Tea at Trianon: Margaret Beaufort

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Margaret Beaufort

The mother of Henry VII was a holy and learned woman.

Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, grandmother and regent of Henry VIII and patron of St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was born on this day in 1443. She founded two colleges at the University of Cambridge, Christ's and St. John's and chairs of divinity at both the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. She also served briefly as regent for Henry VIII after his father died and before his 18th birthday, dying on June 29, 1509, just after the coronations of Henry and Catherine of Aragon.

Margaret was married four times and lived apart from her fourth husband after taking a vow of chastity. She is usually pictured at prayer or holding a prayer book, as in the portrait above. Nevertheless, when Bishop Fisher preached her funeral sermon, he emphasized her role as a Martha rather than as a Mary, because of her good works and efforts. He served as one of the executors of her will.

Julygirl said...: Mercifully, she did not live to see the foulness of her Grandson's soul.; June 3, 2010 at 8:02:00 AM EDT
tubbs said...: Quite A Gal... Too bad she married into that Welsh clan of homicidal maniacs.
She and St John Fisher could be rightly listed among the founders of the English reformation, (but they would have been horrified at the heresy and schism that reformation became). She and Fisher founded their colleges specifically to better train the clergy---something desperately needed in the English church.; June 3, 2010 at 12:43:00 PM EDT