The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby

by Michael Jones, Malcolm G. Underwood

This study of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII and the founder of two Cambridge colleges is the first biography to explore the full range of archival sources and one of the best-documented studies of any late-medieval woman.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Biography, Tudor Period, Medieval, 15th Century

322 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

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Reviews

[Dorothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After getting into the mini series The White Queen I wanted to know more about Margaret Beaufort, the Mother of King Henry VII.This book is really terrific!

[Kari · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting account of the life of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. Grounded in detailed research, the authors discuss many aspects of her character and where she chose to devote her time. It discuss her important achievements such as the founding of two Cambridge colleges and the patronage she gave to printers of the period. The book shows her political astuteness, independence and the ruthless nature she often employed to maintain and enlarge her wealth and land holdings. A downside to the book would be that the quotations were frustrating as they were often in the original language such as French or Latin without a translation provided. Therefore without knowing these languages I could only guess at what was being said! The other negative of the book was that it sometimes got bogged down in the evidence so that it felt the authors were trying to put all the information down from a document when it did not seem entirely relevant. It was a good book and worth reading, just slightly wooden in style. It often felt like the documents were coming to life rather than the person of Margaret herself!

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Margaret Beaufort was one of the most fascinating late medieval women in England. Never technically a Queen, you can seriously argue she held more actual power than the Queen who was her daughter-in-law.

Jones and Underwood's work is learned, but the prose is often dry and the chapters about Margaret's properties and household life were a sludge to get through. I am hopeful that some day soon there will be a comprehensive biography of this fascinating woman that's also a delight to read...

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent factual biography of Margaret Beaufort, showing her family’s history, her placement in the War of the Roses, the work she did throughout her life to build up her family, and a lot of the details of how we go from the Plantagenet to the Tudors. However, it remains very factual throughout, with no sense of the human element beneath all the dry facts.

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A first class biography of a hugely significant figure and one of the few women of her period about whom we have a fair amount of documentation. This biography of Lady Margaret Beaufort is thorough and thoughtful, but it is not the most accessible of books. Slightly repetitious, due to its organization, and crammed full of names, places, and feudal property terms, it will not be for everyone. There are family trees, but even these are insufficient to place all the persons to whom Lady Margaret was related by birth or marriage, and I keenly felt the lack of maps.

However, I found the book to be well worth the effort. It offers a much fuller picture of this exalted lady than we usually get--one which is usually more or less reduced to the epithet "battle-ax." Like many in her day and of her social station she was both ruthlessly avaricious and incredibly generous. Her family, including her servants, and clergy and scholars attached to the two great universities, was of supreme importance to her, and no family member more so than her son, Henry VII. She took enormous care of everyone attached to her, but she was also quite capable of suing them if they owed her money. She was extremely devoted to Christ, and a huge benefactor of the church. She was a great administrator, and enjoyed powers which literally no other woman in the realm could command. She translated religious works from the French (regretting she hadn't paid more attention to her Latin as a girl). She inspired lifelong devotion in many people close to her, and was quite capable of enjoying humor, good food, fine clothing, and jewels. A complex character.

If you are deeply interested in this period, and can tolerate (or enjoy) a crush of detail, you'll find this book well worth the effort.

[Cathleen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the detail Mike went into for this book. I managed to get a real sense of who Margaret Beaufort was, how much she loved her son and how he meant everything to her. She was a very resourceful, strong woman.

[Nate]

DNFed around 9/13/2020. It got very dry and list-y later on.