Lady Margaret Burgh 1431 - 1488

Margaret Roos, dowager Lady Botreaux and Lady Burgh, was born circa 1431, the daughter of Thomas, 8th Lord Roos of Belvoir Castle and Eleanor Beauchamp (born 1407 at Wedgenock, Warwickshire, second daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick). Lady Margaret’s father died on the 18th of August 1430, having drowned in the River Seine, outside Paris, during one of the many minor actions and skirmishes of the Hundred Years War with France. Lord Roos had accompanied the young King Henry VI to France in April 1430, for his Coronation and stayed on to serve as he had done previously in 1427

We know nothing, for certain, about Margaret’s early life, but she would have received an education, fitting, to her status on the lower rung of the English nobility. By 1436 her mother, Eleanor, had re-married, without the Kings license, to Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Dorset, born about 1406, kinsman to King Henry VI. Beaufort was to become one of the chief instigators of The Wars of The Roses. Margaret had two brothers from her parent’s first marriage; Thomas Roos, born at Conisborough Castle, South Yorkshire, on the 9th September 1427, who became 9th Lord Roos, and was, to the bitter end, a staunch Lancastrian. Richard Roos was born at Belvoir Castle in Lincolnshire in 1429. If Margaret stayed with her mother and step-father, she would have moved to English France in June 1438, Beaufort being made Marquis of Dorset in 1443, and Marshall of France, and then, in 1448, Duke of Somerset. Perhaps Margaret did not suffer the indignity of the siege of Rouen in October 1449, when Somerset surrendered the city to the French, in exchange for a safe conduct, for him and his children, leaving hostages, including her own brother, Thomas, Lord Roos, and England’s hero of the French wars, John Talbot, Lord Talbot. Lord Talbot was later ransomed (as was Roos), made Earl of Shrewsbury, and although killed in 1453, remained, until Elizabethan times as England’s greatest war hero, known as the ‘English Achilles’.

Returning home to England, via Caen and Calais in 1450, Margaret, aged about eighteen, entered the Household of Queen Margaret of Anjou as a Lady-in-Waiting, whilst her step-father became Constable of England and, it seems, proceeded to try to dominate the weak King Henry VI. Queen Margaret thoroughly enjoyed acting as a royal ‘matchmaker’ for her ladies, writing letters to likely husbands, urging them to press their suits to the many young and eligible heiresses and noble girls under her motherly wing. Margaret, not a rich heiress nor a young girl, had to wait for a husband, and when one came along she was in her late twenties and he, in his fifties. William Botreaux, Lord Botreaux of North Cadbury, Somerset, had fought at the great battle of Agincourt in 1415. He was rich and had been preciously married to Elizabeth Beaumont, daughter of Lord Beaumont of Folkingham Castle in Lincolnshire (They had three children; William, who died an infant, Anne, who married Sir John Stafford, and Margaret, below). Lord Botreaux’s daughter, Margaret, Lady Hungerford was ten years older than Margaret, when they married sometime before 1458.

As Lady Botreaux, Margaret continued to serve Queen Margaret, moving from Westminster to Coventry and observing the opening moves of The Wars of the Roses from within the Queens affinity. At some point she would have left the Queen and watched from the safety of her elderly husband’s inn in Lambeth, London or one his beautiful manor houses in Somerset. Lord Botreaux, due to his age, took no recorded part in these early troubles. The battle of 1st St.Albans (22nd May 1455) saw her step-father, Somerset, killed by the Yorkist faction and her mother widowed once more. 1461 brought the terrible battle of Towton in Yorkshire, and the Coronation of the first Yorkist King, Edward IV. Lord Botreaux had, probably, been in ill health as he was ‘aged and incapable of bearing arms’, and on 16th May 1462 he died, leaving Margaret a fairly well off widow (the Barony of Botreaux later went to the Hastings family, later Earls of Huntingdon). Margaret’s situation was not that bright, however; her step-brothers, brothers, and step-daughters family were all Lancastrian rebels, many being under Act of Attainder for their loyalty. Margaret chose to re-marry to a recognised Yorkist officer, a man who had only just been made a Knight - Sir Thomas Burgh of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. In 1463, when they married, Margaret’s step-brother, Henry, Duke of Somerset, had just made his peace with Edward IV, becoming Captain of the Royal guard (the marriage may have been arranged to ‘sweeten’ the Duke). By 1464 however, Somerset had, once again, rebelled and was finally captured after the Battle of Hexham, Northumberland and beheaded and buried there.  Somerset’s surviving brothers (Margaret’s step-brothers) faired no better, Edmund being beheaded after defeat at Tewkesbury and John killed in the action there. Later Henry, Duke of Somerset’s bastard child, Charles Somerset, came to prominence at Henry VII and VIII’s court, and later his family became the current Dukes' of Beaufort.

