Beaufort, Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond 1443-1509
English noblewoman

The daughter of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, she married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond in 1455. The Lancastrian claim to the English Crown was transferred to her when the male line died out, and it was because of her descent from John of Gaunt that her son Henry (Henry VII) ascended the throne after the defeat of Richard III (1485). During the Wars of the Roses she was imprisoned at Pembroke by the Yorkists. She married Henry Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham (1464), and in 1473, Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, who was instrumental in helping Henry VII assume the Crown. She was a benefactress of Oxford and Cambridge universities, where she endowed two divinity professorships. She also founded Christ's College and St John's College, Cambridge, and was a patron of William Caxton. She translated Thomas � Kempis into English.

Bibliography: Michael K Jones, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (1992)