Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History podcast. I'm your host, Heather Tesco. It's been a long time since I've been with you,

and a lot has changed for me. The biggest change is that I'm now a mom of a sweet little three-month-old

girl called Hannah. And some of you have sent me some lovely Facebook messages congratulating me,

and I really appreciate them. It's been a long road to get her, and now that we have her,

we're just so excited and trying

to enjoy every moment, even the 3 a.m. feedings. Anyway, on to the Renaissance. I've been thinking a lot

lately about how the Tudors came to power. If anyone is watching The White Queen, which was on BBC

1 and stars, you are already familiar with the two powerful women who were Henry

the 8th's grandmothers portrayed in that series. I wanted to dig a little deeper into the lives of

these two women who were two of the founders of the Tudor dynasty. Henry the seventh's mother was Margaret

Beaufort, and his mother-in-law was Elizabeth Woodville.

Elizabeth and Margaret should have been bitter enemies. One was firmly Lancastrian and worked

tirelessly to pave the way for her son to become the king. The other was the widow of a

Lancasterian knight, killed in the early days of the Wars of the Roses,

who wound up capturing the heart of the young Yorkist king and becoming his queen. These two women,

who both experienced grief and loss, were able to come together to strike a deal that would unite

their two families for good, and their descendants would even wind up uniting

England and Scotland. Today I'm going to talk about Margaret Beaufort, and in the next

episode I'll discuss Elizabeth Woodville. Margaret Beaufort was probably born in 1443, and was

the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III.

Even though he was her great-great-grandfather, Edward III hangs over the tutors as he was living

proof that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing. He had five sons who survived to adulthood and set the stage

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