Margaret Beauchamp

Margaret Beauchamp, Countess of Shrewsbury (1404 – 14 June, 1468), was the eldest daughter of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and Elizabeth de Berkeley.

Ancestry

She was the granddaughter and heir-general of Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley; however, the Barony and castle of Berkeley had passed to his nephew James Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley on his death in 1417. These lands were also claimed by her mother, to whom she and her two sisters were coheirs.

Marriage

On September 6, 1425, she had married John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury; he and her two brothers-in-law, the Duke of Somerset and the Baron Latimer, vigorously maintained the claim to the Berkeley lands. By Talbot, she had four children:
* Sir Lewis Talbot
* John Talbot, 1st Viscount Lisle (d. 1453)
* Sir Humphrey Talbot (d. c. 1492)
* Elizabeth Talbot (d. bef. 1453), married John de Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk.

Wars of the Roses

During the troubled years of the Wars of the Roses, the dispute frequently passed from litigation to actual violence.

Lord Berkeley sacked Margaret's manor at Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, in return for which her son, the Viscount Lisle, stormed Berkeley Castle (1452) and took him prisoner.

Margaret also succeeded in having Lord Berkeley's wife, Isabel Mowbray, committed to prison, where she died that year.

Litigation from her Deathbed

Lord Berkeley married Joan Talbot, Margaret's stepdaughter, in 1457, temporarily quelling the feud. It broke out again in 1463, when William Berkeley, 2nd Baron Berkeley, acceded. Litigation continued, and on her death in 1468, she left her claims to her grandson Thomas Talbot, 2nd Viscount Lisle.

References

* Camden, William. "Of the Antiquity of Epitaphs in England." "A Collection of Curious Discourses." Vol. 1, Ed. Thomas Hearne, Benjamin White, at Horace's Head, London, 1775.