Descendants: the Beaufort Family

Being born out of wedlock during Medieval times didn't always have to be the disgrace that Victorian dime novelists made it out to be.  If the biological father was royal or noble, children could be provided for with titles, lands, and advantageous marriages that would vault them from illegitimacy to a place among the nobility of England.  This is the story of the Beauforts, and their rise to power, which they have steadily held onto till the present day.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, one of the sons of Edward III, was married three times.  His first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, a Plantagenet in her own right, was the mother of Henry of Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV of England.  John's third wife, and the love of his life, was Katherine Swynford, with whom he had at least four children and subsequently married.  In Medieval times, under certain conditions, a subsequent marriage legitimized the children of the marriage, even if they weren't allowed to inherit a place in the line of succession.  John of Gaunt, one of the wealthiest men of his day, had enough land to support John, Jr., Henry, Thomas and Joan.  Their cousin Richard II declared them legitimate under the name of Beaufort, a derivation from an estate held by John of Gaunt in France, Beaufort-Montmorency.  John's half-brother, Henry IV, made him Earl of Somerset in 1397.  His son, another John, became Duke of Somerset in 1443.  And the other Beaufort kids didn't do too bad.  Thomas became Duke of Exeter, and Joan married the Earl of Westmoreland.  Among her descendants were the Dukes of York (ironically), the Dukes of Norfolk and Buckingham, the Earls of Northumberland, Warwick the Kingmaker and Queen Catherine Parr.  John of Somerset's granddaughter Margaret was the mother of Henry VII. 

And it keeps getting better.  The 3rd Duke of Somerset died during the Wars of the Roses, but his biological son was legitimate under his title and began the Somerset line of the Earls of Worcester.  The Beauforts remained staunch Royalists during the English Civil War.  Charles II, a Plantagenet descendant himself many times over, made Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester into the 1st Duke of Beaufort.  Today, David Somerset, the 11th Duke of Beaufort, carries on the family line.  Plantagenets walk the earth today, even if under a different name.