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  Margaret’s onetime carver Henry Parker confirmed Fisher’s picture of Margaret’s extraordinary devotions: “As soon as one priest had said mass in her sight,” he remembered, “another began.” But he adds also that at dinner (and “how honourably she was served I think few kings better”), she was always “joyous” at the beginning of the meal, hearing tales to make her merry, before hearing readings from some spiritual work. Nonetheless—despite her fondness for muscadel, her habit of keeping wine and spices in a locked cupboard of her own chamber for a nightcap—Fisher wrote of her “sober temperance in meats and drinks,” eschewing banquets and tidbits between meals. For “age and feebleness,” he wrote, she might have been exempted from the fast days appointed by the church, but chose instead to keep them “diligently and seriously,” and especially all through Lent “restrained her appetite to one meal and one fish” a day. She mortified herself in other ways, as well. “As to hard clothes wearing she had her shirts and girdles of hair, which when she was in health every week she failed not certain days to wear . . . [so] that full often her skin as I heard her say was pierced therewith.”

  In her faith, Margaret was at one with the women of the old Yorkist regime. Like Cecily Neville, Margaret owned—and commissioned Wynkyn de Worde to print—Walter Hilton’s writing on the “mixed life,” which combined a spiritual program with more worldly concerns. Like her frequent opponent, Cecily’s daughter Margaret of Burgundy, she was particularly attached to the reformed order of Franciscans, the Observants. Margaret of Burgundy had probably been responsible for their establishment in England after 1480; in 1497 Margaret Beaufort was granted confraternity by the order.

  A disproportionate amount of the information that has survived about Margaret Beaufort seems to come from these last years of her life, thanks in part to her involvement with the Cambridge colleges, in whose archives much of it is preserved. But perhaps that ever more active engagement was not coincidental; perhaps it was now, when she had been shaken by the death of a woman who—whatever their personal relations had been—she could never have expected to predecease her, that Margaret became aware that it was time to follow her own interests and make her own legacy.

  King Henry’s retreat immediately after Elizabeth’s death showed he was indeed devastated. He would continue, religiously, to keep the anniversary of her demise, and from this time on there would be a marked lessening in the cheer of his court. He had loved her . . . But Henry was now a widower, just as his son’s wife Catherine of Aragon was now a widow. The coincidence seems to have struck Henry as opportune. Marrying Catherine may have seemed for a moment like a good way of resolving the equation and keeping her dowry and the Spanish connection in the country. But Catherine’s mother, Isabella, in Spain, was horrified when she heard the rumors. Such a marriage between father and daughter-in-law would, she said, be “a very evil thing—one never before seen, and the mere mention of which offends the ears—we would not for anything in the world that it should take place.” It is an interesting reflection on Henry’s character that his instructions to his ambassadors, when later he was considering other candidates, made it plain he was not prepared to marry an ugly second wife. They were to make a careful note of breath, breasts, and complexion—a roundabout tribute to Elizabeth of York.

  Henry VII soon conceived of anther way to keep Catherine of Aragon in England. Shortly after the idea of marriage to her father-in-law was mooted, Catherine was instead betrothed to Prince Henry, amid an extended debate as to whether she was betrothed as Arthur’s widow in the fullest sense, or as the virgin survivor of an unconsummated marriage. It was a debate that would display its full ramifications later in the next century, when the younger Henry, Henry VIII, would begin casting about for reasons to cancel his marriage to Catherine so he could take a new bride. Henry VII negotiated—bickered—indefatigably over the question of Catherine’s dowry, but in this and other negotiations, he was now maneuvering from a position of decreased security.

  The Tudor dynasty now faced an uncertain future. The death of Elizabeth of York, so soon after that of the expected, the near-adult, heir, Prince Arthur, put fresh question marks over a regime that had, after all, been in power for less than twenty years. Anyone tethered to the Tudors by loyalty to the old Yorkist dynasty—of which Elizabeth had been, pretenders apart, the last embodiment—might now consider themselves free to explore other options.

