LADY MARGARET BEAUFORT, mother of Henry VII | The real red queen | winning the Wars of the Roses

it's a story that has it all danger tragedy Intrigue epic battles child murder a 12 year old bride who became a 13 year old Widow and mother and ultimately the woman who won the wars of the Roses I'm speaking of course about the life of Lady Margaret Beaufort mother of Henry VII matriarch of the Tudor dynasty and someone who as a little girl was the pawn of her much more influential male relations but who ultimately Rose to become the most powerful woman in England it's an incredible teal and Margaret is one of History's savviest Fighters greatest survivors and a personal favorite of mine so sit back and relax with history calling as I tell you the story of the real Red Queen [Music] thank you before we get going this video is part of a larger series on the wars of the roses and especially on the women involved in those Wars which I'll leave linked on screen and blue for you it includes biographies of ladies such as Cecily Neville Duchess of York Queen Margaret of Anjou Queen Elizabeth Woodville and her mother jakera of Luxembourg with more still to come if you enjoy my content please remember to hit the Subscribe button under this video and switch on the notification Bell so that YouTube lets you know when I upload you can also find me on Instagram and patreon both of which are linked in the description box below Lily Margaret Beaufort was born on the 31st of May 1443 the only surviving child of John Beaufort Duke of Somerset and his wife Margaret Beacham or Beauchamp of Bledsoe and as such she was part of the sprawling plantagenet family which was then the ruling Dynasty in England through her father Margaret was a great great granddaughter of Edward III and it was this trickle of Royal Blood which would give her and ultimately her son a vague claim on the English throne and lead to the House of Tudor taking the crown it was a complicated descent though as it rested on an absolutely scandalous marriage the children of which were initially illegitimate I'm going to spend a few minutes explaining it to you here as the story of Edward III sons and some of his grandchildren is at the heart of the wars of the Roses if you're not familiar with that conflict which was actually a whole series of conflicts spanning several Generations it was the dispute between different branches of the plantagenet family over who should hold the throne and it would shape Margaret's life and indeed English History Edward III had five surviving Sons but by the time he died in 1377 his eldest Edward Prince of Wales known as the black prince was already dead the throne therefore went to the Prince's son who became Richard II and by the way the yellow lines indicate marriages and the blue lines indicate Offspring here Richard had no children and according to the rules of primagenitor his Heir was Edmund Earl of March who was a descendant of Edward III's second surviving son Lionel of Antwerp Duke of Clarence however in 1399 Richard II was deposed by his first cousin Henry Bolingbrook who was the son of Edward III's third son John of gaunt Duke of Lancaster and his first wife Blanche of Lancaster I know it's a lot you can always re-listen to this section of the video if you need to bullingbrook became Henry IV and Richard II died soon afterwards by which I mean he was probably murdered Henry IV's eldest son became Henry V then his son by the French Princess Catherine of valois became Henry VI in 1422 at the age of just nine months this is the man who was on the throne when Margaret was born but as this branch of the plantagenets were descended from Edward III's third son their blood claim on the throne was arguably weaker than the descendants of his second son Lionel avantorp Lionel's descendant Edmund Earl of March was long dead and had had no children but he had passed his claim to the throne to his sister Anne Mortimer she had married her distant cousin Richard Earl of Cambridge who just to confuse things was also a descendant of Edward III this time through his fourth son Edmund of Langley Duke of York we'll come back to this branch of the family later on for It produced Edward IV and Richard III among others but for now what's important to remember is that we have the descendants of John of gaunt who are known as the lancastrians because he was the Duke of Lancaster and we have the descendants of Lionel of Antwerp and Edmund of Langley who are known as the Yorks because Edmond was Duke of York the lancastrians hold the throne at the time of Margaret's birth because Henry IV had seized it but the Yorks have a better blood claim on it because they are descended from an older son of Edward III the idea of roses comes from the fact that one of the badges sometimes used by the House of Lancaster was a red rose while one of the badges sometimes used by the house of York was a white rose Margaret has therefore again the moniker of the Red Queen because as you're about to see she was a lancastrian nigh for the tricky bits yes we haven't even reached the tricky bit yet how does Margaret fit into all of this for that we need to go back to John of gaunt I've told you that his Heir was his son Henry bullingbrook later Henry IV but he wasn't John's only child far from it in fact after the death of John's first wife Blanche of Lancaster he married again in 1371 to