Vulgar History Podcast
Margaret Beaufort, The Original Tudor Icon
March 11, 2026
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and today we are talking about Margaret Beaufort, who you might have heard of if you’re a fan of Tudor-era history. She is the grandmother of the notorious Henry VIII. She’s also a major figure in the Wars of the Roses; she’s up there with other figures like Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret of Anjou. She also appears, you might know her if you’re a fan of the STARZ TV adaptations of Philippa Gregory’s books, or of Philippa Gregory’s books themselves, like The White Queen and The White Princess. Margaret Beaufort is always there, kind of looming in the background, kind of villainous figure. That’s how she’s often portrayed in film, and that’s how she’s often thought of in history.
But in a new book, Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker, author and historian Lauren Johnson is encouraging us to think of her in a new way. She really did some new digging around into the historical archives to learn more about Margaret, and she really wrote this biography to see who was she really, what was she really like? And because I know this is a figure not everybody knows about, in the conversation you’re about to hear with Lauren, we just kind of talked through who was Margaret Beaufort? What did she get up to? Why is she so important? And I was so excited to be able to talk with Lauren.
So, her previous book was Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI, which is a resource that I used when I did an episode years ago about Henry VI’s wife, Margaret of Anjou. So, I knew that her writing is really great, it’s really readable, it’s a history book that reads like a novel, really. And so, I was so happy to have her on the show just to explain who is Margaret Beaufort, why does she matter, and what was life really like in this Tudor era? So, please enjoy this conversation with author and historian, Lauren Johnson.
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Ann: So, I’m so happy to welcome Lauren Johnson here to talk to me today. She is the author of a new book called Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker. Welcome, Lauren.
Lauren: Thanks for having me, nice to be here.
Ann: I’m really excited to talk to you about, well, first of all, your book, obviously, but also Margaret Beaufort, who’s been one of my faves for a long time. I know she’s got kind of a mixed reputation these days, and you definitely talk about that in your book. But what I want to do today is just explain to everyone, a lot of whom might not know who this is at all, kind of why she’s important and why she’s interesting.
So, kick us off by sort of explaining, as best as you can in the most straightforward way – read the book, everybody to get all the details on this – but, like, why was her family important?
Lauren: Yeah. And I will say in the book, there are quite a few family trees.
Ann: She helps you a lot! The book helps a lot, yes.
Lauren: There’s a character list, there’s maps. You know, not as many family trees as I had to make while I was researching it, I have to say. Every two minutes, I was like, “Who’s John? John who?” John St. John plus John St. John is different from this other one.
Ann: There are – I will say, sorry, just before you say also – another thing I appreciate about this book, because I want everybody to know this is a very approachable book. This is about a part of history you might not know about, but Lauren, you as the author, metaphorically holding the hands of the readers to just explain, “Here’s what’s going on.” And part of that is the fact that everybody has one of two names, which are Margaret or Edward, for the most part. You find ways to give everybody a different name in the book, so we can at least tell everybody apart.
Lauren: Yes, although I did get confused myself at times because of this system.
Ann: When I got to the part where Margaret has a half-sister also called Margaret, I was just like, “Really?… Really?!”
Lauren: Her mother, her grandmother, her sister, her cousin. Her cousin is literally called Margaret Beaufort. Why? Why, 15th century? Why?! [laughs]
Ann: Yeah.
Lauren: So, that’s what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with the age of Margaret, that’s how I’m going to term it now.
Yes, why is Margaret important? Why is she interesting? If you’ve ever heard of the Tudors, she is the reason the Tudors exist. That’s my banner sentence. [laughs]
Ann: Exactly. And if you’re looking specifically, we’ll get to how this all happens, but she is the grandmother of Henry VIII, one of the best-known British kings of all time, I would say.
Lauren: Yeah. Best-known, infamous, I would say, infamous King Henry VIII. And Margaret, not only is the reason that the Tudors get a claim to the throne because of various, complicated, dynastic reasons, going back through generations, but she literally is, like, she’s a political player in her own right. She ensures that the Tudors come to the throne; she survives the Wars of the Roses; she makes sure that there is peace brought to England after a period of decades of civil war. And I think, arguably, is a really key reason that Henry VIII himself comes to the throne because before Henry VIII becomes king in 1509, there had been literally a century in which there had not been an adult prince inheriting the throne from his father. It did not happen for a century, and yet Henry VIII manages it, in part because of his grandma, Margaret Beaufort.
So, she is a woman who, throughout her entire life, literally from birth to death, is at the epicentre of politics. She doesn’t just find her way through these circumstances or survive them by luck or anything like that; she really works to thrive in a system that brought down swathes of her relatives and friends.
Ann: Just to explain to people what you mean when you say that Henry VIII was the first adult son to inherit. For the previous century, correct me if I’m wrong, all the kings were either adult men who seized it from somebody else, or a little baby who didn’t really rule because he was a little baby, and there was just people scheming in the background. So, there wasn’t a consistent… And this is part of why, I will say, when Henry VIII becomes king, I think infamously what most people know about him is he really wanted a son. And it’s like, yeah, he did. Part of the reason was because he wanted this smooth succession because he knew that there had been a hundred years of just absolute chaos. But that’s what Margaret was living through.
Can we talk about her as a little girl and what… Well, I mean, honestly, how old was she when she had her first marriage? Like, six or something?
Lauren: Yes, six years old.
Ann: Was it six? I was underestimating to just make a joke! [Lauren laughs] Okay, actually, six. Okay.
Lauren: Actually, six. Hang on, maths. Maybe seven. I’m not great at mental arithmetic. She was either six or seven, you know, the old age of seven years old.
The thing to know about Margaret right from the start is that she’s really rich. Her father was a great lord who had both inherited and made a lot of money from various sources and had this very distant blood claim to the English throne. So, even as a child, she was someone that people wanted to marry because by marrying her, whichever family married her would be able to claim her lands, her royal claim, her wealth, et cetera.
