Confessions of Margaret Beaufort

Hi,
Recently, I came across an excerpt from John Fisher's funeral oration for Margaret Beaufort.  In it he says that she made her confession 'every 3rd day' and that 'her mervaylous weeping the can bere witness of, which here before have herde haer confession...what floodes of teeres yssued forth from her eyes.'
This description doesn't seem consistent with her personality which has always struck me as being hard headed and practical.  I don't recall confession ever being such an emotive experience, but then I never had a personal confessor who had a lot of time for discussion - probably confession was the closest thing to therapy for the medieval nobility.  Was it customary or expected behaviour at the time to break down in tears while confessing?  If it was, I wouldn't want to read too much into it, but if it wasn't, this fact would suggest that the subject of her confession was distressing - either in the sense of terrible personal experiences or that she was confessing that she did something really terrible?

It is particularly interesting in relation to what she did in the late 1490's.  As far as I understand, it was generally widows who retired to take religious vows, but she sought a release from her marriage, which seems unusual.  I can imagine Margaret Beaufort having quite a few things to feel seriously guilty about - from betraying Richard to being stingy with her tenants - but in later life might she have had regrets, possibly discovering unintended consequences of her actions.  Obviously, this could include the fate of the Princes.  Maybe Stanley murdered them (or only managed one of them) in contemplation of the benefits he could receive under HT as King, but she didn't know until later.  New information may have emerged while Warbeck was in the Tower.  Was he have been the 'certain lord' that Perkin mentioned?  Her taking of religious vows coincides with the executions of Warwick and Warbeck.  It may have been a bit before, but their fates were probably sealed and she was aware of her role in it.  She may have been a traitor, but was she such a sociopath that she would be involved in the murder of two children?  I have always had doubts that she would go that far, but Stanley didn't even care about his own children.  I could definitely see her conspiring to remove them from the country unharmed, but him taking it one step further without her knowledge.

The more I think about HT and Titulus Regius, I do strongly suspect someone told HT that there was good reason to believe that the Princes were dead, but when the pretenders showed up he didn't what to make of it.  I had previously thought it must have been MB who led him to think this, but it may well have been Stanley.  Could she have been so appalled by him that she felt the need to distance herself?

Nico

Hi Nico,

Interesting post.

Personally I'm not convinced that HT had good information that the Princes were safely out of the way, as he was so chary of relegitimizing or marrying Elizabeth - there's more I could say on that but I'm working on a wee book which will explain it better. In fact, I I'd go so far as to wonder whether he had reason all along to suspect that at least one of them might still be "out there" somewhere like the proverbial truth.

I think weeping was regarded rather differently then rom now. I seem to remember reading that Philip the Good of Burgundy did it a lot, and was one of the things that earned him his sobriquet. But I think Fisher also tells how terrified Margaret was on her death bed. Now that could be just the result of listening to too many hellfire sermons and having been involved in plotting that got people killed. She may have had a conscience about Richard III. Maybe it was partly the guilt that essentially decent but compulsively controlling people inevitably accrue to themselves over a lifetime. But yes of course, maybe she knew she had had some sort of involvement in the deaths of other, really innocent, obstacles to her son's kingship.

I too find it hard to beliee that MB had it in her to murder the boys, but I'm not sure about the alternative scenario you suggest. Stanley wasn't close enough to Richard, and sufficiently well liked by him, for Richard to have entrusted the care of the two boys to him. And what about Sir William? Did he know what his brother had done?

Treating Perkin's story as a genuine account for the moment, I feel it points to Buckingham rather than Stanley having had the younger boy: he was his godfather, and the Divisie Chronicle says quite plausibly that Buckingham was RDoY's godfather (I say plausibly because of the child having been born in Shrewsbury, and the Duchess of Buckingham being the Queen's sister). Margaret Beaufort's involvement in the plotting means she must have been in touch with Buckingham, who was the nephew of her late husband and known to her since his childhood.

