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BEAUFORT, CARDINAL. 



BEAUFORT, MARGARET. 



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covetousness according to others, multiplied his riches so as to become 

 the wealthiest subject in England. He advanced to his nephew, 

 Henry V., by way of loan, out of his own private purse not less than 

 28.000Z. during his wars in France ; and also lent the infant king, 

 Henry VI., 11,0001., sums which at that period were of enormous 

 magnitude. 



On the death of Henry V. in 1422, Beaufort (with his brother, after- 

 wards Duke of Exeter) was appointed guardian of his infant successor : 

 Beaufort was also a member of the council of regency, of which the 

 king's uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was the nominal head. 

 The struggle for supremacy between these ambitious men, which soon 

 assumed the character of a fierce personal contest, is the most pro- 

 minent feature of the internal history of England from the year 1424 

 to the year of their death, in 1447. The prelate ultimately triumphed 

 in the struggle, which on more than one occasion threatened to inflict 

 upon the country all the ills of civil war. In 1426, in the absence of 

 the regent, Bedford, the quarrels of Beaufort and Gloucester nearly 

 issued in bloodshed in the city of London. But the Archbishop of 

 Canterbury, and the Prince of Portugal, who happened to be in England 

 at the time, prevailed on the two parties to suspend their strife till 

 the regent should return to England. The Duke of Bedford hastened 

 from Paris to reconcile the rivals, but found it expedient to refer the 

 matter to a perliament summoned for the purpose at Leicester. This 

 parliament is known by the nickname of the " parliament of bats," a 

 nickname which, in its origin, aptly illustrates the temper of the 

 partisans of the bishop and of Gloucester, and throws some light on 

 the then state of manners. In order to prevent the consequences of 

 strife among armed men, the members of the parliament summoned 

 at Leicester were ordered to leave at their inns their swords and other 

 weapons usually worn by the gentry at that period : their followers 

 however with a view of defeating this prohibition, attended them 

 with ' bats,' or clubs, on their shoulders; and when these also were 

 forbidden they concealed stones and plummets of lead in their sleeves 

 and bosoms. ('Parliamentary History,' vol. i. p. 354.) 



Among other charges put forward by the Duke of Gloucester, in a 

 bill of impeachment against his uncle Beaufort, was an accusation that 

 he had hired an assassin to take away the life of the late king Henry V., 

 at the time Prince of Wales ; and that he had encouraged the prince 

 to usurp the throne before the death of his father. Gloucester pro- 

 fessed to make this charge on the authority of Henry himself ; but the 

 bishop triumphantly opposed to that testimony the fact that Henry 

 had, to the last moment of his life, honoured him with his friendship 

 and confidence. After much wrangling and recrimination, the matter 

 was referred to the arbitration of four spiritual and four temporal 

 peers, who awarded that Gloucester should be " good lord to the bishop, 

 and have him in affection and love," and that the prelate should pre- 

 serve to the duke " trew and sad love and affection, and be ready to do 

 him such service aa pertaineth of honesty to my Lord of Winchester 

 and to his estate to do." A formal public reconciliation then took 

 place between the two disputants ; but the bishop felt the award to 

 be so much of a reproof, that be resigned the chancellorship, and 

 obtained leave to go abroad. Beaufort accompanied Bedford in his 

 return to France ; and at Calais received the welcome intelligence that 

 the pope had raised him to the dignity of cardinal, and had appointed 

 him legate ' ;i latere,' for the purpose of directing an English force in a 

 crusade against the Hussites in Bohemia. [BEDFORD, DUKE OF.] 



In 1429 Cardinal Beaufort succeeded in destroying the power of his 

 rival Gloucester, by having the ycung king crowned, and by inducing 

 the parliament to declare on the occasion that the office of protector, 

 filled by the duke, was, ipso facto, at an end. From being at the head 

 of the council of regency, Gloucester was thus reduced to his rank as 

 a peer. From this time till his death the councils of the cardinal pre- 

 dominated in the administration. 



A powerful party however, headed by the Duke of Gloucester, 

 opposed itself to the administration of the cardinal. The spirit of the 

 age was averse to the rule of ecclesiastical statesmen ; and the House 

 of Commons in particular had directed its attention to the question of 

 church reform, us essential to good government. In a meeting of 

 peers, in 1431, it was proposed that, as the dignity of cardinal was, by 

 the law of the land, incompatible with the possession of a bishopric in 

 England, Beaufort should be removed from the see of Winchester, 

 and compelled to refund its revenues from the day that he had 

 accepted the cardinal's hat. Gloucester followed up thia motion with 

 a series of charges, to the effect that Beaufort had incurred the penal- 

 ties of premuuire in having accepted the papal bull, contrary to the 

 express prohibition of the lute king, and had exempted himself as 

 legate from the jurisdiction of the see of Canterbury. The same 

 charges were renewed in a more formal manner by Gloucester in 1434. 

 He accused the cardinal also of having amassed wealth by dishonest 

 means, of having usurped the functions of sovereignty, appointing 

 embassies, and releasing prisoners on his own authority, and estranging 

 from the person of the young king his relatives and the council of the 

 regency. The cardinal, although too powerful to be now reached by 

 Gloucester's accusation, deemed it prudent to obtain two acts of par- 

 liament, one in 1432, the other in 1437, indemnifying him against the 

 penalties of pnemunire, and pardoning him for all crimes committed 

 up to the 20th of July in the last-named year. The arrest and pro- 

 bable murder of Gloucester are usually ascribed to his fierce and 



moo. wv. VOL. L 



courageous denunciation of the ecclesiastical counsellors of the king. 

 Gloucester's death took place on the 23th of February, 1447. 