Constance of Castile they had no surviving Sons so Constance isn't going to come into our story very much at all except to say that Jon cheated on her prolifically with his mistress Catherine swinford John and Catherine produced three sons and a daughter between 1372 and 1381. the eldest of which was Margaret's grandfather John Beaufort Earl of Somerset now these children were 100 illegitimate and therefore had no claim on the throne however the waters were married after Constance died in 1394 for John of gaunt now took the opportunity to marry his mistress in 1396 in one of the most scandalous unions in English Royal history this still didn't make their pre-existing children legitimate but the Duke took the additional step of getting the van poop to recognize the marriage in 1397 and retroactively make its children legitimate now this is Bonkers of course those kids were definitely born outside wedlock which is the whole definition of illegitimate but it just goes to show the degree to which money in power can buy people out of having to follow the rules this legitimacy was further bolstered by an act of the English Parliament that same year but in 1407 with Henry Bolingbrook now on the throne the act legitimizing his half-siblings was further clarified and a clause was added which specifically said that they and their descendants were barred from inheriting the crime Margaret's father was born in 1404 and married her mother in about 1442 sources differ on the exact year Margaret was their only surviving child and so when her father died in 1444 possibly by his own hand after a series of military and financial failures this baby who was the daughter of the king's half-cousin became a valuable heiress albeit one with no legal claim on the throne within days of her father's death Margaret was placed under the guardianship of Royal favorite William de la Paul Earl little Duke of Suffolk who married her off in early 1450 when she was just six years old to his seven-year-old son John De La Poole you don't generally hear much about this so-called marriage when you learn about Margaret because it was dissolved in 1453 and as it was an annulment of an unconsummitted child marriage made before she was 12 years old which was the minimum age a girl could marry and cohabit with her husband in this era it was arguably never really a marriage to begin with Margaret herself didn't recognize it as a real Union but there's enough of a gray area given the state of marital laws at the time that you could if you really wanted to argue that little John de la Paul was her first husband during this time little Margaret remained in her mother's care and grew up with the half-siblings produced through The Dowager Duchess of somersets earlier and later marriages after Suffolk who was deeply unpopular with many English nobles was murdered in 1450 her guardianship was up for grabs again and in 1453 it was transferred to the half-brothers of the King Edmund and Jasper Tudor like the beauforts these two men were the product of another controversial marriage this time between a royal mother and a commoner father I've already explained to you that Henry VI was the son of Henry V and the French Princess Catherine of valois well after the death of her husband Catherine secretly married a Welshman named Owen shooter and that Union produced Edmund and Jasper Nye in 1453 these two gained control of little Margaret and of the Beaufort Estates she had inherited that wasn't all though in 1455 pretty much as soon as she turned 12 Margaret was married to Edmund who was the Earl of Richmond and in his mid-20s she was neither King's sister-in-law as well as his cousin and unlike her earlier child marriage this one was consummated as Edmund sought to produce an heir as fast as possible and with a shocking disregard for the physical well-being of his extremely young wife another kindness of Richmond she and her husband travel to Wales in late 1455 and set up home in lampthy in pembrokeshire Margaret conceived around the end of April 1456 when she was still about a month shy of her 13th birthday but Edmund would never live to see their child having been captured by yorkist forces in August 1456 and imprisoned in carmarthen Castle he caught the plague and died on the 1st of November leaving Margaret a very young and pregnant Widow she moved to Pembroke Castle whom of her brother-in-law Jasper shooter who was Earl of Pembroke by the way and there on the 28th of January 1457 she gave birth to a baby boy she named him Henry after his half Uncle the king but the birth was apparently difficult particularly given Margaret's Youth and small stature and it seems very likely that it permanently damaged her as despite two further marriages there is no evidence that she ever conceived again still no one knew that she couldn't have more children in 1457 and in any case she still held a valuable for the states and was once again a sought-after bride less than a year after Henry Tudor's birth in January 1458 his knife 14 year old mother was married again this time to her distant cousin Henry Stafford who was the son of Humphrey Duke of Buckingham and a descendant of Edward III's fifth son Thomas of Woodstock Duke of Gloucester again there was a huge age Gap a Stafford was in his early 30s at the time not very long afterwards the wars of the Roses began to seriously impinge upon Margaret's