Ann: She’s an only child, I just wanted to mention. So, part of why it all landed on her, there’s not…
Lauren: Yes, sort of. This is the kind of fascinating thing about her is she is the only child of her father, but in something that I think we imagine as very 21st century, she grew up with a totally blended family. She had stepparents and half-siblings and loads of people around her as she was growing up. But she was kind of exceptional because she is the only one who has the Beaufort claim to the throne. So yeah, she is the sole person who can have that claim, and that’s why people want to marry her, even when she is a child. So yeah, first marriage, six or seven, that never turns into a proper marriage, it must be said.
Ann: Yeah. Well, I do want to clarify for people, because we are going to talk about this in a bit when we get to marriage number two, but in terms of marriage age six, we’re not saying, like, put her in a white dress, walk down the aisle. It’s just like, it’s all on paper. Marriage arrangements were made about very young children, but they were not expected to live as man and wife, to consummate that marriage, until the girl was able to bear a child, basically, so like, an older teen, generally speaking. So, when we say she’s married at six, this is not weird to have this on-paper marriage, just to clarify.
Lauren: Yeah, there’s literally babies get betrothed to each other in this time. It’s all a very fuzzy area of church law, to be honest, like, the marriage situations in this period of history. So, this is kind of a paper marriage, exactly as you say. And then, she is remarried, as it were, to someone else instead when she is 12. And 12, according to medieval church law, is the age of consent for girls. It’s 14 for boys, 12 for girls. But her second husband is a man called Edmund Tudor, and he is in his late twenties, he might even be 30 when they get married.
So, this is a proper marriage. This is a marriage where it is intended she will have children, she will consummate it. Although again, I really want to emphasize that even getting married at the age of consent, usually, for very good mental and psychological and physiological reasons, people didn’t actually usually consummate these marriages until late teens, early twenties. But we know that Edmund Tudor does consummate the marriage because Margaret gets pregnant when she is 13.
Ann: And this is, I want to… In terms of Margaret Tudor, she’s an outlier. At the time, you say in your book, other people were like, “Eugh! Really?” It’s not the norm for a 30-year-old man when he marries a 12-year-old, to impregnate her immediately. Because sometimes people say, like, “Oh, in the past, in medieval times, they were all having children at age 12.” It’s like, they weren’t.
Lauren: No, they weren’t. 20 was the average age for a first child for this class.
Ann: But he really needed to have an heir is part of why.
Lauren: Well, partly. And also, just he was greedy; he wanted her money. And if she was pregnant, even if she died or if the child died by the custom of England, by a sort of legal convention, he could get her land and money straight away, he didn’t have to wait. So, it’s entirely about what’s best for him, not her.
Ann: Well, especially because she’s also a really little, tiny person. So, it’s not just she’s 12. I would say 12-year-olds are not suitable for having children then or now, physically, mentally, anything, but she was also a very small 12-year-old. So, just physiologically, it would be more dangerous for her than it would be for somebody who’s 12 years old and five-foot-seven. Like, she’s a little, tiny person.
Lauren: Yeah, it seems like demographically, we in the 21st century, periods start earlier, adolescence has moved earlier, basically. So, in the medieval period, it seems like it would actually be quite unusual to even be having your periods when you’re 12, never mind actually being able to get pregnant. So, she was in a really unfortunate situation, I think, that physically she was capable of getting pregnant, but exactly as you’re saying, psychologically and physiologically, in other ways, she was not really able to have an untraumatic birth.
And throughout her entire life, I mean, she does it as well, people make jokes about the fact that she’s very small. You know, there’s all sorts of comments about this throughout her entire life. We know as well from her granddaughter, her granddaughter apparently resembles her a lot, who is also called Margaret, and she’s described as being very slight for her age, and Margaret expresses concern that this princess grandchild of hers might be forced into a marriage too young, and tries to kind of prevent it happening so that this grandchild “Won’t be hurt,” as she puts it. So, I think there’s a real legacy in terms of how Margaret experiences this point in her life, and I don’t think that we can underestimate how traumatizing and difficult this point in her life, when she was pregnant and giving birth and a new mother, was.
Ann: Well, for a number of reasons. One of those is the fact that the birth – and you described in your book as well, everybody read the book – we don’t know specifically what happened in the childbirth situation, but we know from stuff she said later, like, it went… It was a traumatic experience; it was not a straightforward birth.
Lauren: No, I don’t think so. And the biggest part of that is that the norm in medieval times, and for most of history actually, was that you would have a community of women and trusted people around you. As far as we know, Margaret was just completely alone. Her husband had actually died by the point she was giving birth; he died of the plague after various military things that were going on. And she was kind of forced, when heavily pregnant, to flee to a different castle, to the castle of her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor, just to kind of keep safe while she was giving birth. She’s hundreds of miles away from her mother and her sisters. She, like we’ve already mentioned, is very young, is kind of thrust into this position of motherhood, and widowhood, and parenthood, and all of this, way before most people would have been.
I think that it probably really affected her relationship with her child for the first few years of his life. Her child survives, which is miraculous; people even at the time say that.
Ann: The fact that both of them survive, like that she survived, that he survived, it’s like… Yeah. It’s shocking.
Lauren: Yeah. It is seen as… I think they read it backwards as sort of a semi-divine intervention. I think they genuinely think like, “How is this possible? Everything was against you. There was plague, there was war, like, all of these dangers, and yet you survived, and this child survived.” It is incredible.
Margaret quite quickly, after the birth of this child that she names Henry, probably after the king at that time, who is her cousin, she leaves the baby in this castle in Wales and she goes and arranges a marriage to someone else, someone who is much more likely to kind of listen to her, I think, and to be kind to her and who, crucially, takes her back to the lands where she grew up, the territory where her family live, so that she can almost restart her life, that’s how I see it. She’s just sort of, like, erasing this horrible period of her marriage to Edmund Tudor and starting a new life, but in doing that, she leaves her child behind.
Ann: Well, and in terms of choosing the second husband, and this is something that… She’s still so young, even though she’s just given birth to a child, but we really see her, I guess I’ll say agency, but just kind of her commitment to making her life better, to improving things. She knows, she’s a 13-year-old single mother, widow, and what is this? Like, the 1400s. She’s like, “Well, I need a husband, I can’t…” and she finds him, and she figures this out for herself, and I think that’s very impressive and shouldn’t be discounted in terms of her taking control of her own life.