  Too many of the men (and women) who had been involved in the rebellions against Henry had surnames like Neville, or else were under the young Duke of Buckingham’s sway. Margaret Beaufort’s onetime ward, son to Richard III’s nemesis, Buckingham had turned out to be another who gazed toward the throne itself with covetous eyes. Henry VII was known to be sickly, and his sole surviving son was at this point only eleven years old. Had the infections that wracked the king’s lungs and throat actually carried him off, it would have been the question of another minority—that, or another, older, man’s opportunity.

  In 1504 Henry’s officers were discussing a conversation that had earlier taken place between “many great personages” about the succession and the future of the country. Some spoke of Buckingham as a possible next king, some of Suffolk, but none of them “spoke of my lord prince.” An agent of Suffolk’s at the imperial court had been assuring Maximilian that, should Henry VII die, young Prince Henry could in no way prevail against Suffolk’s own claim.

  This insecurity probably affected the way Henry VII comported himself once the warmth and influence, and the political authority, he had gained from his wife had vanished. That summer of 1503, Reginald Bray—Henry’s greatest officer and one who had had his start under Margaret Beaufort—had also died. Rather than replace him by giving any other individual the same authority, Henry increasingly kept power in his own hands, raising new men but trusting none completely. He was also becoming ever more obsessed with money, an accusation that could of course also be brought against his mother. Perhaps Elizabeth had been instrumental in his earlier comparative liberality.

  In the summer of 1504, Margaret’s husband, Stanley, died, allowing her even greater access to her own funds. She also took the opportunity to confirm her vows of chastity. “In the presence of my Lord God Jesu Christ and his blessed Mother the glorious Virgin Saint Mary and of all of the whole company of Heaven & of you also my ghostly father I Margaret of Richmond with full purpose and good deliberation for the weal [welfare] of my sinful soul with all my heart promise from henceforth the chastity of my body. That is never to use my body having actual knowledge of man after the common usage in matrimony the which thing I had before purposed in my lord my husband’s days.”

  But despite her powerful religious interests, Margaret did not turn to a semiretired and contemplative life, as others had done. She had different duties. In 1505 she felt it necessary to abandon her recently established power base of Collyweston for a variety of houses often borrowed from the bishops whose perks of office they were; here too Margaret was prepared to take advantage of everything the church had to offer. She wanted to be nearer to Henry and his court, even if there were some new frictions between mother and son. Henry was in the process of taking her beloved, and convenient, Woking away from her to convert it to royal use. Shades of Cecily and Fotheringhay—which, indeed, was one of the properties Margaret now used, cleared and cleaned for her convenience. A letter Henry wrote to his mother around this time makes excuse that he had “encumbered you now with this my long writing, but me thinks that I can do no less, considering that it is so seldom that I do write.”

  Margaret had after all her other, ever more absorbing, field of independent interest: her patronage of colleges and universities, especially the University of Cambridge. Her benevolence had originally been a little more widely spread; in the closing years of the last century, Oxford too had hailed her as the princess “of rank most exalted and of character divine” who would exceed all others in her patronage. However, the influence of John Fisher led her to the oth
er establishment—as did, perhaps, its proximity to her geographical areas of influence.

  Margaret’s support for Queens’ College in Cambridge (which Marguerite, Anne, and Elizabeth Woodville had supported before her) could be taken as part of her ongoing bid for the regal role. Her long-standing interest in Cambridge’s Jesus College, too, was a concern shared by the whole royal family. But what came next was all her own. She took the underfunded “God’s House” in Cambridge and turned it into Christ’s College: not her only enduring legacy in that city, but the one that can be most clearly identified with her. The college statutes of 1506 show that she reserved for her own use a set of four rooms there, located between the chapel and the hall and with windows giving a direct view down into either, a position from which she could partake of the college devotions in privacy, perhaps fancy herself part of this masculine seat of learning, and from which she could also keep an eye on the college business as it progressed day to day. Her heraldic devices are still prominently modeled on the oriel window outside her former lodgings. One is a portcullis, the other a “yale”—a mythical creature with the ability to twist its horns in different directions, to keep one of them safe in a fight, and a symbol of proud defense appropriate for the wary Tudors.