life Henry VI had proven to be a very weak King not to mention one who had serious mental health issues at the time that his wife Margaret evangelo had given birth to their only child Edward Prince of Wales back in 1453 King Henry had been in a catatonic state from which he had only emerged at the end of 1454. for almost a year while the King was completely incapacitated the country had been managed by his cousin Richard Duke of York who held the post of protector and defender of the realm this man was a descendant of Edward III's second and fourth Sons you may remember and had a stronger blood claim on the throne than Henry VI he was also second in line after the Young Prince of Wales there was another protectorate between late 1455 and February 1456 and relations between the Yorks and the lancastrians continue to deteriorate as the decade progressed in June 1459 York and his supporters were indicted for treason and hostilities quickly broke out I'm not going to run through every individual battle here as not all of them directly affected Margaret but from her point of view the first really important Clash came on the 10th of July 1460 when her father-in-law the Duke of Buckingham was killed at the Battle of Northampton as a result of this yorkist Victory Henry VI was taken prisoner Margaret longju and her son had to flee North to Scotland and on the 31st of October parliament passed an act of Accord stating that the throne would pass from Henry VI to the Duke of York not to the Prince of Wales it was a disaster for the lancastrian cause still all was not lost for events moved at Breakneck speed over the next few months and at various points it seemed like either York or Lancaster could be victorious the Duke of York went from being almost King at the end of October 1460 to being killed on the battlefield at Wakefield on the 30th of December that year then Margaret evangelo who had picked up Scottish support for her cause marched back into England in January 1461. she headed for London while she and Margaret beaufort's brother-in-law Jasper Tudor and his father Owen shooter clashed with the forces of the Duke of York's eldest surviving son Edward Earl of March at the Battle of mortimer's cross at the start of February it was another huge setback for the lancastrians and the tutors alike Owen shooter was killed and Jasper was forced to flee to Mainland Europe although Queen Margaret did succeed in freeing her husband from yorkist forces at the Second Battle of Saint Albans on the 17th of February the royal family and their righty and destructive Army were refused entry into London by its citizens instead they had to retreat back North as the forces of Edward Earl of March approached the capital and on the 26th of February he was Allied into the city where he was proclaimed King Edward IV on the 4th of March the lancastrian Royals made a last-ditch effort to reverse these losses at the Battle of Titan on the 29th of March but they lost to the Orcs and had to flee to Scotland then Mainland Europe but what did this all mean for Margaret well she and her husband were devoted lancastrians as she was the cousin and sister-in-law of Henry VI and had been married into the Tudor family her second husband Henry Stafford fought for the lancastrians at Titan and when they lost things could have gone very badly for him and his wife fortunately they were both pardoned by the new Edward IV and Margaret's lands were not forfeited what was taken from her however was her four-year-old son little Henry Tudor Earl of Richmond was stripped of his title and inheritance and placed under the guardianship of William Lord Herbert who captured Jasper Tudor's Home Pembroke Castle on the 30th of September 1461. indeed Herbert himself was now mere to the new Earl of Pembroke even though Jasper still lived this forced separation from her son was surely nothing but painful for Margaret especially as it became clear she would have no more children but there was nothing that could be done about it she was allowed to write to Henry and visit him sometimes but she was powerless to do much else the lancastrian position was only weakened further when Henry VI was recaptured in 1465 and imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1469 Lord Herbert or Lord Pembroke as he was Nye and Henry tutor were ordered to go with the King to fight the forces of Edward's rebellious cousin the Earl of Warwick and his brother George Duke of Clarence at the Battle of edgecoat on the 24th or 26th of July this is another one of those dates where the sources differ the king and his men were defeated the former Lord Herbert was executed and Edward IV was taken prisoner and initially sent here to Warwick Castle Margaret panicked when she heard all that had happened thinking that her child might have been killed or injured too but the twelve-year-old Henry Tudor had been taken back to his guardian's widow and devaru a new Guardian would be needed for him though and Margaret tried to negotiate with the Duke of Clarence to improve her son's position and perhaps get some of his lands back this misfired when Edward IV managed to regain the initiative in the Autumn of 1469 for it now looked as though Margaret had been Consulting with his enemies fortunately her husband's loyalty was considered secure enough that nothing happened to her as a result of this but it certainly did