Lauren: I completely agree. Agency is absolutely the word. That she wants to… We might see it as sort of a lowering of yourself, being like, “Oh, you have to marry, you have to have a man,” but actually the fact that she chooses it, that she does it very rationally, that she makes that decision in quite a measured way, as quickly as she makes it, I think is really revealing. And the success of that marriage, the fact that all of the evidence points to this couple being very happy together, having a long and quite companionate marriage, a much more normal marriage actually for the 15th century than the one with Edmund Tudor, I think that’s testament to Margaret’s wisdom.
The other thing to say is that, at this point in history, we are getting the beginnings of the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic wars, basically, a civil war between York and Lancaster.
Ann: Yeah, York and Lancaster, I was going to say, if people don’t know the phrase Wars of the Roses. It’s that. There’s all the Shakespeare plays about it, I’m sure we’ll get into it, Richard III is involved. It’s kind of like, yeah, a lot of wars, families, and it’s a lot to do with succession, really.
Lauren: Entirely, yeah. It’s about who should be king, fundamentally. But yeah, it’s kind of remembered as being the white rose of York, their family, against the red rose of Lancaster, their family. And Margaret is essentially just trying to protect herself and her own family and is like, “I just want someone in the middle, please, I don’t want to get dragged into it.” So, there’s all of that political sinking as well happening when she’s making this marriage.
Ann: Yeah. Well, because she’s living in this incredibly unstable time, and her role as sort of a distant relative of the royal family puts her in danger, really. And we see this throughout her life, really, and you talk about this in the book as well – everybody, read the book – but she’s kind of like, if I can just compare this to the TV show Survivor, she’s the sort of person, because it’s in your title, she’s a survivor, but there’s people on that show who are just going to sit back and let the bigger characters fight it out, and they’re like, “I just want… I’ll see who’s there at the end, and I’ll just kind of make a deal week to week who I’m going to ally with,” and that’s kind of what Margaret reminds me of. She’s not all in on either side. She’s just like, “You have your war, and I’ll just be here and leave me out of it, please.”
Lauren: “Yeah, I’ll look after myself and my own people.” That’s such a good way of putting it. Yeah, yeah, she is. That’s who she is. Survivor.
Ann: Well, that’s what she does throughout the whole story. Like, we see this through— She’s living through this extremely contentious period of time, and if she had, at this stage, taken a firm stance, I don’t think the rest of history would have spiralled out like it did. So, she kind of knew… Well, and at this point, too, she’s got her new husband, she’s now in her mid-teens, if we’re looking at this era, she would probably be expecting that she’s going to have children with him. But she does not, and you suggest, and I think other historians have suggested, the trauma of the birth of her first child probably just messed up her internal organs to such a point she probably couldn’t conceive.
Lauren: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s, like, physiological or it could also totally be psychological. We know, and it’s something that I think people are starting to put onto women in the past and to understand a bit better, like, we know in the 21st century that cortisol levels, stress hormones can so impact your ability to conceive, and PTSD, things like that. There must have been all sorts of psychological legacies for Margaret that might have made it impossible for her to have a child, even if she wanted it. And I do think she wanted more children with her next husband. So, yeah. Whether it’s physical, mental, whether it’s that her husband himself can’t have children, that’s also a possibility. But yeah, she doesn’t have children.
And I think that that’s why, about 10 years after she has left her son, Henry, she starts to kind of take more interest in him and start to kind of build a relationship that goes on later in her life, actually, to be pretty much the most important relationship for her and for that son, which ends up being very important because he eventually becomes king.
Ann: Well, and I think it’s interesting too, just, I was looking at portraits of everybody because you kind of mentioned “This person resembled this person,” and I was like, “What did they look like?” And so, Margaret Beaufort and her son, I think, do have quite a strong physical resemblance, and I think in character, they also were very similar. So, I could see 10 years in, she’s, whatever, 22, he’s 10, and I think at that point, they could see like, “Oh, we got along. We are a similar sort of like very serious, very religious,” but also, I don’t want to say mercenary, but just, like, straightforward sort of person.
Lauren: I think there’s a caution to them. And it’s in her father as well, it’s interesting. There’s a real, like, there’s some genetic psychology going on through that family that they’re very careful, considered people. And I think they find the world around them to be made up of a lot of mad risk takers and violence, and they’re just like, “No, no, no, no, no. Can we do whatever is least dangerous, please, at all times?”
Ann: So, this next era of her life, if we’re looking at… So, she reconnects with her son because she realizes at this point, she’s probably not going to have another child. So, he now carries the air of the Beaufort lineage, but then he’s also the Tudors have a connection to the royal family as well.
And honestly, I want to tell you, when I was first, this was years ago, but I was getting into the Wars of the Roses, I actually made myself, like, a corkboard with cards on it and string connecting things, because I couldn’t remember. So, that’s all happening. There’s just kind of who—
Lauren: At some point, Ann, I’m going to show you, I did a video when I was working out with, spoiler, Princes in the Tower stuff, I literally did that. I have, like, string and pieces of paper, because I was like, “What is happening in this point in history?”
Ann: Well, because suddenly in the story, you’re reading with these people, and I feel like I get it, and then it’s like, “And then this person comes in!” and I’m like, “And they’re the descendant of who, from three generations back?” Like, John of Gaunt is suddenly involved?
Anyway. So, she has a connection to the royal family, her son has a connection to the royal family, and there’s basically just wars going on. And her husband, I think, also continued to be kind of like, “Let’s just see how this plays out,” right?
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. And unfortunately, I mean, there’s so much in the Wars of the Roses you can go into, there’s so much you don’t need to go into. [laughs] But like, essentially, there’s peace for a time, then the wars break out again. Margaret tries to play the system a little bit at that point in time, and it goes very badly for her; her husband ends up being wounded in battle and ultimately dies, probably of those wounds. Her son is forced into exile because of his connection to one side of the civil war when he’s only 14 years old. Like, Margaret has made the wrong alliance at the wrong time, so she’s out of favour.
