The Beauforts: The Illegitimate Family That Put the Tudors on the Throne

The Beauforts were one of the most influential families in late medieval and Tudor England, rising from scandal to shape the destiny of a nation. Descended from John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford, the Beauforts began as illegitimate children but were later legitimized by both Pope and Parliament, though barred from the royal succession.

Despite this, they became cardinals, generals, queen consorts, and kingmakers, marrying into powerful houses like the Nevilles and playing central roles in the Wars of the Roses. Through the determination of Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry Tudor, the family placed the Tudors on the throne of England, securing their legacy. Today, the Beaufort name still survives among Britain’s nobility, a testament to a dynasty that was never supposed to rule but never faded into obscurity.

Transcript of The Beauforts: The Illegitimate Family That Put the Tudors on the Throne

If you are looking for a Tudor origin story with scandal, political maneuvering, and some truly complicated family trees, you can’t do much better than the Beauforts. Born from a royal affair and legitimized by both Pope and King, but with an asterisk, the Beauforts were royal, but quiet. Their bloodline connected them directly to Edward III, yet they were not always treated like royalty.

They were not princes, but they were never just ordinary nobles either. They were something in between, close enough to power to shape it, but far enough removed to constantly have to prove their place. This family would produce cardinals and generals, rebels and queen consorts. They married into the Nevilles, battled the House of York, and eventually, through one very determined mother, put a Tudor on the throne.

In this episode, we are tracing the Beauforts from their beginnings in scandal with John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, through the chaos of the Wars of the Roses, and right up to their curious survival as semi-royal dukes who still exist today. They have been erased, rewritten, and maligned, but they were never irrelevant. So let’s get into the story of the Beauforts, the family that refused to stay in the margins of history, no matter how many times someone tried to scribble them out.

The Beauforts began as bastards. There is really no way around it. Their story starts not with a marriage, but with an affair, one that scandalized the English court for over a decade. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was the third surviving son of King Edward III and arguably the most powerful man in England outside the Crown.

By the 1370s, he was widowed from his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, and married to his second, Constance of Castile, a match designed more for diplomacy than affection. But it was his mistress, Katherine Swynford, who held his heart. Katherine was the daughter of a knight from the Low Countries and the widow of one of Gaunt’s own retainers. She had served as a governess in his household, a respected position, but not exactly the standard résumé for a duchess.

Their affair was public enough to provoke outrage among the nobility. Chroniclers reported that high-born women refused to share rooms with her at court. One described her as the great scandal of her time. Their relationship continued for a decade until the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 forced Gaunt to distance himself. He issued Katherine a quitclaim, formally ending their connection. But the story did not end there.

When Constance died in 1394, Gaunt did not remarry for politics. He returned to Katherine, and in 1396, at around 56 years old, he married her in Lincoln Cathedral. By then, they already had four surviving children: John, Henry, Thomas, and Joan. These children were born out of wedlock, so they were given the surname Beaufort, likely taken from one of Gaunt’s former titles associated with a now-lost lordship in Anjou.

Legitimization and Political Maneuvering

Despite later myths, they were not born in France and almost certainly never saw the actual castle. The name was chosen not for sentiment but for convenience. It allowed them to be recognized as his children without threatening the inheritance of his legitimate heirs. It was similar to “Fitzroy” for a king’s illegitimate child. The Beaufort name marked them as Gaunt’s relations, but not his successors, and that would come to matter a great deal.

In 1396, not long after their marriage, John of Gaunt petitioned Pope Boniface IX to legitimize his children with Katherine Swynford. The Pope obliged, issuing a bull that declared them legitimate. A year later, Gaunt secured parliamentary approval under Richard II. The act officially recognized the four Beauforts as lawful children, and they were allowed to inherit lands, titles, and marry into noble families.

Problem solved, right? Not exactly. When Gaunt’s legitimate son Henry Bolingbroke seized the throne as Henry IV in 1399, things got more complicated. In 1407, Henry issued a royal proclamation reaffirming the Beauforts’ legitimacy, but with a handwritten note added to the patent: excepta dignitate regali. They were legitimate, yes, but they were barred from the royal succession.

It is not exactly clear who added that line. Some believe it was Henry IV himself; others argue it was a scribe. What is certain is that it was not part of the original act passed by Parliament, and it was not part of the papal bull either. As historian Nathen Amin and others have pointed out, this marginal note may have had no legal authority at all. It may not have been officially binding, but once it was there, it stuck.

Decades later, that little phrase would become a favorite talking point for the enemies of Margaret Beaufort and her son, Henry Tudor. The Yorkists pointed to it as proof that the Tudors had no rightful claim to the throne. After all, how could a dynasty be built on a line that had been explicitly excluded?

