Royal: Lady Margaret Beaufort, 1443-1509, Part 2

Lady Margaret Beaufort has almost universally been depicted in novels, plays and movies as, to quote historian David Starkey, the mother-in-law from hell.  A woman so imperious, so aware of her own royal blood and her status as the King's mother that she wouldn't give way to Henry's young wife, a teenager who didn't know the first thing about being a queen.  Margaret was now, My Lady the King's Mother, who signed herself Margaret R, whereas she had always used Margaret Richmond before 1499.  While R could mean Regina or Queen, R. could also stand for Richmond, and she'd never forgotten Edmund Tudor.  She was also proud of her son, and often completed her signature with the Latin for, Mother of Henry, King of England and Ireland.  Margaret completely reworked the etiquette and protocols for the new court.  Henry deferred to her and expected others to do the same.  However, the one who would most know what life with Margaret was like was Elizabeth of York who, if she found Margaret hard to deal with never let on. 

Margaret's husband was made Earl of Derby.  She was thus Countess of Richmond and of Derby and in control of a great deal of personal wealth.  She was a frequent benefactor of Westminster Abbey, and commanded the monks there to celebrate her birthday each May 31 with an appropriate Mass.  Both she and her husband endowed several churches in Wales.  She established the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge.  She would turn God's House, Cambridge into the College of Christchurch in 1505.  After her death, she left instructions for the founding of another College, St. John's.  Today, she's considered the foundress of both institutions.  Lady Margaret Society and the Beaufort Club at Christchurch commemorate her, as does the Lady Margaret Boat Club at St. John's.  Lady Margaret Hall, the first women's college at Cambridge, was founded in her honor.  When flooding threatened some of her properties, she arranged for engineers to build sluices to reclaim the land.  She also founded a grammar school in Wimbourne. 

In her personal life, Margaret was an extremely pious woman.  In 1499, she decided that she wished to live a life of chastity, through her husband was still living.  Derby agreed and Margaret moved to Collyweston Manor, Northamptonshire, where she devoted her life to prayer.  It's from this period of her life that the portrait of her at prayer, in black with a nun-like wimple comes from.  She renewed her vows in 1504 but her husband was still welcome in her home.  A suite of rooms at Collyweston was kept ready whenever he visited.  Then, in 1503, tragedy struck.  Elizabeth of York died from the after-effects of childbirth.  Henry and his children were devastated and it was Margaret who rallied her son and kept his court going around him.  Henry repaid his mother by making her executor in his will.  In 1509 he died and his young son, Henry VIII took the throne.  Margaret managed his coronation.  She died in the deanery at Westminster on June 29, 1509 and was buried in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey.  Her gilded bronze effigy lies between the tombs of William and Mary and near her great-granddaughter Mary Queen of Scots.