Margaret’s brother, Thomas, Lord Roos, was captured at Hedgeley Moor in 1464, taken to Newcastle-upon-Tyne and beheaded there on 17th May, being returned to either the church of the Franciscans or Austin Canons in Hexham for burial, leaving his young son, Edmund (eventually 10th Lord Roos), to fend for himself with the other rebel Lancastrians in Scotland and then in France. Lord Roos had fought at 1st St.Albans, was with Somerset at Guines in the Calais Pale, fought at Wakefield, 2nd St.Albans, went with Henry VI and Queen Margaret to Scotland after Towton and was part of the Lancastrian force that surrendered Bamburgh Castle to the Yorkists in December 1462, leaving, once again, for Scotland on finding that the Yorkists would not reverse the Attainder and restore him to his lands, (his step-brother Henry, Duke of Somerset, received a pardon and fully restored to favour).

Margaret’s mother, now Eleanor, Dowager Duchess of Somerset, having been granted a number of her fathers manors and £222.4s.6d a year, for life, by Edward IV in 1463 and a further £100 a year from 1465, married again to Sir Walther Rokesley, a Lincolnshire knight. Eleanor died in March 1466/7, Rokeseley being buried in Crowland Abbey near Peterborough. Philippe, Lady Roos, Margaret’s sister in law, was the sister of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester and Constable of England, an officer of the Yorkist government (who had also had Thomas Roos wardship, hence the marriage to Philippe), which did not prevent Lady Roos being arrested in 1461 (due to her husbands Attainder). Lady Roos regained her freedom and married again, after Thomas, Lord Roos execution, to Sir Thomas Wingfield in 1468/9, later marrying again on 26th August 1471 to Sir Edward Grimston of Suffolk. Thomas, Lord Roos and Philippe, Lady Roos, had five children; Edmund, John, Isabel (Married Thomas Lovel), Eleanor (Married George Manners) and Margaret. In 1485 Henry VII annulled the 1461 Act of Attainder against Thomas, Lord Roos. Edmund was still overseas and the estates were in 1492 it was found that Edmund ‘was not of sufficient discretion’ to guide himself and custody was given to Sir Thomas Lovel, his brother-in-law; he died at Elsing manor on 23rd October 1508 in his middle fifties. The Lordship of Roos passed, through marriage, to the Manners family, now Dukes' of Rutland of Belvoir Castle.

In the late 1480’s Lady Margaret became gravely ill, and Sir Thomas called in expensive Doctors and purchased costly prescriptions from London apothecaries in an attempt to make her well or, at least, control the suffering she was evidently in. Sadly, on the 10th December 1488, Margaret Roos, dowager Lady Botreaux and Lady Burgh, passed away at the The Medieval Manor House. aged 57. Lady Margaret was laid to rest in the Burgh family vault, under the parish church, rebuilt by her husband Thomas. Eight years later, Thomas joined her, their memory kept alive by the magnificent monumental effigies, displaying Burgh and Roos heraldry and recording the dates of their decease. Today the effigies are long gone, swept away, not by religious fervour or Civil War, but by over zealous re-builders, with no care for history. The Vault remains intact and undisturbed, The Old Hall her more abiding monument.





SOURCES



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HERALDRY from The Lance and Longbow – various publications by kind permission of the Editor