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| Edmund Beaufort 2nd Duke of Somerset @Wikipedia |
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| Edmund Beaufort 2nd Duke of Somerset @The History Jar |
(1406-1455)
1448-1455
Duke of Somerset 1448
Marquess of Dorset 1443
Earl of Dorset 1442
Count of Mortain 1427
Knight of the Garter 1436
Lieutenant of France 1444-1449
Husband of Eleanor Beauchamp, mar 1431/33, daughter of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and Elizabeth Berkeley
" . . . After Edmund Beaufort's violent death in 1455 his widow Eleanor found shelter at Maxey. She was to remarry with one of Margaret Beauchamp's servants, Walter Rokesley (who was later to be buried at Crowland). . . ." (The King's Mother)
His lovers were:
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| Catherine of Valois Queen of England @Wikipedia |
Widow of Henry V of England.
"In 1427 it is believed that Edmund Beaufort may have embarked on an affair with Catherine of Valois, the widow of Henry V. Evidence is sketchy, however the liaison prompted a parliamentary statute regulating the remarriage of queens of England. The historian G. L. Harriss surmised that it was possible that another of its consequences was Catherine's son Edmund Tudor and that Catherine, to avoid the penalties of breaking the statute of 1427–8, secretly married Owen Tudor. He wrote: 'By its very nature the evidence for Edmund Tudor's parentage is less than conclusive, but such facts as can be assembled permit the agreeable possibility that Edmund 'Tudor' and Margaret Beaufort were first cousins and that the royal house of 'Tudor' sprang in fact from Beauforts on both sides.'" (Wikipedia)
"Henry V died in August of 1422. Catherine was not allowed any political role in the government of her infant son King Henry VI. She was mainly the king’s caretaker and remained in his household until 1430. During this time, Catherine apparently began a liaison with Edmund Beaufort, Count of Mortain and future Duke of Somerset. This match caused great concern to Henry VI’s guardian, his uncle Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and the Regency council. There may or may not have been a Parliamentary statute passed at this point forbidding a dowager queen to marry without royal consent and forfeiture of lands. If there was a statute, it has disappeared from the parliamentary records. Whether or not this statute existed, the marriage of Catherine to Beaufort never occurred." (The Freelance History)
"There may, of course, have been another pressing reason behind Edmund's departure to France in 1427, and that was his alleged closeness to the king's mother, Queen Katherine. Rumours of an affair between the young widow and the budding soldier alarmed Gloucester, nervous of the possibility a Beaufort stepfather could exert unchecked influence over the impressionable king. Katherine was still just twenty-six years old at the time of Edmund's departure, and remained capable of bearing children, as proven by her later offspring. Any prospective match between th eking's mother and Cardinal Beaufort's nephew was politically catastrophic for Gloucester, and his response was to oversee the passing of a parliamentary Act forbidding Katherine from marrying without the explicit permission of the king." (The House of Beaufort)
"It is interesting to note that the eldest child of the Tudor-Valois marriage, probably born between 1428 and 1430, was christened Edmund, prompting recent speculation the father was not in fact Owen Tudor, but rather Edmund Beaufort. This is highly speculative; there is no satisfactory evidence Edmund and Katherine engaged in a physical affair other than rumour, and although the first Tudor child was indeed christened Edmund, there could be various explanations for this -- perhaps Edmund Beaufort stood godfather to the boy, or maybe the name was inspired by St. Edmund the Martyr, particularly if the birth had taken place on the saint's feast day of 20 November. It should also be noted the child's birthplace of Much Hadham in Hertfordshire was less than fifty miles away from Bury St. Edmunds, where the shrine of St. Edmund was located." (The House of Beaufort)
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| Marguerite of Anjou Queen of England @Wikipedia |
Wife of Henry VI of England.
Alleged affair with Queen Marguerite of Anjou.
"The elder Edmund was killed at St. Albans in 1455; his eldest son, Henry, took up the family dukedom and the Lancastrian cause. Henry Beaufort is linked suggestively with Margaret in one contemporary rumor: on March 15, 1461, Prospero di Camulio, Milanese Ambassador in France, wrote from Brussels to Cicho Symonette, Secretary to the Duke of Milan: “They say here that the Queen of England, after the king had abdicated in favour of his son, gave the king poison. At least he has known how to die, if he did not know what to do else. It is said that the queen will unite with the Duke of Somerset. However these are rumours in which I do not repose much confidence.” Henry VI, of course, had not abdicated in favor of his son, nor had he been poisoned. The rumor that Margaret intended to “unite” with Somerset, then, should inspire no more confidence in us than it did in Camulio. I do, however, confess to finding it plausible that this Somerset could have been Margaret’s lover–he was young, handsome, and charismatic and had done her the great service of defeating the Duke of York at Wakefield–but there is no evidence that he actually did play such a role in Margaret’s life." (History Refreshed by Susan Higginbotham)
"The fall of the duke of Suffolk left Somerset the chief of the king's ministers, and the Commons in vain petitioned for his removal in January 1451.Power rested with Somerset and he virtually monopolised it, with Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, as one of his principal allies. It was also widely suspected that Edmund had an extra-marital affair with Margaret. After giving birth to a son in October 1453, Margaret took great pains to quash rumours that Somerset might be his father. During her pregnancy, Henry had suffered a mental breakdown, leaving him in a withdrawn and unresponsive state that lasted for one and a half years. This medical condition, untreatable either by court physicians or by exorcism, plagued him throughout his life. During Henry's illness, the child was baptised Edward, Prince of Wales, with Somerset as godfather; if the King could be persuaded, he would become legal heir to the throne." (Wikipedia)