Actually, reading Perkin's account (the genuine one in his letter to Queen Isabella) it is not at all clear that the lord he claims to have been handed over to himself was the same person who killed his brother. Richard could well have decided to split the boys up for extra security, and entrusted them to two different people: whether for the purpose of having them killed as PW/York believed, or to keep them safe and secret, is debatable, but if Richard simply wanted them dead he would probably done so rather more simply.

But that opens up a can of worms, because it would suggest that Buckingham took over the rebellion that had been intended to reinstate Edward V whilst having every reason to believe he was still living. I think only two versions of this would work:

a) that Buckingham had both boys for safe keeping, killed the elder one to pave the way for his own claim to the throne, but couldn't go through with murdering the younger boy, his own godchild, and so shooed him off into exile;

b) that Buckingham believed Richard meant for him to murder the boys, killed one before realising he'd got the message wrong, and then changed sides out of desperation.

But why would Richard give the boys into the keeping of Elizabeth Woodville's brother-in-law? Even if Buck could be trusted, his wife certainly couldn't be.

The whole business is very puzzling, but just why did nobody ever come back claiming to be Edward V?

Anyone any ideas?

On Saturday, February 11, 2017, 8:07 pm, maryfriend@... [] <> wrote:

Hilary you don't think EW had anything to do with the death of either of the Princes? I can see her being involved with smuggling them abroad. There is the verbal story from the Tyrrell family which Audrey Williamson quoted in her book that the " boys were at Gipping with their mother by permission of their uncle". Apparently the Tyrrells never told the story because they felt that it proved that James had murdered them. However, I think the fact that she never accused Richard, even when he was dead meant that she knew that either they were not dead or that she knew who had killed them and it wasn't Richard. Of course the question to ask then is if she knew who killed them why didn't she accuse them when Richard was dead?

I'm sure Fisher did like MB but we must not forget that his glowing report of her comes from the oration he gave at her funeral.

Margaret wasn't seeking release from he marriage to take religious vows (I.e. she wasn't getting her marriage dissolved to take the veil as Sir John Pilkington's widow seems to have done from her second marriage). She just got the bishop to witness Stanley's permission to take a vow of chastity and live separately from him - more similar to the example of Margery Kempe. So it was about getting away from Stanley rather than wanting to be a nun. It was a retirement from court but not from the world in the sense that Collyweston became quite a hub.

It's also in 1499 that Margaret changes her signature from "Margaret Beaufort" to "Margaret R" and in 1500 she had men who had expressed doubt about who was the rightful king brought to Collyweston for questioning, so she wasn't distancing herself from her son's occupation of the throne in any real sense.

Hi Hilary,

Yes, I do think Edward IV is likely to have had an underlying health problem, but there is some evidence that he and his courtiers did tend to overeat - a grumble home by one of the Milanese ambassadors in 1473 that he could get no sense out of them as they do nothing but gourmandizing.

I think the jury is out over diabetes. The Greeks apparently knew about it but it's not clear that medieval doctors were tasting urine, which would have been the only way to diagnose it. Nor is there any evidence that Edward suffered from sores that failed to heal. But I personally think it's very possible.

He certainly got more lethargic, and Commines saw a big difference in his appearance between 1471 and 1475. If it was just due to greed, he could have picked himself up for the war with Scotland and got into shape. A couple of hints, I think, of something that may have involved his digestion. First there is the famous report that he used to make himself sick in order to start eating again. Perhaps he just kept being sick and couldn't help it? The second thing is the dispensation he got from the Pope to eat meat during fasting periods on the grounds that fish and seafood made him sick.

I suppose after years of overeating he could simply have developed acid reflux, but maybe it was something more complex.

Hall, incidentally, claims that Edward had the ague (ie malaria), which he picked up in 1475 on the French campaign, but as we know from Commines, his appearance had already changed markedly by that time.

