation of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist Cambridge, under his authority, into a college for students of arts and theology.
A number of documents conveying his approval, that of the Prior and monastery of Ely, that of the Pope and that of the King, led up to the drawing up of the foundation charter sealed by Lady Margaret’s executors.”
- the signature of Lady Margaret