nothing to endear her to the orchest cause in the uyo world of the wars of the Roses though Edward IV's return to par didn't last particularly long though he at first made a public show with forgiving Warwick and Clarence relations between the two sides quickly broke down again and the latter two men ended up fleeing to France where they made an alliance with the exiled Margaret olongju then returned to England to try to oast Edward once more he was in the north of the country when they landed and as such was taken by surprise and unable to defend his Capital he fled to Holland while his pregnant wife Queen Elizabeth Woodville and their children took shelter in Westminster Abbey Henry VI was released from his imprisonment and put back on the throne in October 1470. Margaret was now back in Royal good books her brother-in-law slash cousin was King once again and her other brother-in-law Jasper Tudor was back in England too her son was brought from where he had been staying at Webley with andevro to his uncle Jasper at Hereford in October 1470 and from there they traveled to London where mother and child were reunited they met and dined with the king who supposedly according to much later sources said that his nephew would one day be king the family stay together until the 11th of November when the now 13 year old Henry Tudor left Margaret to go to Wales with Jasper Margaret and I negotiated with the Duke of Clarence again to have her son's title of Earl of Richmond which Clarence was in possession of returned to him upon the Duke's death but all these plans came to naught when Edward IV returned to reclaim his kingdom this happened in March 1471 when Edward landed in Yorkshire with his other brother Richard Duke of Gloucester the future Richard III Clarence defected from Warwick back to his brothers and Edward marched to and entered London unopposed rescuing his wife daughters and newborn son from sanctuary in Westminster Abbey this baby was one of the future princes in the Tour by the way then set about eliminating lancastrian opposition Henry VI was reimprisoned in the Tower of London as Edward retook the throne and on the 14th of April the Earl of Warwick's forces were defeated at the Battle of Barnet and Hertfordshire and Warwick himself was killed Lily Margaret's husband Sir Henry Stafford fought on the yorkist side demonstrating how quickly this couple could change sides when it was necessary and he was wounded meanwhile that same day Margaret evangelo her son and her son's new wife who was Warwick's daughter and Neville arrived in England from France and heard what had happened they tried to get to Wheels to meet up with Jasper and the young Henry Tudor but Edward IV caught up with him at chicksbury on the 4th of May and in the ensuing battle Queen Margaret's 17 year old son Edward Prince of Wales not to be confused with Edward IV's new son who was given the same name and title was killed Margaret and Anne were taken prisoner and Henry VI mysteriously died in the tar on the 21st of May supposedly on the spot marked on the floor here though probably not really and with that the main lancastrian line had been extinguished and the orcas victory in the wars of the Roses seemed unsurmountable in the short term this was a failure for Lily Margaret Beaufort as it meant she was once again not a member of the extended royal family and her son was now in grave Danger the 14 year old Henry was neither senior surviving lancastrian meal even despite the taint of illegitimacy and the legal bar on the throne stemming from John of gaunt and Catherine swinford's Union until September 1471 he was holed up in Pembroke castle with his uncle Jasper and Margaret advised him not to accept any offer of a pardon from Edward IV who was developing a reputation for breaking such promises when it suited him and to instead flee abroad the two tutors did as she suggested and sealed for France that month though they were blown off course and ended up in Brittany instead which I know was part of modern day France but it was a little different in the 15th century it was to be 14 years before Margaret saw her child or Jasper again on the 4th of October that same year her husband died too having never properly recovered from the wounds he sustained at the Battle of Barnet Margaret and I faced a new chapter in her life as she worked to survive in a hostile environment and promote her absent son's interests the first thing she did was to remarry and with immodest Heist her new husband was Thomas Lord Stanley a favorite of Edward IV's whom the 9 29 year old Margaret wed in June 1472 it was a smart match which offered the lancastrian Margaret the protection of a yorkist husband and a conduit to the king whose trust and good graces she was going to need to secure if she ever wanted to build a bridge back to England for her son for Stanley it provided access to Margaret's considerable land Holdings Lily Margaret was now at the center of York Court life and her biographers Michael Jones and Malcolm Underwood are Leaf details of their book in the description box note that she was present and played a leading role in Royal events like the re-burial of the long dead Duke of York father of Edward IV in 1476 and the christening of Princess Bridget in 1480. always though she sought the rehabilitation of her son in 1472 just before her marriage to Stanley she made a will