John Beaufort KG (1404 - 1444)

Born 25 Mar 1404 in Tottenham, Middlesex, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 27 May 1444 at age 40 in St. Margaret's Hospital, Wimborne, Dorset, England

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Biography

Titles of Sir John Beaufort: (Royal Ancestry)

Captain of Cherbourg 1439

Lieutenant-General of France and Normandy 1440

Captain-General of Aquitaine 1443

Earl of Kendale

Duke of Somerset

Birth

John Beaufort was born on 25 March 1404 at Tottenham, Middlesex and was baptised in the church there.^[1] He was the son of John Beaufort^[1] and Margaret Holland. He was heir of his brother Henry.^[1]

Marriage

Husband: John Beaufort]]

Wife: Margaret de BEAUCHAMP

Child: Margaret Beaufort

Marriage: 1439

Death and Burial

He died testate on 27 May 1444.^[2] He was buried at Wimborne Minster, Dorset.

His heir was his one-year-old daughter Margaret.^[2]

(Royal Tombs of Medieval England) In 1444 he died at St. Margaret's Hospital, Wimborne, near his ducal manor of Kingston Lacy, rumored to have committed suicide to avoid charges of financial corruption and inept command. The duke was buried in the hospital church standing on the site of an earlier church thought to be the burial-place of Ethelred I (d.8710, but which otherwise had no tradition of senior burial. There are no records of John Beaufort's funeral or tomb. John Beaufort has a tomb located to the south of the Wimborne Minster high altar and features a Purbeck marble tomb-chest and alabaster effigies of himself and Margaret Beauchamp. The duke's effigy Is shown wearing armor and both effigies are wearing ducal coronets. the duke's coffin apparently lies within the tomb-chest, which may have been executed soon after his death. But the single tier tomb-chest is not large enough to contain two coffins, and there is no record that Margaret was actually buried at Wimborne. In 1495 Margaret's family founded a chantry for her at Shaftesbury, but there is no record that she was buried there.

Research Notes

Sir John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset succeeded to the title of 3rd Earl of Somerset [E., 1397] on 25 November 1418.2 He was invested as a Knight, Order of the Garter (KG) circa 1440. He was created 1st Earl of Kendal [England] on 28 August 1443. He was created 1st Duke of Somerset [England] on 28 August 1443. He has an extensive biographical entry in the Dictionary of National Biography.  

John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset (c. 1373 - March 16, 1410) was the first of the four children of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and his mistress (later his wife) Katherine Swynford. Beaufort was born in about 1373 and his surname probably reflects his birthplace, his father's Beaufort Castle in Anjou, France. The family emblem was the portcullis which is shown on the back of a 1p coin. John of Gaunt had his nephew Richard II of England declare the Beaufort children legitimate in 1390, with the important proviso that they were barred from the succession to the throne, despite being the grandchildren of Edward III of England. It is thought that this may have been a "private" act (that is, not entered in the public records), because, in January 1397, the Duke had Parliament issue a similar declaration, with the same proviso. Later that month, Gaunt married Katherine although they had been living apart for some years, possibly in order to have their children publicly declared legitimate. While this legal wrangling ultimately caused an enormous amount of bloodshed and destruction, it did result in one of the Beaufort descendants ascending the throne as Henry VII.

John Beaufort was created Earl of Somerset on February 10, 1397. On September 28 of that year he married Margaret Holland, daughter of Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent; the next day he was created Marquess of Somerset and Dorset. Also sometime that year he was made a Knight of the Garter. He lost the two marquessates in 1399 after the accession of Henry IV. In 1404 he was Constable of England.

He and his wife had six children:

1. Henry Beaufort, 2nd Earl of Somerset (c. 1401 - November 25, 1418).
2. John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset (baptized March 25, 1404 - May 27, 1444).
3. Thomas Beaufort, Earl of Perche (c. 1405 - 1432).
4. Joan Beaufort (c. 1406 - July 15, 1445), who married James I of Scotlan
5. Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset (c. 1406 - May 22, 1455).
6. Margaret Beaufort (c. 1409 - 1449). Married Thomas de Courtenay, 5th Earl of Devon.

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} King's College London, 2014. | Mapping the Medieval Countryside [online]. Available at http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/22-677/ [Accessed: 15/12/2020] Proof of age for John brother and heir of Henry son and heir of John earl of Somerset 1425
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} King's College London, 2014. | Mapping the Medieval Countryside [online]. Available at http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/26-178/ [Accessed: 15/12/2020] Inquisitions Post Mortem for John, Duke of Somerset 1444

• Richardson, Douglas. Royal Ancestry (2013) Vol. V p. 200-203. Vol. V p. 528-533. Vol. IV p. 645-650
• Royal Tombs of Medieval England M. Duffy 2003 p. 229-233
• Hope, Sir William Henry St. John. The Stall Plates of the Knights of the Order of the Garter, 1348-1485 (A. Constable and Co., ltd., Westminster, 1901) Plate LVIII