"Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep."* ...... Margaret Beaufort ... today on the wireless

Perhaps a controversial  way to sum up Margaret Beaufort the mother of Henry Tudor but then Shakespeare always has the best words.

Lady Margaret Beaufort, 1510

So I shall listen with rapt attention to BBC Radio Four's In Our Time to see how his judgement plays out against the opinion of three experts.*

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the woman who, as a child bride, became mother to the boy who would eventually become the first king in the Tudor dynasty. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c1443-1509) was twelve when she married Edmund Tudor, half his age, and gave birth to their son Henry when she was thirteen and Edmund was already dead from the plague. 

Margaret Beaufort made it her life's work to protect Henry during the Wars of the Roses, which had begun soon before his birth and, as many more obvious successors to the crown died or were killed in the wars, she pivoted to supporting Henry when he became the strongest contender against Richard III. 

She was to survive Richard III declaring her a traitor and went on to see Henry become Henry VII the first Tudor king and herself become the King's Mother. Outliving her son by a few months, she was then to help her grandson Henry VIII succeed and the Tudor dynasty continue.

With, Joanna Laynesmith, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading, Katherine Lewis, Honorary Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lincoln and Research Associate at the University of York and David Grummitt, Staff Tutor in History at the Open University

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Location; In Our Time BBC Radio 4

Picture; English: Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort by Meynart Weywyck circa 1510 after restoration work in 2023

*Henry VI, Part II, 4.4, William Shakespeare

**Margaret Beaufort, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002s3dq