Again, I think it’s very interesting that at that point in time, when she’s like, “Oh, no! I have messed up my decision making here. I’ve really chosen the wrong people,” she again remarries and she remarries someone who, once again, is like, famous for sitting out of the conflict, who literally lives up in the northwest of England. I imagine him very Game of Thrones, like, living up on an eagle’s nest somewhere where no one can get to him. That kind of individual. Yeah, she’s very considered in who she makes alliances with.
Ann: And so, again, like you said, she kind of took the risk, she made the alliance, but then it was the wrong one. So, now she’s making the right one. This is the guy, he is connected to the current king in a positive way, I think. Is this…? I’m trying to remember, there’s so many twists and turns, but at some point she becomes, like, the godmother of the princess. Like, she’s back in the good graces.
Lauren: Yeah, this person that she marries, he’s, like I say, he’s very famed for not backing any side in the Wars of the Roses. Like, literally, to two different sides of a battle, he’ll say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll come and fight for you,” and then just not fight for either of them, and everyone’s like, “Oh, Thomas, you wag” [Ann laughs] He’s called Thomas Stanley, he’s also called the Lord of Mann, which is the best title of the Wars of the Roses because of owning a tiny island called the Isle of Man, which has cats with no tails, fun fact. There we are.
Ann: Oh, is that the Manx cat?
Lauren: Yeah, the Manx cat is from the Isle of Man. So, he owns the Manx cats, technically. There we are. Anyway, that’s irrelevant to the Wars of the Roses, but fun fact.
Ann: You know what? Myself and my listeners are always glad to know when cats are involved in stories. We just imagine them there too, yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. [chuckles] Imagine, if you will, a tower surrounded by cats. That’s what I’m picturing now.
Ann: I’m like, yeah, great choice. Great choice of husband. So, she marries this guy who famously stays out of it.
Lauren: Yeah, he’s called Thomas Stanley, and he is connected to the family who are, at that point in time, in the ascendancy, which is the Yorkist dynasty, the White Rose of York. They are now in control of the kingdom, and Thomas Stanley is quite high up in their hierarchy and manages to stay there, pretty much actually, for the whole rest of the next decade or more, during which time, we don’t have loads of information about Margaret. We know that she’s just sort of moving up and up, like you say, in society; she becomes connected to different members of the ruling royal family.
And really, everything just seems to be going in the right direction for her. She seems to be finally managing to maneuver Henry, her son, back into England; she’s making alliances with the Yorkist king to get him back, to get him married, maybe, to a Yorkist princess. And then, it all goes wrong because that king dies, and we end up with the Princes in the Tower, these young boys who should become kings, who instead are put in the tower and their uncle becomes King Richard III. So, like, really complicated situation. All you need to know is Richard III becomes king.
Ann: And I will say that there is some… Well, Philippa Gregory, being one, in her fiction, people who suggest that Margaret Beaufort murdered the Princes in the Tower. I think that’s pretty far-fetched, and you explain why that is in the book as well. But she’s a character in this time period, and she’s all up in what’s happening to the extent that some people think that she was actively scheming and/or doing murders.
Lauren: Yeah, which she wasn’t. No. [laughs] Yeah, I mean, she was kind of willing to work with Richard III, is the thing. Like, she didn’t particularly have a relationship with him at all before he became king. Her husband, Thomas Stanley, didn’t have a good relationship with him, but again, was quite happy to go along with what was happening.
But there were various rebellions and movements against Richard, and suspicions that maybe the Princes in the Tower had been killed by him, to the extent that Margaret started – and I would argue completely as a result of the situation, not because this had always been in her intention – but she started to join these conspiracies against Richard III and put her own son, Henry, forward as a rival claimant for the throne. So, like, quite a swing around from someone who had been trying to not get involved in things. Suddenly, she is literally leading a conspiracy against the King of England.
Ann: Yeah, and I think this is where some people who look at this story, again, especially fiction writers, who you’d think want to go retroactively back to see if she does get to this point where she is actively scheming for her son to be the king. And it’s like, “Well, let’s imagine that she always wanted that. Let’s imagine that she’s been doing that all along.” But really, this was a pivot, and it was, like you said, situational, really.
Lauren: Yeah, it’s completely situational. And it’s because there is an initial rebellion against Richard that she gets involved in, that completely fails. And after it fails, she is punished by Richard. She is sort of effectively made her husband’s prisoner, and exiled away in the kingdom. She can’t have her servants; she can’t communicate with her son anymore. All of her lands, Richard seizes them and starts to kind of hand them out to other people. So, like, she’s lost everything at that point in time, and the only way for her and her son to really regain power, or livelihood even, is to continue this conspiracy against Richard and to try and overthrow him, which is what they ultimately do.
Ann: Which they do! And it’s a very exciting part. If you watched The Hollow Crown, the televised adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays, the sequence where Henry comes in and the sword fight against Richard, it’s all very good. And the guy playing Henry Tudor is very handsome. Anyway, it’s not hard to cheer for him in that scene. But in history, what happens, it could have gone either way, but it just happened that Henry Tudor and his forces, they had the right soldiers, they had the right tactics. They win, and Margaret Beaufort’s son becomes King Henry VII, the first Tudor king.
Lauren: Which I don’t think anyone was prepared for. It’s a moment in time where I think most of the people in England and Wales are like, “Huh?! Who? What’s happening?” Just rushing to try and work out who this person is because he hasn’t been in the country for 14… Maths, 14 years. Yeah.
Ann: Well, just in terms of you and me and our corkboards with the string, they have to put them up, olden, Tudor era, corkboards, just being like, “Wait, he’s descended from who? And who’s descended from who? What’s his claim?” They bring out the scrolls, I guess.
Lauren: He literally had to win the throne in battle because no one understood, otherwise, how he was king. Whereas if you win a battle in the medieval times, it’s like, “Oh, okay. Yeah, God chose. Fair enough. That’s fine.”
Ann: [laughs] That’s it. That’s good.
Lauren: But because Henry has not been in the kingdom, because no one knows who he is really, he doesn’t have this basis of support in the country or in the court, Margaret Beaufort, his mother, is hugely important because she is pretty much the most experienced courtier and politician in the country at this point in time. And crucially, he can trust her. He can’t trust anyone else he doesn’t know. Loads of people have been fighting for Richard; the ones who were fighting for Henry were obviously technically supporting a rebel. Might they do it again with someone else?
