Tea at Trianon: Life in the Time of 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

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Life in the Time of Margaret Beaufort

From author Judith Arnopp at Myths, Legends, Books, and Coffee Pots:

Even for the era she was born into, Margaret’s upbringing was remarkable. During her infancy, her father, John Beaufort, Earl and later Duke, of Somerset, took his own life while awaiting the pleasure of the increasingly unstable/inefficient King Henry VI. Margaret became the ward of one of the most powerful men of his day, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk (later Marquis and Duke) but she was allowed to remain in the home of her mother, Margaret Beauchamp, at least for the first decade of her life. She was just eight years old when Suffolk, taking advantage of Margaret’s wealth and status, married her to his young son, John, but since neither had yet reached their teens, the marriage remained unconsummated. Suffolk’s subsequent disgrace with the king and his ignoble death saw the marriage hastily annulled and Margaret’s future placed in the hands of the king, Henry VI.

Margaret’s early years were spent learning the graces required of an heiress of high status. We know she was well educated, more than one historian noting that her French was ‘first rate’ but it is unlikely she would have mastered many of the required skills by the time of her second marriage at approximately eleven years of age. It is my feeling that her education continued long after she left the schoolroom at Bletsoe. Margaret set great store on knowledge and in later life endowed many places of learning. After she was married to the half-brother of the king, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond she accompanied him to a wild and unstable Wales. She would have needed to learn hard and fast, with lessons in politics and survival taking precedence over languages. (Read more.)