A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Beaufort, Margaret
BEAUFORT, MARGARET,
Countess of Richmond and Derby, was the only daughter and heiress of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, (grandson to John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster,) by Margaret Beauchamp, his wife. She was born at Bletshoe, in Bedfordshire, in 1441. While very young, she was married to Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, by whom she had a son named Henry, who was afterwards king of England, by the title of Henry the Seventh. On the 3rd. of November, 1456, the Earl of Richmond died, leaving Margaret a very young widow, and his son and heir, Henry, not above fifteen weeks old. Her second husband was Sir Henry Stafford, knight, second son to the Duke of Buckingham, by whom she had no issue. And soon after the death of Sir Henry Stafford, which happened about 1482, she married Thomas, Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby, who died in 1504. After spending a life in successive acts of beneficence, she paid the great debt of nature on the 29th. of June, 1509, in the first year of the reign of her grandson, Henry the Eighth. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument was erected to her memory. It is of black marble, with her effigy in gilt copper; and the head is encircled with a coronet. She founded and endowed the colleges of Christ and St. John's, at Cambridge.