  Margaret is known to have visited Cambridge in 1505, 1506, 1507, and (less certainly) 1508, and her work there did not cease with the foundation of Christ’s. Her careful arrangements extended not only to ensuring that Fisher could use her rooms when she was not doing so, but to arranging a country property (one of her many bequests to the college) to which the scholars could retreat when plague came to the city. As early as 1505, Fisher also drew her attention to the lamentable state of the ancient hospital of St. John the Evangelist, and though in the event it would be her executors who oversaw the difficult process of converting it into St. John’s College (a place that was to be “as good and as of good value” as Christ’s), here too her arms can still be seen resplendent above the porter’s lodge today. There is a story of how, looking out of her windows at Christ’s once, Margaret saw the dean punishing a lazy scholar and cried out, “lente, lente” (gently, gently). That softer side of her character is elusive; life had not taught her to display it readily.

  After Elizabeth of York’s death, Margaret was certainly involved to some degree in the upbringing of Prince Henry, though her interventions sound more like those of a formidable organizer than of a doting grandmother. The excessive interest his father now took in the young prince meant he was never going to be sent off to Ludlow where his brother had died, but as heir to the throne he was nevertheless in need of a more adult and masculine establishment than he had hitherto been provided. Here, as everywhere, his grandmother’s hand can be seen, and the composition of his new household showed a considerable degree of cross-fertilization with hers. His bede-roll—a portable prayer manual, meant to be pored over daily—suggests not only a genuine piety but a particular interest, which Margaret shared, in the Crucifixion itself: the wounds and the holy name of Jesus. His love of chivalry might have come first from the York side of the family, but here too Margaret played a role: in 1504 two of the four young men added as “spears” to the prince’s household came from hers.

  There is no evidence of Margaret having fulfilled any sympathetic function toward Catherine of Aragon, however much the girl may have stood in need of it. Catherine was caught between her father’s and her father-in-law’s diplomacy, an unenviable position and one that soon became even more uncomfortable. At the end of 1504, the death of Catherine’s mother, Isabella of Castile, reduced Catherine’s diplomatic value; thenceforth, she represented only a less valuable alliance with her father’s Aragon, rather than with a united Spain. In June 1505, Prince Henry was instructed to repudiate his official marriage with her, leaving Catherine once again without clear prospects in a strange land.

  Isabella’s own kingdom of Castile, her share of Spain, descended not to her husband, Ferdinand, but to her daughter Juana, Catherine’s older sister. This development created a battle for control between Juana’s husband, Philip of Burgundy, and her father, Ferdinand, who had no intention of giving up so easily. Though there is evidence Juana made valiant if ineffectual efforts to take control into her own hands and rule as her mother had done, the real tussle was between the two men. History knows Juana as “the Mad,” but modern scholarship suggests that although her behavior could sometimes be erratic, the slur was little more than a pretext used by the men of her family to set her aside—a decision apparently acquiesced in by most contemporary opinion.

  In January 1506, the wintry weather gave England a firsthand view of Juana and her problems and blew an unexpected bonus onto Henry’s shores. Juana and Archduke Philip, on their way to Spain to claim her inheritance, were shipwrecked on the Dorset coast. Hearing the news at Richmond, King Henry immediately sent word to his mother at Croydon and set about preparing a dazzling reception. The reluctance of her male connections to take up cudgels for the isolated Catherine was dramatized when she invited her brother-in-law Philip to join her in dance and got only a resounding snub. It was the precocious Princess Mary, not yet in her teens, who saved the situation by dancing with Catherine herself. Philip’s attitude to Juana was also made plain. He purposely kept her away from Henry’s court until he himself was firmly established as the star visitor, which left Catherine only a few hours to spend with the sister she was never likely to see again. Other factors apart, the last thing Philip would have wanted was for Catherine either to encourage Juana in independence or, maybe, to get too much evidence of her sister’s sanity.