But the truth is murkier. The Beauforts were not just some side branch. They were deeply tied into the royal family, married into the most powerful noble houses, and held some of the highest positions in church and state, legitimate enough to be trusted, but not quite legitimate enough to rule. That blurry middle ground would follow the family for generations: never fully royal, never fully removed from the crown.

The Beauforts’ Rise to Power

Once legitimized, or mostly legitimized, at least, the Beaufort children wasted no time embedding themselves deep into England’s political and dynastic web. This was not a quiet generation. They were ambitious, well placed, and determined to prove that they belonged.

The eldest son, John Beaufort, was granted the title Earl of Somerset in 1397. He had served in military campaigns in France and was created a marquess by Richard II, though that title was stripped by Henry IV, who did not love how close John had been to the deposed king. Still, the family’s position remained strong.

John married Margaret Holland, a granddaughter of Joan of Kent. This was the same Joan who had married the Black Prince and was the mother of Richard II. John’s children, therefore, were connected to both the Lancastrian and the older royal line of Edward the Black Prince. Convenient.

Then there was Henry Beaufort, who chose a different path: the Church. He became Bishop of Lincoln, then of Winchester, and eventually rose to Cardinal. Do not picture a quiet cleric in a cloister. Henry was one of the most politically active men of his time. He was a key figure during the minority of Henry VI, a patron of the arts, and at various points clashed with everyone from Thomas Arundel to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Henry was a cleric with ambition and influence, and by the time of his death in 1447, he had outlived nearly all of his contemporaries and left a fortune behind.

Thomas Beaufort, the third son, took a more traditional noble route. He served under Henry V, was made Duke of Exeter, though the title died with him since he left no legitimate heirs. Like his brothers, he was deeply loyal to the Lancastrian cause and served with distinction in the Hundred Years’ War.

Finally, there was Joan Beaufort, the youngest, who might just have been the most influential of them all. She married Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, and produced a staggering 14 children, including Cecily Neville, the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. So yes, the Beauforts were technically Lancastrian, but their blood also flowed in the veins of the House of York. In one generation, the Beauforts had gone from scandalous royal bastards to cardinals, dukes, and matriarchs of royal houses.

They were not content to live in the footnotes. They were writing the next chapter of England’s dynastic story. By the middle of the 15th century, the Beauforts were no longer outsiders. They were entrenched in the highest levels of government, married into the nobility, and close to the crown. But the closer you are to power, as we have seen, the more dangerous things get.

And during the Wars of the Roses, the Beauforts played in blood. The man at the center was Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, a grandson of John Beaufort. He inherited the title after his uncle died childless. Edmund was everything you would expect from a Lancastrian noble. He was proud, loyal, and deeply tied to Queen Margaret of Anjou. He became her closest advisor and protector to her young son, Edward of Westminster.

To the Yorkists, he was the enemy, especially to Richard, Duke of York, who saw Edmund as an upstart Beaufort with too much influence and not enough experience. The rivalry exploded in 1455 at the First Battle of St. Albans, the very beginning of the Wars of the Roses. York’s forces charged through the town’s narrow streets, and in the chaos Edmund was killed, one of the first high-ranking casualties of the civil war. His body was later found slumped against a wall, surrounded by blood.

But the feud did not die with him. His sons Henry, Edmund, and John took up the Lancastrian cause, and the violence escalated. In 1460 at the Battle of Wakefield, Queen Margaret’s forces struck back. Richard of York was killed, his head famously displayed on Micklegate Bar in York with a paper crown mockingly placed on top.

The Beauforts had their revenge, for a little while. Because then, in 1471, the pendulum swung back once more. At the Battle of Tewkesbury, Henry Beaufort, now the 4th Duke of Somerset, led the Lancastrian forces in a desperate charge that failed. He was captured and executed the next day, not in battle, but dragged out of sanctuary and beheaded in front of a church. His younger brothers were also killed in the fighting.

Margaret Beaufort: The Strategist

Just like that, the male Beaufort line, the legitimate one, at least, was gone. All that remained of the once powerful Beaufort dynasty was Margaret Beaufort, daughter of Edmund Beaufort’s first cousin. She was a young widow with a son in exile and no real power of her own, at least not yet. But through her, the Beauforts would rise again and claim the throne that they had been denied. After the deaths of her uncles and cousins in the Wars of the Roses, the Beaufort name could have vanished into obscurity.

Instead, it passed to a young girl, Margaret Beaufort, born in 1443 to John Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset. Her father died shortly after her birth, leaving her a wealthy and politically valuable heiress. At just 12 years old, she was married off to Edmund Tudor, the much older half-brother of King Henry VI.

