Henry Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset

Henry Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset ( January 26, 1436 - May 15, 1464 ) was one of the most important military commanders of the House of Lancaster during the English Wars of the Roses . He also held the subordinate titles of 5th Earl of Somerset , 2nd Marquess of Dorset and 2nd Earl of Dorset .

family

Somerset was the son of Edmund Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and Lady Eleanor Beauchamp, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick. He was the cousin of Margaret Beaufort , the nephew of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and an uncle of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham .

He himself was unmarried and left no legitimate children. He had an illegitimate son of Joan Hill, Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester (1460 - March 15, 1526) (later legitimized), from whom the Earls and Marquesses of Worcester descended and later the Dukes of Beaufort emerged , who are currently the last male descendants of the Plantagenets as well as those of the second house of the Counts of Anjou.

Life

Somerset fought in the first Battle of St Albans (1455), where he was badly wounded and his father was killed fighting troops from Richard Plantagenet . He made this responsible for the death of his father. Together with his origins from a branch of the Lancaster family, this led Somerset to side with the opponents of the Plantagenets. Together with other nobles, he wanted to take revenge and planned, among other things, an ambush against Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury and his son of the same name, the Earl of Warwick. On the mediation of Heinrich VI. There was a reconciliation and Somerset was appointed governor of Calais, but returned as early as 1460.

He was the chief commander in victories of the House of Lancaster at the Battle of Wakefield (1460), in which Richard Plantagenet and the Earl of Salisbury were defeated and killed. He was also in command in the second Battle of St Albans (1461) but also in the defeat in the Battle of Towton (1461) against Edward IV , after which he fled the battlefield and went to Scotland.

From Scotland he traveled to France to negotiate aid. Instead, however, he was detained for a period. From there he traveled to Flanders and back to England via Scotland. Bamburgh Castle was assigned to him by Queen Margaret of Anjou . After a siege he had to hand over the castle. King Edward IV pardoned him on March 10, 1462, with the aim of winning over some of the commanders from the Lancaster camp, and gave him back his lands and titles.

Somerset remained devoted to Edward for the next year. He took part in his court and gave him military advice. But at the end of 1463 he switched back to Lancaster's side. He hurried north and began raising troops. He held the land in the far north of England until May 1464, when he was defeated at the Battle of Hexham . He was later captured in a barn and beheaded the same day. He was buried in Hexham Abbey.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Powicke & Fryde: Handbook of British Chronology. Second Edition, London, 1961, p. 449.
2. ↑ see web link; other sources give the date April 1436 (Powicke & Fryde: Handbook of British Chronology. Second Edition, London, 1961) or early 1436 ( Oxford Dictionary of National Biography )
3. ↑ see web link

literature

• John A. Wagner: Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses. ABC Clio, 2001, ISBN 1-85109-358-3 , pp. 25f.

Web links

• Henry Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset on thepeerage.com , accessed September 10, 2016.
• Michael K. Jones: Beaufort, Henry, second duke of Somerset (1436-1464). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 seen on April 29, 2012 License required

predecessor	Office	successor
Edmund Beaufort	Duke of Somerset 1455-1464	Title forfeited