Margaret of Anjou (French: Marguerite; 23 March 1430 – 25 August 1482) was Queen of England by marriage to King Henry VI from 1445 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471. Through marriage, she was also nominally Queen of France from 1445 to 1453. Born in the Duchy of Lorraine into the House of Valois-Anjou, Margaret was the second eldest daughter of René of Anjou, King of Naples, and Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine.
Margaret was one of the principal figures in the series of dynastic civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses and at times personally led the Lancastrian faction. Some of her contemporaries, such as John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, praised "her valiant courage and undaunted spirit", and the 16th-century historian Edward Hall described her personality in these terms: "This woman excelled all other, as well in beauty and favour, as in wit and policy, and was of stomach and courage, more like to a man, than a woman".
Owing to her husband's frequent bouts of insanity, Margaret ruled the kingdom in his place. It was she who called for a Great Council in May 1455 that excluded the Yorkist faction headed by Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York. This provided the spark that ignited a civil conflict that lasted for more than 30 years, decimated the old nobility of England, and caused the deaths of thousands of men, including her only son, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471.
Margaret was taken prisoner by the victorious Yorkists after the Lancastrian defeat at Tewkesbury. In 1475, she was ransomed by her cousin, King Louis XI of France. She went to live in France as a poor relation of the French king, and she died there at the age of 52.
Margaret was born on 23 March 1430 at Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire east of France ruled by a cadet branch of the French kings, the House of Valois-Anjou. Margaret was the second daughter of René of Anjou and Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine. She had five brothers and four sisters, as well as three half-siblings from her father's relationships with mistresses. Her father, popularly known as "Good King René" (Bon Roi René), was duke of Anjou and titular king of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem; he has been described as "a man of many crowns but no kingdoms". Margaret was baptised at Toul in Lorraine and, in the care of her father's old nurse Theophanie la Magine, she spent her early years at the castle at Tarascon on the river Rhône in Provence and in the old royal palace at Capua, near Naples in the Kingdom of Sicily. Her mother took care of her education and may have arranged for her to have lessons with the scholar Antoine de la Sale, who taught her brothers. In childhood, Margaret was known as la petite créature (the little creature) and was interested in French romances and hunting.
Her family included several prominent women who exercised power in politics, war, and administration as regents and queen-lieutenants. Her mother, Isabella of Lorraine, fought wars on behalf of her husband while he was imprisoned in 1431–1432 and 1434–1436 by the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, and ruled the Duchy of Lorraine in her own right. Her paternal grandmother, Yolande of Aragon, ruled the Duchy of Anjou as regent for her son while Margaret was a child, repelling an English military presence and supporting the disinherited Charles VII of France (Dauphin). It has been suggested that this family example provided her with precedents for her later actions as regent for her son. Attitudes to women's exercise of power were different in Western Europe than in England at the time, with England more opposed to women exercising authority.
Marriage, concession of Maine, and subsequent rule
Margaret met with English envoys at Tours on 4 May 1444 to discuss her marriage to Henry VI of England. On 24 May, she was formally betrothed to Henry by proxy. Her uncle, Charles VII of France, who may have suggested the marriage as part of peace efforts between France and England near the conclusion of the Hundred Years' War, was present. The marriage was negotiated principally by William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and the settlement included a remarkably small dowry of 20,000 francs and the unrealised claim, via Margaret's mother, to the territories of Mallorca and Menorca, which had been occupied for centuries by the Crown of Aragon. The marriage settlement also contained the promise of a twenty-three-month truce with France. Opinions were mixed as to the wisdom of the marriage, but the prevailing understanding was that it represented a genuine effort at peace.
Loans were taken out by the government in order to pay for the considerable expense of transporting Margaret to England. Solicitation for the loans emphasised the role that the marriage, and Margaret herself, would play in seeking peace with France. This was a theme that continued throughout the preparations for her wedding. She arrived in England on 9 April 1445.
On 23 April 1445, Margaret married King Henry VI of England at Titchfield Abbey in Hampshire. She was fifteen and he was twenty-three. She then travelled to London accompanied by various lords and courtiers, arriving on 28 May 1445, where she was met by the mayor and aldermen of the city. The predicted turnout for her arrival and procession was so large that on 8 May, an inspection of roofs and balconies was ordered due to the expectation that spectators would use them as vantage points for her progress.
Her ceremonial progress through the city lasted two days, the intervening night spent, by custom, in the Tower of London. It was accompanied by eight theatrical pageants. Five of these pageants concerned the peace with France, casting Margaret as a symbol of, or the agent of, peace. Three spoke of her spiritual role as a redeemer and intercessor. It is uncertain whether these pageants represented a propaganda effort on the part of the Crown or reflected popular sentiment.
She was then crowned Queen of England on 30 May 1445 at Westminster Abbey by John Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury. Those that anticipated the future return of English claims to French territory believed that she already understood her duty to protect the interests of the Crown fervently. The wedding and her transport were very expensive, estimated by some historians at more than £5,000.
Shortly after her coronation, René of Anjou entered negotiations with the English crown in an attempt to barter a lifetime's alliance and a twenty-year truce in exchange for the cession of the English-held territory of Maine to Anjou and Henry's agreement to abandon his claim to Anjou. Ultimately, the agreement ended without an alliance with Anjou and with the loss of Maine. Margaret, alongside Henry, corresponded closely with Charles VII regarding the agreement, attempting to act as a mediator.
The loss of Maine, regarded as a betrayal, was deeply unpopular with the English public, who were already inclined to mistrust Margaret due to her French origins. Blame was cast on William de la Pole, due to his role in negotiations. The reputation of Margaret's marriage suffered as a result, although she herself was not openly blamed for the loss.
In the early years of their marriage, prior to Henry's illness, Margaret and Henry spent significant proportions of their time together by choice. They shared an interest in education and culture. On 30 March 1448, she was granted licence to found Queens' College, Cambridge. Prior to 1453, there is little evidence of public political efforts on her part. Most of her surviving letters were written during that period, and the majority pertain to acts of intercession, mediation, and intervention in matters on which she had been asked to act, such as the arranging of marriages, the return of wrongfully taken property, and the collection of alms. These were expected and important parts of the role of a noblewoman or queen. Some were successful, and others regarded as high-handed or ill-thought-out. On one occasion, she recommended a man named Alexander Manning to the role of gaoler at Newgate; shortly after, he turned the prisoners loose in an act of protest at his rumoured dismissal for negligence and was then gaoled himself.