Less than a year later, she became a widow, because Edmund had already died. She gave birth to Henry Tudor. The birth was traumatic, and she would never have another child. But Margaret was not just a vessel for dynastic survival. She was a strategist. And over the next three decades, she would align herself with both Yorkist and Lancastrian houses, carefully maneuvering through incredibly dangerous political terrain.

She married twice more, with her final husband, Lord Thomas Stanley, eventually becoming the decisive figure at the Battle of Bosworth, where his troops turned the tide against Richard III. We talked about the Stanley family in a separate episode a couple of weeks ago. So while her son was in exile, Margaret was his voice in England. She built alliances, financed conspiracies, and stayed alive, no small feat during the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III.

At that point, she was likely just negotiating for him to stay alive. Edward IV was healthy, he had children, and there did not seem to be any sign that Henry Tudor could potentially be king. But when Henry returned in 1485 and claimed the throne as Henry VII, it was not just a Tudor victory, it was Margaret’s triumph.

She styled herself not as Queen Dowager or Regent, but as “My Lady, the King’s Mother,” a title she had Parliament officially recognize at court. She took precedence over everyone but the queen and often acted as a co-ruler in all but name. This made sense: Henry Tudor had been away living in exile, while Margaret was the one who was familiar with everything and knew the politics. Of course Henry relied on her.

She also managed her own estates, maintained a separate household, and even signed documents in her own name, which was a significant achievement for a woman of her time. But Margaret also left a lasting legacy beyond politics. She was deeply devout and funneled her wealth into education and religion. She founded Christ’s College and St. John’s College at Cambridge, helping to shape the intellectual life of Tudor England. She also re-endowed religious houses, sponsored scholars, and supported early printers and translators of devotional texts.

Her motto, Souvent me souvient (“I often remember”), reflected a life of careful calculation, long memory, and determination. And it was through her that the Beauforts became monarchy, legitimized not just by birth, but by power, faith, and persistence. After her triumph and the rise of her son Henry VIII, you might expect the Beaufort name to quietly retire from the historical stage.

The Beaufort Legacy: From Illegitimacy to Nobility

The male line had been extinguished at the Battle of Tewkesbury. The family’s political legacy had been passed to the Tudors, and with Margaret’s death in 1509, the same year as her son, it seemed like the Beaufort story had reached its final chapter.

But not quite, because there was one more branch of the family, an illegitimate line born during the chaos of the Wars of the Roses. And this branch wasn’t finished. This line descended from Charles Somerset, the illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, third Duke of Somerset, one of the Lancastrian leaders executed after the Battle of Hexham. Charles was born around 1460 and likely spent the early part of his life in obscurity or exile, away from the immediate danger of Yorkist revenge.

But he also had powerful connections. He was raised in the household of Lady Margaret Beaufort and accompanied her son Henry into exile. After the victory at Bosworth, Charles was rewarded handsomely for his loyalty. He was knighted, granted lands, and quickly rose through the Tudor court. In 1506, he was created Baron Herbert, taking the title from his wife’s family.

A decade later, in 1514, he became the Earl of Worcester, a remarkable climb for a man whose father had died a traitor and whose own birth had once disqualified him from polite society. The most surprising moment in this line came long after the Tudors had faded from power.

In 1682, during the reign of Charles II, Charles Somerset’s descendant Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester, was elevated to the title of Duke of Beaufort. It was a revival of the old name, now reattached to a new lineage. This branch of the family had no legal connection to the original Beaufort dukedom, and its descent from a bastard son would once have made the whole proposition laughable.

But by the 17th century, legitimacy was more flexible, especially if you had money, land, and royal favor. The old scandals had faded. The Beaufort name still carried aristocratic weight. And Charles II, not exactly a stickler for legitimate descent himself, had no objection to rewarding loyalty with a splash of dynastic flair.

The Dukes of Beaufort have been part of the British nobility ever since. Their seat, Badminton House in Gloucestershire, remains one of England’s grandest estates. The family has held ceremonial posts in the royal household, married into major houses, and largely kept out of the political bloodbaths that defined their forebears.

And they are still around. The 12th Duke of Beaufort, Harry Somerset, born in 1952, is a landowner, horse-racing enthusiast, and a distant cousin to the Windsors. He is no kingmaker, but he is the living legacy of a family that clawed its way back from illegitimacy, exile, and royal prohibition, and somehow ended up back in the upper crust of Britain’s ruling class.

The Beauforts were never supposed to last, but dynasties built on scandal sometimes have the longest shelf life. And that is the story of the Beauforts, born into scandal, legitimized by royal decree, and then written out of the succession only to come back and put a king on the throne anyway. They were never supposed to rule. They were supposed to quietly fade into the background, but instead they shaped the fate of England, and they are still around today, tucked into the aristocracy like a historical Easter egg with a scandalous backstory.