"Rumour at the time claimed that Edward of Lancaster, the son of Queen Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI, had been fathered by Edmund Beaufort, these were based on the long period of time which elapsed from Margaret's marriage and the time she became pregnant, and Henry VI's insanity around the time of conception. Henry VI himself did nothing to such rumours when on being introduced to the new Prince of Wales, enquired about the child's godfathers and adding to existing doubts about the child's paternity, he declared that Edward must have been fathered by the Holy Ghost. However the rumor of his adultery with the queen may have been part of a campaign during the king's insanity to destroy his reputation and reduce his influence." (English Monarchs)
"As for the Duke of Somerset, there were three such dukes associated with Margaret: Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset (died 1455) and his sons Henry (died 1464) and Edmund (died 1471). Though Paul Murray Kendall and others have stated that the elder Edmund was suspected of fathering Margaret’s child, I have yet to find any contemporary English source alleging that he and Margaret were lovers–although in his youth, Edmund was linked romantically with the widowed Catherine of Valois, Henry V’s queen. Hall states that when Somerset was arrested in 1453, he was in Margaret’s great chamber; assuming that this non contemporary account is true, it’s notable that Somerset was not said to have been in Margaret’s bedchamber. Margaret did grant the elder Somerset an annuity of 100 marks in 1451. It is recorded as having been paid at Michaelmas 1453, at which time it was noted that it was being paid for past and future services as well as “for the great good will and kindness that he will show [her] in her urgent affairs.” Helen Maurer has suggested that the 'urgent affairs' referred to Henry’s recent mental breakdown, which would make sense. There is no reason, however, to assume that the annuity was prompted by a love affair." (History Refreshed by Susan Higginbotham)
(1436-1464)
3rd Duke of Somerset
1455-1464
5th Earl of Somerset 1455
2nd Marquess of Dorset 1448
2nd Earl of Dorset 1448-1455
Earl of Mortain 1443-1448.
Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight 1457
Warden of Carisbrooke Castle 1457
Son of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset & Eleanor Beauchamp, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick.
Personal character.
"He survived Towton despite leading a desperate cavalry charge, but was finally defeated, captured and executed in 1464. Ultimately it was his personal qualities that led to success and then failure. He was a ruthless and violent man obsessed with vengeance but flawed by fecklessness and faithlessness. Along among the Lancastrian royal dukes he was suspected of harbouring his own ambitions to take over the throne (and the queen)." (The Battles of St Albans: 64)
His lover was:
Lover in 1463
2) Joan Hill (1438-1493)
Love rin 1460?
"Joan Hill, Henry Beaufort's mistress and Charles's mother, was still living in 1493, when Henry VII granted her an annuity, but nothing else seems to be known about her. I have therefore invented the details of her background." (The Queen of Last Hopes: The Story of Margaret of Anjou: 39)
Natural offspring:
a. Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester (1460-1526)
"Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, 1st Baron Herbert (c.1460-1526), KG, who was given the surname "Somerset" and was created Baron Herbert in 1506 and Earl of Worcester in 1513. From him descend the Earls and Marquesses of Worcester and the Dukes of Beaufort,[12] who are the last known surviving male-line descendants[citation needed] of King Henry II (1154-1189) of England, Count of Anjou, founder of the Plantagenet dynasty, of which King Richard III (1483-1485) was the last ruling member in the male line." (Wikipedia)
"Charles Somerset, the natural son of Henry Beaufort, fought for Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth. (He was originally named Charles Beaufort and took the name of Somerset when Henry VII became king; I decline to bore the reader with this detail.0 He served Henry VII and Henry VIII as a soldier, a diplomat, and an administrator; the magnificence of Henry VIII's famous Field of the Cloth of Gold was largely a product of Charle's organizational flair. Somerset was made the Earl of Worcester by Henry CIII in 1514. The present-day Dukes of Beaufort are his descendants." (The Queen of Last Hopes: 39)
Personal & family background.
"The Somersets, earls of Worcester, were influential Welsh landowners who had built up a large estate in South Wales and the border counties under the Tudor and early Stuart monarchs. They could trace their lineage back to Henry Beaufort, third duke of Somerset (great-grandson of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster), who had sired any number of aristocratic bastards before he was beheaded by Yorkists in 1463. The product of one of these illicit unions, Charles Somerset (1460?-1526), married Elizabeth, daughter of William Herbert, earl of Huntingdon, the heiress to a vast fortune. He was raised to the peerage in 1513. Many family properties, including Tintern Abbey, were gained following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1537. But the bulk of their estates were purchased in the early seventeenth century by Edward, fourth earl of Worcester (1553-1628), who gained a considerable income as master of the house under Elizabeth I, and commissioner to the treasury and lord privy seal under James I. He bought at least a dozen rectories in Monmouthshire, along with great tracts of land that surrounded Raglan Castle. Most importantly, he arranged the marriage of his son, later fifth earl and first marquis of Worcester, to Anne Russell, daughter of the earl of Bedford and one of the wealthiest heiresses in the kingdom. The marriage was attended by Elizabeth I and commemorated in the famous painting, Queen Elizabeth going in procession to Blackfriars in 1600. Through the Russell connection, the family gained Worcester House, a river palace on the Strand in London, as well as lands in Dorset and Lincolnshire. When the fifth earl succeeded his father in 1628, he purchased still more property, some of which had belonged to the duchy of Lancaster. By 1641, the family was astonishingly rich. Hugh Owen, steward and secretary to the fifth earl, estimated that Worcester's personal estate was worth at least 40,000 pounds per annum, 'yea there be some that will not stick to averre that they can prove it worth a 100,000 pounds.'" (Beaufort: The Duke and His Duchess, 1657-1715: 11)
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