]

The Beauforts were descended from Edward III., but a bar sinister
marred their royal pedigree. John of Gaunt had three sons by Catherine
Swynford before she became his wife. That marriage would, by canon
law, have made legitimate the children, but the barons had, on a
famous occasion, refused to assimilate in this respect the laws of
England to the canons of the Church; and it required a special Act of
Parliament to confer on the Beauforts the status of legitimacy. When
Henry IV. confirmed this Act, he introduced a clause specifically
barring their contingent claim to the English throne. This limitation
could not legally abate the force of a statute; but it sufficed to
cast a doubt upon the Beaufort title, and has been considered a
sufficient explanation of Henry VII.'s reluctance to base his claim
upon hereditary right. However that may be, the Beauforts played no
little part in the English history of the fifteenth century; their
influence was potent for peace or war in the councils of their royal
half-brother, Henry IV., and of the later sovereigns of the House of
Lancaster. One was Cardinal-Bishop of Winchester, another was Duke of
Exeter, and a third was Earl of Somerset. Two of the sons of the Earl
became Dukes of Somerset; the younger fell at St. Albans, the (p. 007)
earliest victim of the Wars of the Roses, which proved so fatal to
his House; and the male line of the Beauforts failed in the third
generation. The sole heir to their claims was the daughter of the
first Duke of Somerset, Margaret, now widow of Edmund Tudor; for,
after a year of wedded life, Edmund had died in November, 1456. Two
months later his widow gave birth to a boy, the future Henry VII.;
and, incredible as the fact may seem, the youthful mother was not
quite fourteen years old. When fifteen more years had passed, the
murder of Henry VI. and his son left Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor
in undisputed possession of the Lancastrian title. A barren honour it
seemed. Edward IV. was firmly seated on the English throne. His right
to it, by every test, was immeasurably superior to the Tudor claim,
and Henry showed no inclination and possessed not the means to dispute
it. The usurpation by Richard III., and the crimes which polluted his
reign, put a different aspect on the situation, and set men seeking
for an alternative to the blood-stained tyrant. The battle of Bosworth
followed, and the last of the Plantagenets gave way to the first of
t