The cardinal survived his great rival but six weeks. His death-bed 

 has been painted in immortal colours by Shakspere (' Henry VI.,' 

 part 2), but the imagination of the poet has supplied the darkest 

 features of the picture. Shakspere represents him as expiring in an 

 agony of despair : 



" Lord Cardinal, if thou tliink'st on heaven's bliss, 



Hold up thy band, make signal of thy hope. 



He dies, and makes no sign." 



But we know from the authority, Hall, which Shakspere has followed 

 in the less harrowing details of the scene, that the cardinal's world- 

 liness was confined to expressing his regret that money could not 

 purchase life, and that death should have cut him off at the moment 

 when his rival to the great object of his ambition (the popedom) had 

 been removed. Hall's version is given on the authority of one Baker, 

 the cardinal's chaplain ; and the last words are, " I pray you all to 

 pray for me." His will, moreover, to which two codicils are attached, 

 on the 7th and 9th of April (he died on the llth), is still extant 

 (Nichols's ' Royal and Noble Wills,' p. 311), indicating a state of feeling 

 more worthy of a Christian prelate. His great wealth was distributed, 

 according to the provisions of his will, in charitable donations. Not 

 less than 40001. was allotted for the relief of the indigent prisoners 

 in Newgate, Ludgate, the Fleet, Marshalsea, King's Bench, and the 

 prison attached to the Southwark manor of the diocese of Winchester ; 

 and the hospital of St. Cross at Winchester still exists as a monument 

 of his munificence. Cardinal Beaufort was buried iu the beautiful 

 chantry which bears his name in Winchester Cathedral. 



BEAUFORT, LOUIS DE, was born of a French family, settled in 

 Germany or Holland, as far as we may presume from the scanty infor- 

 mation we can find of his early life. He was for a time tutor to the 

 young prince of Hesse Homburg, but he became known to the learned 

 world by his ' Dissertation sur 1'Incertituda des Cinq Premiers Sieeles 

 de 1'Histoire Romaine,' 8vo, 1738. He was oue of the first modern 

 writers who earned the spirit of critical investigation into the narrative 

 of the first five centuries of the Roman commonwealth ; he showed 

 that both Li vy and Dionysius could not be implicitly trusted, and that 

 it required a process of very acute and careful discrimination to sepa- 

 rate the truth from the legendary fables of early Roman history. 

 Among other things he maintained that Porsenna did really conquer 

 Rome afcer the expulsion of Tarquiuius. Niebuhr remarks, when 

 speaking of Beaufort's ' Dissertation ' (vol. i. p. 539, note), "that the 

 critical examination of this war is the most successful part of that 

 remarkable little work." His next work was ' La R^publique Roniaiue* 

 ou Plan Ge'ne'ral de 1'Ancieu Gouvernement de Rome," 2 vols. 4to, La 

 Haye, 1766. The author treats at length and systematically of the 

 institutions of Rome ; of its senate, its populus and plebs, its comitia, 

 its consuls and tribunes ; of the laws and tribunals, of the religion of 

 the country and its ministers, of the various classes of society and thei r 

 respective rights, and the condition of the allies and subjects of Rome. 

 This work met with great approbation, and maintained its ground ai 

 one of the best works upon the Roman republic previous to Niebuhr' a 

 'History of Rome." He wrote also ' Histoire de Gerinanicus,' 12mo, 

 1741, which be dedicated to the Landgrave of Hesse Homburg. 

 Beaufort was a member of the Royal Society of London. He died at 

 Maestricht in 1795. 



BEAUFORT, MARGARET, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND AND 

 DERBY, is entitled to honourable mention as an eminent patroness of 

 literature, after the manner of the age in which she lived. She was 

 of royal descent, being the daughter and heiress of John Beaufort, duko 

 of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, third sou 

 of Edward III. Margaret Beaufort was born in 1441, and was thrico 

 married ; first to Edmund Tudor, half-brother to Henry VI., created 

 Earl of Richmond, by whom she had one son, afterwards Henry VII. ; 

 secondly to Sir Henry Stafford, a younger branch of the ducal house 

 of Buckingham ; thirdly to Lord Stanley, afterwards earl of Derby. 

 By the two last marriages she had no issue. She died in 1509, and is 

 buried at Westminster, where her tomb may be seen in the south aisle 

 of Henry VII.'s chapel. 



The Countess of Richmond was rich, pious, charitable, and generous. 

 Her attention to the formal observances of religion prescribed by tlu 

 Papal Church was strict even to rigour. To her bounty Christ's 

 College, Cam bridge, founded in 1505, and St. John's College, Cambridge, 

 projected and endowed by her, but not chartered till 1511, owe their 

 existence. The estates which she left to St. John's College were sued 

 for and recovered by Henry VIII. as the heir-at-law of Margaret Beau- 

 fort, and the wealth which this distinguished college now enjoys is 

 chiefly due to the liberality of later benefactors. The Countess of 

 Richmond established a professorship of divinity, with a salary of 20 

 marks, iu each university, the holders of which are called Lady Mar- 

 garet's professors. She also appointed a public preacher at Cambridgi, 

 with a salary of 10/., whose duties are now confined to the delivery of 

 one Latin sermon yearly. 



Walpole has given this lady a place in his ' Catalogue of Royal an 1 

 Noble Authors,' as the translator of two books: 1. 'The Mirrouro 

 of Qolde to the Sinfull Soul,' translated from a French translation of 

 the ' Speculum Aureum Peccatorum,' printed by W. de Worde in 1522 ; 

 2. Translation of the fourth book of Dr. J. Gerson's ' Treatise ou tho 



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