The Tomb of Margaret Beaufort, My Lady The King’s Mother
Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, was the mother of Henry VII.
She died on 29th June 1509, aged 66, just a few days after attending the coronation of her grandson, Henry VIII.
On 3rd July her body was brought to Westminster Abbey Refectory, where it lay surrounded by candles.
On the 9th July, she was buried in the south aisle of Henry VII’s chapel.
Her tomb is by Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano.
The tomb has a portrait effigy in gilt bronze of the Countess in her old age, wearing a widow’s dress with a hood and long mantle.
Her head rests on two pillows, with a design of the portcullis and Tudor rose, and her delicate and characteristic wrinkled hands, are raised in prayer.
The effigy was made using a wax cast technique where a secondary mould is made from a wax cast allowing intricate work to be done.
Her face was probably modelled on a death mask.
The hands, wimple and trimming of her mantle show traces of colour.
At her feet is the yale, a mythical beast with swivel horns – although the horns have been lost.
The Yale is the family crest of the Beaufort’s.
The surviving section of the effigy plate shows the Beaufort portcullis, and the knot of the Stafford family.
The tomb chest is of black marble.
At the west and east end of her tomb, are the arms of two of her husbands, Edmund Tudor and Thomas Stafford.
On the south side of her tomb, are the arms of Henry VII and his queen Elizabeth of York, and Henry V and his queen Catherine of Valois.
On the north side of her tomb, are the arms of Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon.
The inscription in Latin was composed by Erasmus. It can be translated:
“Margaret of Richmond, mother of Henry VII, grandmother of Henry VIII, who gave a salary to three monks of this convent and founded a grammar school at Wimborne, and to a preacher throughout England, and to two interpreters of Scripture, one at Oxford, the other at Cambridge, where she likewise founded two colleges, one to Christ, and the other to St John, his disciple.
Died A.D.1509, III Kalends of July [29 June]”
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