So, Margaret Beaufort becomes this incredibly important political player to King Henry VII. And because she’s a woman, I think a lot of that power that she had, that authority with which she influenced her son, either it’s been under exaggerated, you know, it’s been minimized, or it’s been made into a really weird, kind of like, obsessive relationship where she has too much power. There’s no sort of understanding that this was actually quite a functional partnership between them.
Ann: Well, and I think part of that, there’s lots of reasons for it, but two things that come to mind for me are the fact that, like we said before, the two of them have such a similar personality; they’re not clashing in this fundamental level. They’re both cautious, they’re both very thoughtful. Like, I could see them working together. And they’re also very close in age. She’s only 12 years older than him, and she hadn’t raised him for the first ten years, so where she is his mother, they don’t necessarily have that sort of, like, stage mom sort of presence. So, I could see them as sort of allies, sort of peers almost.
And I do want to mention, this story I really appreciate in the context of looking at so many other women in history, like Catherine de’ Medici or Agrippina in ancient Rome, where there are these women who fight so hard for their sons to become the next ruler, and the sons are useless, and the sons are terrible. And it’s just like, “Augh! The mom worked so hard, and this guy sucks.” [Lauren chuckles] Like with Agrippina, Nero kills her! But here, it’s not just that Margaret helped to ensure that his son became king, but then he respected her and kept her there and listened to her. That never happens! And he was, like, capable of being king. This is an outlier, to me, in terms of my research of women in history, this is perfect.
Lauren: Yeah, he’s actually good at it. There are other women for whom that is kind of true in 15th-century England. So, the king before, the main Yorkist king, Edward IV, his mother was also a very important political player. Margaret of Anjou was raising her son in the Wars of the Roses to become the great next Lancastrian hope. Like, there’s actually quite a few examples of women working successfully with their sons. But because we haven’t really remembered them, I think Margaret Beaufort gets kind of presented as a bit of a weirdo, basically. [chuckles]
Ann: Yeah. Well, and again, I’ve mentioned Philippa Gregory as well, but that’s because I first encountered her as a character in the TV version of The White Queen, where it’s a fantastic performance by this actress, I forget her name, but she’s so intense and weird and twitchy, and she’s, like, obsessed with him, but she’s also in love with Jasper Tudor. They really just kind of go all in on, like, she’s this weirdo. Look at this insane person.
Lauren: Look at this weird, old woman. Yeah.
Ann: Yeah. But actually, she is like – and this is part of the reputation that you’re kind of exploring and interrogating in your book – it’s kind of like, people see her this way, but what was she actually like, and how was she actually seen at the time? Which, it seems like she was respected.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. It’s totally a modern construct of Margaret. It is partly a result of… And when I say modern, I mean modern in a history sense, so I mean like, the 1700s onwards. It’s something that kind of came about as almost a mirror of what happened with Richard III, that the more people were like, “No, Richard III has been mistreated,” the more Margaret seems to have gone down in people’s esteem, and the more she has become almost his enemy or something. And that’s not remotely how it was at the time.
I think Margaret Beaufort was really well respected. There’s very little bad that is said about her, and for 15th-century powerful women, that is an incredible achievement. And we can tell from, you know, there’s all sorts of different resources that we have to study Margaret’s life, of which her own household accounts are the biggest one, and you can see in them, like, how well she gets on with her servants, with her friends, with her relatives, how she really cultivates her relationships separately from her son and the royal court, like, people who are just important to her for other reasons. It’s an element of her, that humanity, essentially, of her, that just seems to have been left out of her story in recent years, and I think it’s a huge, a huge shame, actually, because she was pretty great.
Ann: Well, and like you said, the fact like, for a powerful woman in this time and place to not have… That can be underestimated, I think. But also, there’s the situation you mentioned, there’s other women who, similarly, queens or dowager queens, this is what I want to talk about. When Henry becomes the king, they’re like, “What do we call her?” Because she wasn’t queen beforehand, and she’s actually married to someone else, so it’s kind of this confusing situation of he became king, but his mother was never a titled royal like that, so what name do we give her?
Lauren: Yeah, it’s totally unprecedented, basically. Even the Yorkist mother beforehand had kind of, they’d claimed that the Duke of York was king. So, they could sort of be like, “No, no, the true queen, that’s who she was.” Whereas Margaret Beaufort, it’s like, “No, no, she’s Thomas Stanley’s wife. That’s what she is, she’s not a princess or anything.” So, a lot of effort is put into, like we would say today, the optics of who Margaret is in relation to Henry and who she is in relation to Henry’s queen, who is Elizabeth of York, and that’s a marriage that actually Margaret had helped make as well.
So, the three of them, again, really seem to have an effective relationship, and it is quite astonishing to me that there’s no questioning of Margaret, there’s no sexual slander about the fact that she’s still married while she has a son who is king. She makes some choices later to become what’s called a vowess, which basically means she’s almost like a nun, but she still has power, but her husband’s still alive. It’s a very nebulous position, but it basically means that she is an independent lord in her own right. And I think, partly, that is how she gets around that sort of slightly confusing situation of being, yeah, a king’s mother, but never queen. Yeah, it’s just testament to the respect that there was for her, I think, and the ability that her and Henry and Queen Elizabeth demonstrate to the wider world.
Ann: And that’s another sort of popular slander of Margaret, is that she was interfering in the marriage of her son, or that she was lording it over her daughter-in-law. When actually, it seems like what we were talking about, her personality, her son’s personality, I just think that they’re not people who are going to stir up drama for the sake of drama. They’re very careful and considerate politically, but I would think they’re also very careful and considerate personally. Like you were saying, her servants had kind things to say about her. So, clearly, the three of them were a functional unit: her, her son, the wife. And they’d all been through it! Just to be clear, his wife, Elizabeth of York, she was the sister of the Princes in the Tower. Her brothers were murdered by this uncle, who maybe wanted to also marry her. So, I think the three of them are just kind of like, “Oh, we can just have a pleasant domestic arrangement? We can just have dinner and spin our yarn.”