which allowed for some of her lands to be used to create an estate for Henry should he ever return from Exile and her hopes must have been buoyed by the execution in 1478 of the king's brother George Duke of Clarence who was drawn in wine of all things for this freed up the Earl of Richmond title once again she was still cautious of Edward IV though in 1476 she told Henry not to return to England even if he was offered a York princess as a bride which suggests that she was wary of Edward's plans and in fact the King was hunting her son Across the Western continent nearly catching him on more than one occasion which would very possibly have led to Henry's death see my video on his early life for details of his extraordinary Journey to the throne which I think is often overlooked by shooter enthusiasts because they get distracted by Henry VIII and his wives and Elizabeth the first by 1482 this situation seemed to have improved though for a document which Edward IV himself signed off on again made arrangements for Henry's return from Exile as long as he was in the king's favor it did this by reaffirming the earlier ground of lands made back in 1472 and also assigned him many of the lands which had belonged to Margaret's mother The Dowager Duchess of Somerset who had only just died a few weeks earlier the fact that the Richmond title was something the family wanted back for him is emphasized by the fact that the document actually referred to him as the Earl of Richmond though in reality he hadn't held that title for many years the 1482 plans never came to anything probably because Henry tutor was reluctant to trust Edward IV and he was right to be so not only had Edward been hunting him down the King was also making alternative arrangements for his daughter's marriages and wasn't perhaps all that committed to a match between his eldest girl princess Elizabeth and the sometime Lord Richmond from Margaret's point of view though she was investigating and where possible setting up potential routes of return for her son even if they didn't ultimately pan out she was essentially keeping her own and his options open but without actually committing to anything that might put Henry in physical Danger as it transpired though it was only by placing himself in the greatest possible physical danger that he would in fact get to come home and the chain of events which led to his dramatic return all started in April 1483 when Edward IV died in the next part of the video we're going to look at that Year's dramatic sequence of events and at the accusations that Margaret may have had something to do with the fate of Edward's Sons the princes in the tar after the older King's death the succession initially seemed secure enough the crown passed to his 12 year old son Edward V who was then at Ludlow castle where he was being raised by his mother's Woodville family specifically Queen Elizabeth's brother Anthony Woodville and one of her sons from her first marriage Richard Gray he was quickly sent forward to return to London for his coronation and left the castle on the 24th of April things started to go seriously awry though when Edward IV's Brother Richard Duke of Gloucester got involved he intercepted the new King on the 29th of April seized control of the boy's person and ultimately had Woodville and gray killed he took the new little King to London ostensibly to prepare for his coronation placed him in the tar and had one of his staunch supporters Lord Hastings summarily executed then on the 16th of June he had The Dowager Queen who had fled into sanctuary in Westminster Abbey with her daughters and younger son Richard of shrewsby Duke of York released this other boy into his care the little jerk was sent straight to the tower to join his brother after which Gloucester announced that actually Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville had never been legally married their children were therefore illegitimate and he was in fact the rightful King he took the Quran on the 26th of June and the princes and the tar who were really a king and a prince just to be precise were never seen again now my personal view is that those boys were most likely killed on Richard III's orders but there is a theory popularized in recent years by the novelist Philippa Gregory that Margaret Beaufort somehow had them killed in order to clear a path to the throne for her son Henry Tudor I've always found this to be a particularly bad case of pseudo history and a terrible slander to lay at Margaret's door what creates with me is not that Gregory put this baseless rumor into her fiction books because fiction is fiction and even when it's based on historical fact you are allowed to play around with it and I quite like that what kind of a world would it be without the likes of Outlander and Doctor Who for instance giving us alternative histories no I really only take issue with the claims that Gregory's accusations that Margaret was a double child murderer are actually based on solid historical research and might be true that is codswallop we don't know for certain what happened to the boys but all available circumstantial evidence points to Richard III as having orchestrated their disappearance and likely deaths from his seizure of the children and the throne to the murder of Anthony Woodville Richard Gray and Lord Hastings to the fact that they disappeared and he