The House of Beaufort: The Bastard Line That Captured the Crown

The Wars of the Roses were a tumultuous period in English history, with family fighting family over the greatest prize in the kingdom—the throne of England. But what gave the eventual victor of these brutal and complex wars, Henry Tudor, the right to claim the crown? What made his Beaufort mother the great heiress of medieval England, and how exactly did an illegitimate line come to challenge the English monarchy? This book uncovers the rise of the Beauforts from bastard stock of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, to esteemed companions of their cousin Henry V, celebrated victor of Agincourt, and tracks their fall with the House of Lancaster during the 1460s and 1470s. The hopes and fortunes of the family gradually came to rest upon the shoulders of a teenage widow named Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry. From Margaret would rise the House of Tudor, the most famous of England’s royal houses and a dynasty that owed its crown to its forebears, the House of Beaufort.