Lauren: “Can we just get on?”
Ann: You know, like there’s not TV, but if there was, they just, “Oh, you know, let’s just watch a nice little movie.” The three of them are survivors; they survived for a long time.
Lauren: Absolutely. And like, to be completely transparent, there are some comments made about Margaret and Elizabeth’s relationship at the time, but they are made by people who have never witnessed that relationship. They’re made by people who never seem to have seen this pair, who are making, like, sweeping judgments about the dynamics of the royal court based on very little, and then some other evidence that’s been totally… Like, just totally misread basically, misconstrued several centuries later. All of the evidence that we have is that Margaret and Elizabeth have probably, like, they’ve witnessed what happened to other women of the royal court before, and particularly Elizabeth’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville, who had an incredibly difficult time in the Wars of the Roses, who lost a lot of members of her family to the violence of the wars, and was very unpopular herself and lots of sexual slander did attach to her.
So, I think they just… We don’t always realize that it can be a choice to be passive, and I think that’s the choice that Elizabeth of York made. She was like, “No, I am going to be the medieval ideal queen,” which is to say, “I’m going to have children. I’m going to sit quietly. Every now and then, I might do something to do with religion, and otherwise, I’m not getting involved because that is the best way for me and my family to be safe.” Again, it testifies to just common sense that, I think, is why Margaret and Henry enormously respected her.
Ann: Like you said, it’s a choice to be passive. You know, on my podcast, I love talking about women who are scandalous and audacious and do ridiculous things, but they generally all die at age 25 of tuberculosis or something like that. So, if you want to live a long and happy life, make that choice. That doesn’t mean that Elizabeth of York is a boring person by any means; it means she knew how to survive.
Lauren: And I totally had to come to that thought process myself as well, because similarly, like, that’s what’s interesting, isn’t it? You know, the devil gets the best stories, he gets the best songs. But it can be an empowering choice not to do that. It can be empowering for a woman to say, “Okay, yeah, the best political course for me is this one. It might look like the most boring choice, but it’s the safest one, and that’s how I’m going to survive in this situation.” Yeah, it was a bit revolutionary at that point in time, because there had not been that figure in politics, that kind of “safe” queenship for quite a long time.
Ann: And then, Margaret Beaufort, in her sort of later years, there’s this vowess role that she has taken on because her husband, it would have been very convenient for everyone if he had died earlier, but he didn’t, he was hearty. But she does… So, talk about her, what she does in terms of colleges, and then also in terms of book writing, publishing, translations.
Lauren: Yeah. She has this whole other life, Margaret Beaufort. She would be incredible even without the political stuff, because she founds two different Cambridge colleges, not one, two. And she actually has a real role to play in, like, the values of those colleges. She’s very concerned for, kind of, disseminating information, for getting educational opportunity out into the country, and getting her religious messaging out into the country. Especially, she’s very concerned, like, in England, there’s a real north-south divide. Even today, the north tends to have a lot less money and opportunity than the south of England. And Margaret has lived in the north, so she’s witnessed it herself, so she really tries to make sure that northerners get an opportunity to come and be students and preachers and whatever within this university.
She’s also really concerned to spread the word of God, as she sees it, by translating books herself. So, she publishes herself; she’s the first English woman to appear in print, which is incredible. She then has those books published herself, she pays them to be bound, she pays them to be sent out.
Ann: And the amount of copies, you say in your book, like how many… It’s not just, “Oh, she translated a book and look, here’s one. We’ll put it in the library.” Like, she had so many copies of them made.
Lauren: Like, 50 to 100. And that’s just for herself to send out to people; there were others as well. And it has to be emphasized that, like, she is born at the time the printing press comes into being. Like, it is brand new technology that she is harnessing and understanding the power of as well. For me, the big thing that really touched me that I kind of hadn’t quite got before was that Margaret Beaufort, because she was rich, she was able to go into the places that had libraries, she was able to go and look at these hand-produced, incredibly expensive, barely-touched manuscripts. She could look at them, and she could get information out of them, and she recognized that other people couldn’t. So, she was like, “Well, how do I spread this? I know, I get it printed,” because prints are cheap, and so loads of people can afford them. But of course, lots of people don’t read Latin or French, so “How do I do that? Right. I translate them. I translate them into English.”
Just that thought process alone is totally revolutionary to me, especially for a woman in this point in history. Like, later on, under the Tudors, we get humanism and all those sorts of, like, movements for education and broadening education and understanding, and Margaret’s doing it way before. So yeah, she’s incredible. And that entire part of her life has sort of just been forgotten about.
Ann: Well, and I think also just thinking today, nowadays, in terms of people who, the older you are, often, the more set in your ways you can be or resistant to technology, but she’s in her, I don’t know, she had her child so young, but let’s say late-middle age, at least.
Lauren: Yeah, like fifties, sixties, probably.
Ann: Yeah! But the fact that she’s like, “Let’s jump on this new technology. Let’s take advantage of it,” and she’s thinking of that herself, rather than being like, “Oh, I don’t want to use an iPad,” or whatever. [Lauren laughs] She’s lifelong engaging with the new technologies. I think that’s also notable for someone now, and also for someone then.
Lauren: Yeah, I think so too. She’s just a fascinating person who is far beyond the sort of… If people have ever heard of her, they have just heard, “Oh, she’s that kind of scheming woman who did things.” It’s like, no, no, no! She is a revolutionary educator as well as everything else.
Ann: I think this is part of… It would have been so predictable if she had died in childbirth, age 13, or something in the Wars of the Roses, but the fact that she lived long enough to be able to live what I’ll call sort of an active retirement, that she was able to engage with her passions and with her hobbies, and that the world was settled and calm enough that she could be like, “Oh, I’m just going to work on some translations.” She’s not actively having to worry about civil war and things. It just speaks to her involvement in how her son became king, everything kind of calmed down. He and his wife had children, they had sons, so there’s going to be a clear succession. Two sons, you’ve got the heir and the spare.