never produced them to show that they were still alive nor did he comment on their feet or order any investigation into it to the potential confession in the early 1500s of Sir James Tyrell who said he and two other men had smothered the boys on Richard's orders to the Discovery in 1674 of two skeletons behind a wall in the white tar which have long been assumed to be the princes and which are not entered in Westminster Abbey there is absolutely no evidence that Margaret had anything to do with it and huge practical problems associated with her planning it how exactly was she or rather her agents supposed to have breached the walls of the Tower of London for instance had its two most high-profile guests prisoners murdered and got away with it furthermore she didn't actually have a motive for killing them it's only with hindsight that we can see that events were leading her son towards the throne at that point no one knew that in 1483 and killing the boys at that stage only made Richard's position more secure not Margaret's as without them he really was next in line for the throne this is because the children of his older brother George had been blocked from it due to their father's disgrace and execution back in 1478. in fact had she or anyone else killed him it would have been a gift to Richard who could have blamed their deaths on someone other than himself and removed the stain of being a regicide and child killer from himself the fact that he never accused anyone else of having harmed them is very telling indeed lastly had Margaret had the princess killed without her son in position to immediately take the throne the most likely outcome would have been her own execution and an indelible blemish on Henry tutor's reputation murdering them at that point would have been stupid and would still have left them with the problem of needing to kill Richard III and his son we have to remember that the chances that Henry Tudor and exiled Welshman from an illegitimate branch of the royal family who was only the great great grandson of a long dead King was going to wind up on the throne in the near future were ludicrously low at this point Richard held the crown he had a legitimate son the son of his brother George was still alive even if he had been barred from the throne and there was also the Duke of Buckingham to contend with despite being married to Elizabeth woodville's sister Buckingham was initially a strong supporter of Richard III but as a descendant of Edward III's fifth son Thomas of Woodstock he also had his own claim on the throne he was by the by also Margaret's nephew through her second marriage each of these people were in better shape to claim the throne than Henry Tudor even Edward IV's daughters were better potential Clements despite their new illegitimate status as was Lady Margaret Beaufort herself who was after all the senior surviving boat for Clement not her son I've said it before and I'll say it again Henry VII taking the crown was one of the big plot twists of English History and it's not something his mother was even contemplating until late 1483. up to that point she was still angling as she had been for years for Henry to return as the Earl of Richmond then hopefully marry one of the York princesses and live the life of a landed magnet she even opened negotiations with the new Richard III in early July 1483 with a view to bringing that plan to fruition and attended the coronation of Richard and his Queen and Neville on the 6th or 7th of that month again I've seen different sources give different dates I know Margaret's reputation has been trashed in many quarters by those claiming that she was a grasping Maniac who always had her eye on the throne but if you're going to claim that then please provide some actual evidence to support it and which is strong enough to counteract all the evidence against Richard I've just gone through using historical hindsight to dream up what I consider to be a phony motive and offering no explanation as to how Margaret could have gotten someone into the tar to commit this double murder isn't remotely convincing and in fact the very real practical problems associated with trying to get at the princes were amply proven in Late July 1483 when there was a field plan to rescue them this plan involved the tutors in as much as letters were sent to Jasper and Henry telling them that parts of London would be set on fire as a distraction then the princes would be taken out of the tar with the longer term plan seemingly being that the two tutors would come back with an invasion force from France to support the restored yorka's King therefore confirming their loyalty to the regime the attempt to storm the Tara field however scores of conspirators were arrested several were executed and the princes were never found by September the gossip in London and Beyond was that they were most likely dead it was only at this stage that Margaret began to plot to put her son on the throne her first attempt to do so however was a complete failure and nearly cost her her life this attempt was made in the Autumn of 1483 and one of Margaret's co-conspirators was none other than the former Queen Elizabeth Woodville whose involvement indicates that she believed her royal Sons were dead and it also suggests that she didn't think that Margaret had anything to do with it the new plan was that Henry Tudor would