  Philip was taken also to visit Margaret Beaufort at Croydon, where the archduke’s minstrels would perform for the king’s mother. Prince Henry would receive a grandmotherly present of a new horse with fine gold and velvet trappings, the better to show off in front of a Burgundian guest who was a leading exponent of martial chivalry.

  King Henry’s main topic of negotiation with his guest was a treaty of mutual defense between England and Burgundy (something that would make an Aragonese alliance with Catherine even less necessary). One subtext was Henry’s determination to regain custody of the fugitive Suffolk, still enjoying Burgundian hospitality. He won Philip’s promise to send Suffolk back to England, for all that Philip initially demurred, apparently invoking the memory of Margaret of Burgundy, to whom he said he still owed a loyalty. And King Henry, when he met her, appeared to have been considerably more impressed with Juana than Juana’s own husband, lending her, when the time came to resume her journey, Elizabeth of York’s “rich litters and chairs.”

  Suffolk was brought back to imprisonment in England; he would eventually be executed but by Henry VIII, not by his father. Indeed, a number of those caught up in the fallout of his dissent were treated with a leniency that may owe something to their female connections.

  In other directions, however, the king was proving himself a harsher ruler than in earlier days. He had now two new and dauntingly aggressive money collectors, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, who used every tactic of law and intimidation to extract revenue and who caused, so Bacon heard from an earlier chronicle, “much sorrow” from the autumn of 1506. Was this what John Fisher was referring to when he wrote that Margaret Beaufort detested avarice and covetousness in anyone, but most especially in any that belonged to her? Her own love of money was tempered by possibly a softer heart, and surely a stronger morality, than her son’s.

  But if there were any differences of opinion between Margaret and her son, they would now regularly be eclipsed by concerns over the king’s health. Early in 1507, he fell ill with a disease of the throat or chest—perhaps quinsy (an abscess) or else tuberculosis. Lady Margaret moved into Richmond to be by his side, just as she had done in 1503, and, just as she had done then, she buried her worries in practicalities, ordering not only a supply of medicinal materials but also mourning garb—attire that, for the moment, proved unnecessary.

  Also in February 1507, Marga
ret in Scotland gave birth to a son—several years after her marriage, so it is possible her husband, James, unlike Edmund Tudor long ago, had indeed waited until she was rather older to consummate the marriage. She was dangerously ill after the birth, but her husband went seven days on foot to a famous shrine to pray for her recovery. Despite the presence of his illegitimate children—despite the early death of this and other of her babies—this Margaret was lucky in her marriage. She was lucky, that is, until her husband’s early death at Flodden in 1513, fighting against an English army—her brother Henry Tudor’s army.*

  Henry and Mary, the Tudor children still in England, were beginning to come into their own. That spring, in May 1507, the tournaments with their elaborate springtime pageantry were all about the young Prince Henry and the ravishing sovereign of the joust, his budding sister Princess Mary. After Elizabeth’s death, Mary had probably spent some of her time in Margaret Beaufort’s care, whether at court or at Eltham (where the very swans in the moat now wore enameled badges with the Beaufort portcullis around their necks).

  That summer, the elder Henry was sufficiently recovered to be set on a new and promising courtship. Philip of Burgundy had died unexpectedly in the autumn of 1506, leaving Juana, the queen of Castile, a widow. From Henry’s viewpoint, she was almost as desirable a prospect as Elizabeth of York had been—beautiful, and carrying with her a kingdom. The Spanish ambassador wrote that the English “seem little to mind . . . her insanity, especially since I have assured them that her derangement of mind would not prevent her from bearing children.” It was a realistic but nonetheless brutal reminder that a queen consort’s first duty was childbearing and that mental strength—even mental stability—was not regarded as necessary in a woman.