She lived through such a chaotic first three-quarters of her life, really, I love for her the last part of her life, she could just do what she was passionate about, and that was spreading the word of God and helping people, really. I think that’s lovely.
Lauren: Yeah, I think so. I think she felt responsibility for people, and that is something that we can kind of lose sight of in the people with power, I think, that they can also understand they have a responsibility to pay it back.
Ann: And so, she’s around, I’m just trying to think, again, the TV adaptations, she’s there, an even older woman still scheming in, like, The Spanish Princess and stuff, when Catherine of Aragon comes to town.
Lauren: No, she’s just being mean to everyone. In TV adaptations of Margaret Beaufort, she’s just going around being horrible, I feel like.
Ann: Yeah, sort of like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey, sort of character, but without the sort of cuteness, just sort of this mean old lady.
But in terms of her life, she was born into this chaotic time, the Wars of the Roses happened. For me, I often think of the Wars of the Roses era and Henry VIII as two completely separate things. But both of those were within her lifespan because she lived a decently long life considering the time period. And when she died, the Tudor dynasty, it was set up, it was there. Her life’s work, in addition to all that, but just kind of securing peace for the kingdom, a good life for her family… When she died, everything seemed on a great path, I would think.
Lauren: Yeah, and also, again, in a very filmic manner, she died literally after the coronation feast for Henry VIII. So, she saw her son to the end of his life, Henry VII; he died while she was continuing to look after him. She then helps Henry VIII become king. She’s at the coronation, she goes to the coronation feast, and then she dies. It’s so perfectly complete in some ways. She was like, “Right, that’s it. I’m done.”
Ann: Yeah, “Everything’s good.” I do want to say, though, in terms of she died because, potentially food poisoning-related, she ate a cygnet, which is a baby swan, was part of what was served. So, there’s something, to me, that just makes me think of ancient Rome again somehow. Just like, I don’t know, eating a swan, eating a baby swan just feels like, I don’t know, if you told me that was how Agrippina died or something, I’d be like, “Mmm, yeah. That sounds ancient Rome.” [Lauren laughs] So, there’s something very classic about it, but you’re right, she attends the feast and then dies. It’s kind of like, “Pffft. That’s it, I’m good.”
So, I sent you some categories that I want to score. I’m just bringing up my document here, because when we do these kind of biographical discussions… I’m really fascinated where she’s going to land in some of these categories. Because you can imagine the first category is Scandalousness, and the sorts of people I was talking about, like these audacious, I don’t know, vaudeville performers or something, they would score very high. But on a scale of 0 to 10, how scandalous do you think she was seen by people of her era? I feel like…
Lauren: I think of her era, not very.
Ann: Yeah. No one was slandering her, really.
Lauren: No! And again, that is incredible. We mentioned Margaret of Anjou, a lot of slander there. I am… Is there any slander in her life at all? I mean, at the time, there really isn’t.
Ann: No, because she kind of did what was expected of a woman, really. She was put into this arranged marriage, and then she got another marriage. Even when she was behind the scenes, no one ever saw her as stepping out of the bounds of what a woman should be doing. I don’t think – and I think it’s to her credit – that I don’t think… She did some things that one could say are scandalous, like being involved in a rebellion to oust the king.
Lauren: Yeah, she is involved in quite a few rebellions, to be fair. That’s a bit scandalous.
Ann: So, a bit of…
Lauren: 3. There’s three rebellions. [chuckles]
Ann: Well, and they were… Ultimately, she was successful. So, if she’d been involved in a rebellion that didn’t work, then I think people would be like, then they would be going after her. But they did work, so I think it’s like, “Oh, she was right.” So, I think 3 is fair, one for each rebellion.
The next category is the Schemieness. And this is not just how she’s shown on television adaptations, but just in terms of – I see this as a positive, as a compliment – coming up with a plan, executing the plan, seeing what’s going on, and coming up with what you should do to survive to the next day. And I think she’s the ultimate… This is her survivor instinct. I think she was always thinking of what to do, and sometimes what to do was to step back and not do anything, but that was a choice.
Lauren: Yeah. She can’t have a 10 because in, like, what’s called the Readaption, this messy period, 1469 to ‘71, when the throne keeps switching between people, she chooses the wrong side, and it really messes with her situation. So, I have to, like… At least one point has to come off of that. She also is involved in the rebellion against Richard that happens early on that doesn’t succeed. So, maybe two points off, I’m going to give her 8 out of 10.
Ann: An 8, I think that’s fair. Yeah. You say in your book, towards the end, if a couple of things hadn’t gone her way, then she would just be remembered as this bumbler who just made some bad calls. I do think that we remember her and we’re honouring her because a lot of the choices she made did work out, but they could just as easily have not worked out. Some of that is just the hand of fate, really. But she was very active.
Lauren: Yes, absolutely. And I think she recognized that as well. I think she never lost sight of the fact that there could come another rebellion or something where she would choose the wrong side and lose everything. I mean, literally to her dying day, I think she had that fear. So yeah, she schemed, but she did not scheme always in the best directions.
Ann: The next category is Significance. I would think that this, I don’t know, you tell me, I think this is a high score. Just significance to history; I think both what she did with her choices and how she worked to get Henry back to England to support him in that shaky era when he became king. Like, the Tudors really set the tone for what we would call modern England, really, and she was a crucial part of that. But then also, founding the colleges, the significance of her being the first woman to have a book published. I feel like this is a high score.
Lauren: I go full 10. Absolutely full 10, because I genuinely don’t think that the Tudor dynasty would have, first, come into being, and then survived without Margaret Beaufort backing it or existing. Yeah, I just, I can’t see it.
Ann: And the Tudor, it’s such a… I mean, it’s a famous, well-known part of English history, but that really set the tone for so much stuff, like the colonization, which led to the empire building. The fact that she’s… What would she be? The great-grandmother of Elizabeth I and everything that she accomplished. Actually, I will say Elizabeth I also facially resembles Margaret Beaufort.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
Ann: And I think also that sense of caution. I think she’s kind of, you can see those genetic traits in her, I think.