invade with a French army take the throne and marry princess Elizabeth of York thereby uniting the two factions of the plantagenet family the two women communicated via their Mutual doctor Lewis carleon who was able to get in to see Elizabeth and her daughters who were still in sanctuary and were assisted by other conspirators including Elizabeth's last remaining son from her first marriage Thomas Gray Marcus of Dorset and her brothers Richard Edward and Lionel Bishop of Salisbury more surprising is the involvement of the Duke of Buckingham and to this day no satisfactory explanation has been fined to explain why he turned on Richard in order to help Henry tutor but Jones and Underwood suggests that Margaret may have drooped him into thinking that he would end up on the throne his rule was to raise an Army in England which would join up with a force coming over from France under Henry's control the entire thing was a disaster however Buckingham rebelled to soon struggled to gain significant support and ended up going into hiding by the time Henry Tudor arrived off the Dorset Coast it was too late to do anything he sealed back to Brittany where he was joined in Exile by Lord Dorset Buckingham was captured and executed in Salisbury on the 2nd of November and Lionel Woodville had to flee to Bull Yu where he died the following year as for Lily Margaret she was lucky to escape with her life and it was only her marriage to the pro ricardian Lord Stanley which saved her she was stripped of her money and lands including those she had placed in trust for Henry back in the 1470s and these were instead given to her husband as for her person she was placed under house arrest in the custody of her spice and without her household servants short of torturing or killing her Richard could hardly have punished her more she was still alive though and that was his mistake for Lord Stanley allowed her to continue communicating with Henry and less than two years later she and her son made the comeback of this century by August 1485 Richard III's position was markedly weaker in many ways his wife had died as had his only son and only legitimate child in fact and though this did leave him free to remarry and produce fresh airs he hadn't done so yet he was the only real obstacle between Henry Tudor and the throne and Henry's plan was clearly still to oust Richard and marry Elizabeth of York a marriage which he swore to see through on Christmas Day 1483 in Rand cathedral in France there was also little for Henry to lose Now by trying to take the crown he and his mother had shown their hands at the end of 1483 and I think they were both in a Do or Die situation if Henry didn't take the throne he'd be on the Run for the rest of his life and if he waited any longer he ran the risk of Richard marrying again and producing those fresh airs I mentioned there were even rumors which Richard denied that he was going to marry his niece princess Elizabeth himself it was time for the final shooter push for the throne Henry landed at Milford Haven on the 7th of August 1485 with a small army which included Elizabeth woodville's remaining Brothers Edward and Richard though her son Lord Dorset had been left behind as a hostage to the French to make sure Henry paid them back the money they had given him towards this Expedition marching three wheels and into England Henry finally clashed with Richard's forces at Bosworth field on the 22nd of August also at the battle was Margaret's husband Thomas Lord Stanley with his brother William Williams decision to throw his military might behind his step-nephew helped to swing matters in Henry's favor while Thomas remained neutral no doubt so that he could say he was on the side of whoever the winner was and intercede on William's behalf if needs be this wasn't necessary in the event though Richard III was killed and it was Thomas who picked up the deceased King's battle crime and placed it on Henry's head the churu era had begun and Margaret was neither mother of the king and the most powerful woman in the land it was an extraordinary turnaround for a woman who had not been born the child of a monarch or a prince who had effectively been sold off as a little girl not once but twice who had survived childbirth at 13 and been separated from her son for 14 years and who had had to try to ingratiate herself with three separate Kings all whilst protecting her child's interests and trying to find a safe way to bring him home to her Margaret's job wasn't over yet though with she and Henry's new positions Kim knew responsibilities and new dangers forgetting the throne was one thing while keeping it was entirely another make sure you come back next time to hear all about how she helped him to navigate his new position and her relationships with her one-time Ally Elizabeth Woodville her new daughter-in-law Elizabeth of York and of course her Infamous grandson the future Henry VII let me know below if I've convinced you that Margaret didn't have anything to do with The Disappearance of the princes in the tar and if you can't wait to hear more about the wars of the roses and the tutors try one of these videos next whatever you choose please enjoy and until next time keep learning

Channel: History Calling

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Length: 38min 8sec (2288 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023