Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit,

the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenose,

from Shakespeare to Samarise, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft.

Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

Margaret Beaufort was a remarkable woman.

Although born as the daughter of a duke and the descendant of one king, Edward III,

and eventually the mother of another, Henry the 7th, her prospects were by no means guaranteed.

In an arresting line, one of my guests today sums up the calamities of Margaret's existence

in terms that cut across time.

Born into a century of conflict and deprived of her father while she lay in her crib,

she was married at 12, widowed and in labour at 13, her only child born into a plague-stricken

war zone.

Yet, even though she was an orphan, a widow and a mother by the age of 13,

in such an age of political turmoil, Margaret proved resilient enough to riot out the vicissitudes

of the wars of the roses.

Through two further marriages, decades of danger and uncertainty, and despite only seeing

her son a handful of times before he reached adulthood,

she succeeded in guiding him to the throne of England as the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty.

She also helped bring about his marriage to Elizabeth of York, a union that helped heal the wounds of a bitterly divided kingdom.

What sort of woman can she have been? As we'll learn today, Margaret displayed extraordinary

courage, shrewdness, political astuteness, and sheer persistence. But she may not have been unusual

among noble women at the time who struggled to safeguard themselves and their families against

...