And then the final category is what I call the Sexism Bonus. So, this is where you give people points for how much more, maybe, they could have accomplished were it not for sexism. A 10 in this category would be somebody like… I’m trying to think. Sophia Dorothea, who is the wife of George I, who was rumoured to have had an affair and was trapped in a tower for 25 years or something. It’s like, she would get a 10 because that’s… Margaret Beaufort, I think, you know, the way that she was treated by Jasper Tudor, I think, as sort of a tool for him to get money, I think that cannot be understated, the sexism in that, that he just saw, “If I can impregnate this child, I will get money.”
Lauren: Yeah, it’s really difficult with Margaret as well to divorce her from her sex. I think she had an understanding of herself fully based on her sex, the fact that she was a woman and the limitations that that put on her. And maybe also the opportunity, like, the one thing to say about the Wars of the Roses is that because it is a time when there’s a lot of political turmoil, where men are the active participants, i.e. they are the ones in the battles, they are the ones who are forced into exile or are tainted, so they’re declared traitors and lose all their lands, it actually kind of gives women an opportunity because their lands are usually protected by the law. They are the ones who end up, like, holding together everything for their family, so it can be inherited for the next generation. They might be left in charge of enormous swathes of, you know, countryside and farms and all sorts of things. So, I think there was actually a lot of female power around at that point in time.
Ann: Well, and I think also there were, you mentioned, you know, the other mothers of other kings or would-be kings, there was some acceptance of a powerful woman, at least in that role of mother of a prince. So, I think she accomplished so much. I don’t think sexism got in her way, other than, most egregiously, being impregnated at age 12.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. Which can’t… There’s just no way to see it in any other direction because it just wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have happened, obviously, to a boy. So yeah, the danger of that situation would not have happened in any way to someone male at that point in time.
Ann: I think I would give her, in terms of the Sexism “Bonus” I would say it’s… Because it didn’t really get in her way. And this category is kind of there to give points to people where it did get in their way, but it didn’t. She accomplished so much despite living in the culture she was living in. So, I think it would just be something like a 2 or something.
Lauren: Yeah, I agree, a 2.
Ann: Let me just get, so this is, so her total score is a 23. I just want to let you and the listeners, I guess, know who does that put her in the company of on this? For instance, Jane Austen has a 22. Margaret Beaufort has a 23.
Lauren: I love Jane Austen. I feel like Jane Austen and Margaret Beaufort would have been pals. They would have sat around being witty. [giggles]
Ann: I think they would have, and just being kind of like…
Lauren: Well, just reading quietly. They might have sat and just read together quietly in a corner.
Ann: Just being two reasonable, level-headed people surrounded by… Living in eras that are full of really audacious, chaotic people. I think they both appreciate to just sit down with a cup of tea, and they could do some embroidery together or read a book. In terms of writing, too, like, the fact that Margaret Beaufort was this pioneer. I think that’s lovely. I think that’s nice that they can sit next to each other on this scale for the Vulgar History podcast.
So, Lauren, your book… I just want to get the title right, Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker, it’s coming out in North America when this episode comes out, so in March of 2026. It’s already been out in the UK for a while. I don’t know if you have any thoughts you wanted to share about what the reception has been like, what conversations you’ve had with people. Are people surprised by some of the way that you present her in the book?
Lauren: Yeah. I mean, it’s been well received. People have been pretty positive about it. I think my big agenda in it was just to try and make sure that her womanhood, as it were, was not forgotten, and that some of the myths that had come about as a result of her being a woman and a mother were challenged, which I think it has done successfully. Hopefully, I’ve been sort of equal enough; there don’t seem yet to have been any enraged Ricardians, for instance, so that’s really good.
Ann: [laughs] I’m always worried about them. Whenever I do anything about that era, I’m just like, I know that there’s people out there who are passionate about Richard III. And you say in your book, he basically had them killed; that seems pretty obvious. And I thought, “Good for you for just saying that.”
Lauren: Well, people at the time seemed pretty clear on it. You can’t really discount the evidence, I feel like.
Ann: Yeah, of just what people then assumed and what that led to. But yeah, I know, just if listeners don’t know, there’s people who really are defensive about Richard III and claim that he’s very misunderstood and stuff. So, that’s good. And I’m glad that… I think that it’s a figure that people who are interested in Tudor history may not know about if people focus more on Anne Boleyn or the Henry VIII era. But I think this era is so interesting and I think your book is a really good introduction both to her and also to the wider, that early Tudor era.
Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation!
Lauren: Thanks for having me.
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So again, the book we’re talking about, Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker by Lauren Johnson, is now available in North America. It was already available in the UK for a while, but now it’s here, where I live in Canada, it’s there in the US, and I really encourage everybody to pick it up because it’s a really fantastic book. The information is so good, but also, as you heard from Lauren, she’s so good at telling this story and sharing this information.
I also have a book that I have written, it’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen. It is now available all over the place, wherever you buy your books, in North America, in most English-speaking countries. You can find copies of it as well as in a few other countries; it’s in Germany, it’s in Japan. You can get a full list of links to buy copies of my book at my website, RebelOfTheRegency.com. And if you do read my book and you like it, I would encourage you to leave a five-star review, or a four-star review, whatever you’re feeling, but just a review in general on Amazon and on Goodreads because the more reviews that are there, the more it gets bumped up in different algorithms, and the more other people will find my book. And you know what? Once you read Lauren’s book, do the same for Margaret Beaufort: Survivor, Rebel, Kingmaker. Just, you know, supporting women writing history books because it’s important.
What also is important is I’m taking a little trip. I’m going to be in London, England, actually, this weekend coming up. So, on March 15th, I’m going to be having an event for fans of this podcast, fans of my book, fans of me. We’re going to all be hanging out in London. If you want to take part in that, please RSVP, and I’ll send you all the details, the where and the when. Just go to VulgarHistory.com/RSVP, and I’ll let you know where we’re meeting. But again, London, England, I’m coming for you on Sunday, March 15th. I’m really excited to see everybody there.
We’ll be back next week with another episode of Vulgar History. We’re diving right back into the Regency era, the reason for the season. Anyway, until then, my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out.
Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Regency Era artwork by Karyn Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod. Get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.
References:
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Buy a copy of Ann’s book Rebel of the Regency
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