Talk:Margaret Beaufort (disambiguation)

Untitled

I have reduced the amount of information on this page because it is not an article, it is a disambiguation page. I have altered it to something more like the wording and structure of the other disambiguation pages. Personaly, I think there is still too much on this page, far more than any other disambiguation page, but I have left some of it in.Boleyn (talk) 06:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Lady Stanley

I have not been able to find a reference in the literature to Lady Margaret Beaufort being referred to as Lady Stanley. Is this an invention of wikipedians? Mathsci (talk) 22:58, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

No it isn't. She was married to Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby.

This is a disambiguation page, so it shouldn't have sources. And anyway you don't need a source to show that she was also called Lady Margaret Beaufort, that's not in dispute -- my point was that all three of them could be called that, so it's hardly helpful for a disambiguation page. Richard75 (talk) 15:20, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia's guidelines are here: WP:DABREF. In short, that sort of content doesn't belong in a disambiguation page but should go in the topic article instead. (But actually you don't need to put it there either in this instance.) Richard75 (talk) 17:58, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

(ec) You were the one who claimed that the three Margaret Beauforts were of equal importance. You also demanded sources, so sources you got. No sources call her Lady Stanley, so that is original research on your part. There are long and detailed biographies of her: her marriage to Stanley has been described as a marriage of convenience. Please find a source where she is called Lady Stanley. Your imagination is not a source. You may as well say she was called Lady Stafford. Your "reasoning" would apply equally well there. Both were nominal titles.

All the sources I've searched through refer to her as Lady Margaret Beaufort. Unsurprisingly they were written by academics from Cambridge and their colleagues: by the former archivist at St John's College; by one of the senior historians at Christ's College; and by 3 academics in theology, one of them a Lady Margaret's Professor in Divinity. Sometimes she is just referred to as Lady Margaret and sometimes just Margaret. The point is there is only one famous Lady Margaret Beaufort—"The King's Mother"—the others had far less significance and no comparable coverage in the literature. Indeed as the sources reveal, Lady Margaret Beaufort had high rank among royalty during the reign of Henry VII, being given pride of place at his funeral. Her legacy in Oxford and Cambridge is not disputed, two colleges (1505 and 1511) and and two divinity professorships (1502). She is also the only Lady Margaret Beaufort buried in Westminster Abbey. Here is what Westminster Abbey write:[1]

Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, was buried in the south aisle of Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey. She was born on 31 May 1443, daughter of John (Beaufort), Duke of Somerset and his wife Margaret (Beauchamp). She was descended from one of the illegitimate children of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (a son of Edward III) and his mistress Katherine Swynford. They were given the name Beaufort after Gaunt's castle in the Champagne region of France. Margaret married firstly John de la Pole (marriage dissolved 1453), secondly Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond (eldest son of Owen Tudor and Queen Catherine de Valois, widow of Henry V), thirdly Sir Henry Stafford and lastly Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby. She is best known as the Lady Margaret Beaufort. By her second husband she was mother of Henry VII. She was the foundress of two colleges at Cambridge – Christ's and St John's – and of Chairs of Divinity at both Oxford and Cambridge. Margaret was also the patroness of William Caxton, England's first printer and contributed to the endowment of her son Henry's chapel at the Abbey.

She died on 29 June 1509 at the Abbot of Westminster's house a few days after attending the coronation of her grandson Henry VIII. On 3 July her body was moved from Cheyneygates (lodgings within the Abbot's House) to the Abbey Refectory where it lay surrounded by candles until the burial in the south aisle of Henry VII's chapel on 9 July. Her friend and confessor Bishop Fisher, who preached her funeral sermon at her month's mind, said of her "Every one that knew her loved her, and everything that she said or did became her".

They echo the statements about her legacy that I made (based on the sources). They also write, "She is best known as the Lady Margaret Beaufort." Again that is just what I have said and what is shown by the copious literature. That copious literature does not exist for the other two Margaret Beauforts.

She is most commonly referred to as "Lady Margaret Beaufort" and that I believe is what is most helpful for readers of wikipedia. Thank goodness "Lady Margaret Beaufort" redirects to her page. That is unlikely to change, despite what you say. Mathsci (talk) 18:50, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

1. I never said they were of equal importance.

2. I never doubted that she was called Lady Margaret Beaufort. She was a lady, and that was her name.

3. My point is that all three of them have the same name. That's why there's a disambiguation page for them. Saying that one of them was called LMB when they were all called that isn't inaccurate, but it's not very helpful either.

4. I'll find a source for Lady Stanley when I get home. In the meantime, you shouldn't assume bad faith and accuse your fellow editors of making things up. Richard75 (talk) 10:47, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I have now made some edits to the main article and added a little content to the articles on the two colleges she founded (mostly connected to portraits). On wikimedia commons, the category "Lady Margaret Beaufort" applies solely to her. That was a quite a relief for me. The present form of this disambiguation page might possibly confuse some readers. It is still true, nevertheless, that if readers type "Lady Margaret Beaufort" they get to the famous Lady Margaret Beaufort. Originally her article was called Lady Margaret Beaufort; you moved it to the full title in 2012. The disambiguation page predated that move by six years and originally looked like this.[2] At that stage it was clear that some confusion between the three Margaret Beauforts was likely to arise.

I am not sure how helpful it is to treat all three in the same way, but it might be comparable to Henry Tudor. I don't think the school really deserves a place on the disambiguation page; does it have any merits beyond the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, formerly part of Lady Margaret House, a convent for the Canonesses of St Augustine? Neither has a wikipedia article. As compared to Lady Margaret School, also named after her. Mathsci (talk) 13:35, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

It's probably true that Henry VII's mother is the most famous of the three, so a bare reference to LMB is more likely to mean her than one of the others. So she could be considered the primary topic. We could say something like "LMB usually means 1, but may also refer to 2 and 3."

I haven't got round to finding a source for Lady Stanley, but I won't push that issue for now since she would only have been called that for some of her life. (I remember adding it to the article because I'd read a history book which mixed her up with one of the other ones, and another book which used her married name to differentiate them.)

I tend to agree with you about the school. Richard75 (talk) 21:52, 25 June 2016 (UTC)