I'm not sure we'd be any more charitable now - at least not with women. Re thyroid even, UK doctors have to enforce a very broad "normal" range even though individuals have differing needs for thyroid hormone. Nonetheless, if a person's thyroid result comes back within the set normal range that person is sent on to a psychologist for a diagnosis of "conversion disorder" (psychosomatic illness) even though there is no evidence that exists either (I know this, since a "friend" of ours is a psychologist who receives patients with unexplained medical symptoms and solemnly dishes out this diagnosis to them). We all know the history of the belief that women are prone to hysterical illness, and the scandalous misattribution of ME to the realms of psychologically perpetuated "chronic fatigue". Sorry - OT rant over.

So, anyway, if Edward fetched up now and modern doctors had a simple and obvious test for his complaint it would be recognised and treated, but otherwise not necessarily. If the digestive tract was involved in his chronic problems we might still not "get" it - it's an area of much current research but has been badly neglected for so long.

Put chronic illness together with a bad chill, and doctors perhaps treating his cold by shutting the windows and sitting him by a smoking fire, and pneumonia wouldn't be too much of a surprise.

Hi Mary,

Hi Mary,

Absolutely, acid reflux can cause oesophageal damage and cancer, but although Edward may have had acid reflux I don't think it can have been oesophageal cancer that killed him - it doesn't fit what we know of his last illness.

The medieval recipes and banquet menus I've seen suggest that he probably didn't see much in the way of shellfish - poor man's fare most likely. Most of the fish would have been freshwater, and I imagine the King would have got it very fresh. I'm in two minds as to whether Edward did have a genuine fish allergy or whether like most medieval people he was sick of fish in the metaphorical sense and so was tempted to blame it for his gastric problems, particularly if he'd had food poisoning from bad fish even once.

In general I'm chary of Mancini's evidence, as I am of all chroniclers and 'historians', but since both his patron (Angelo Cato) and his one known informant (John Argentine) had been royal doctors (Cato to Louis XI and Argentine to Edward V), I think he is likely to have made a point of getting hold of reliable information on Edward IV's last illness, and Dr. Argentine would surely have been filled in on the details by other royal physicians when he got to court with the new king. So I think we probably can trust the story of the chill caught whilst out fishing.

From what I've read Bishop Morton had been in Rome promising the Pope more me money. I'm sure absolution would not be a problem. The modern Catholic Herald has written several articles on Richard. Guess that Tudor thing didn't work out very well.

Hi I resurrected this because in the week I was watching a very interesting series on 1066. Various historians, including Janina Ramirez, role play the protagonists. I wish they'd do a similar programme about our period!
However, one point that was made was that William of Normandy was hesitant about invading England because he might kill an anointed king. Apparently once someone was anointed king, albeit whether they had a right to the throne or not, the act of anointing meant that to kill them would be highly sacrilegious.William got round this by petitioning the Pope and getting both his absolution and more importantly support.
Did HT do this before his invasion? The oath at Vannes would not absolve him, neither would a post-conquest petition to the Pope. One can imagine that this would eat away at a religious woman like MB. She had helped rescue her son but in doing so had condemned his eternal soul. No wonder she cried a lot. H

Hi I resurrected this because in the week I was watching a very interesting series on 1066. Various historians, including Janina Ramirez, role play the protagonists. I wish they'd do a similar programme about our period!
However, one point that was made was that William of Normandy was hesitant about invading England because he might kill an anointed king. Apparently once someone was anointed king, albeit whether they had a right to the throne or not, the act of anointing meant that to kill them would be highly sacrilegious. William got round this by petitioning the Pope and getting both his absolution and more importantly support.
Did HT do this before his invasion? The oath at Vannes would not absolve him, neither would a post-conquest petition to the Pope. One can imagine that this would eat away at a religious woman like MB. She had helped rescue her son but in doing so had condemned his eternal soul. No wonder she cried a lot. H