Public Family Trees/Tudor/John Beaufort
1404 - 1444 · Male · England
1
Generation
0
Ancestors
21
Descendants
1
Children
1
Marriages
John Beaufort
1404 - 1444
John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, was an English nobleman and soldier of the Lancastrian royal house and the father of Lady Margaret Beaufort. Born in 1404, he was a grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, through Gaunt's marriage to Katherine Swynford, whose children were legitimated by parliament but later barred from the succession by a clause of doubtful authority. Captured in France as a young man at th…
Born1404
The beginning of John Beaufort's recorded life.
Family
A partnership that connects two branches of the Tudor family.
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Tudor family.
Died1444
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
Your turn
Free, with no sign-up to start. Add yourself, then your parents and grandparents, and watch the tree grow.
Gen 1 · 1401 - 1437
Catherine of Valois was a French princess who became queen of England as the wife of Henry V and, by her second marriage, the grandmother of Henry VII. Born in Paris in 1401, the youngest daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria, she was married to Henry V in 1420 under the Treaty of Troyes, which was meant to settle the Hundred Years' War by making her husband heir to the French throne. Their only child succeeded as Henry VI of England at the age of nine months. Widowed at twenty, Catherine formed a lasting union with Owen Tudor, a Welshman of her household, and their sons Edmund and Jasper Tudor grew up under the protection of their royal half-brother. She died in 1437 and was buried at Westminster Abbey.
Gen 1 · 1411 - 1460
Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, was the English magnate whose claim to the throne opened the Wars of the Roses and whose sons became Edward IV and Richard III. Born in 1411, he inherited vast estates and a double descent from Edward III, through his father Richard of Conisburgh and his mother Anne Mortimer. He served as the king's lieutenant in France and in Ireland and twice as Lord Protector during the incapacity of Henry VI, pressing his case against the court party led by Queen Margaret of Anjou. In October 1460 parliament recognised him as heir to the throne in place of the king's son, but he died at the Battle of Wakefield that December. Through his granddaughter Elizabeth of York his blood passed into the Tudor line.
Gen 2 · 1442 - 1483
Edward IV was king of England from 1461 to 1470 and again from 1471 to 1483, the first monarch of the House of York and the maternal grandfather of Henry VIII. Born at Rouen in 1442, the eldest surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, he took the throne as a teenager after his father's death in the Wars of the Roses and won decisive victories at Towton, Barnet and Tewkesbury. His secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464 alienated his chief ally, the Earl of Warwick, and drove him briefly into exile. His second reign brought England relative peace, a revived royal revenue and a fashionable court. He died in 1483, and three years later his eldest daughter Elizabeth of York married Henry VII.
Gen 2 · 1449 - 1478
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, was an English prince of the House of York, a younger brother of Edward IV and Richard III and the father of Margaret Pole. Born at Dublin Castle in 1449 while his father served as the king's lieutenant in Ireland, he was created Duke of Clarence at his brother's coronation in 1461. In 1469 he married Isabel Neville, elder daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and joined his father-in-law's rebellion against the king before changing sides again and being reconciled. Relations with Edward IV broke down once more after Isabel's death, and he was attainted by parliament and died in the Tower of London in February 1478. His daughter Margaret carried the Plantagenet bloodline into the Tudor century.
Gen 3 · 1466 - 1503
Elizabeth of York was queen of England as the wife of Henry VII and the mother of Henry VIII, and the only Englishwoman to be the daughter, sister, niece, wife and mother of kings. Born at the Palace of Westminster in 1466, she was the eldest child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Her father's death in 1483 left her and her siblings declared illegitimate under Richard III, and her marriage to the victorious Henry Tudor in January 1486 was the settlement that closed the Wars of the Roses. She bore at least seven children, of whom Arthur, Margaret, Henry and Mary survived infancy, and was widely praised for her generosity, her piety and the dignity she brought to the new dynasty. She died at the Tower of London on her thirty-seventh birthday in 1503.
Gen 3 · 1473 - 1541
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was an English noblewoman and one of the last of the House of Plantagenet, a first cousin of Elizabeth of York and for many years a trusted figure at the court of Henry VIII. Born in 1473 to George, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel Neville, she was married to Sir Richard Pole, a loyal servant of Henry VII, and bore five children, among them Cardinal Reginald Pole. Henry VIII restored her to the earldom of Salisbury in her own right in 1513, a rare distinction for a woman, and appointed her governess to Princess Mary, to whom she remained devoted through the years of Mary's disgrace. Her family's opposition to the king's religious policy brought her attainder in 1539 and her death at the Tower of London in 1541.
Gen 4 · 1486 - 1502
Arthur, Prince of Wales, was the eldest son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and heir to the English throne until his death at fifteen. Born at Winchester in September 1486, less than a year after his parents' marriage, he was named to evoke the legendary British king and to advertise the new dynasty's ambitions. He was betrothed in infancy to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and the two were married at St Paul's Cathedral in November 1501 in a match that anchored England's alliance with Spain. The couple were sent to Ludlow Castle to head the council of the Welsh Marches, and Arthur died there in April 1502. His younger brother became Henry VIII and in 1509 married his widow.
Gen 4 · 1489 - 1541
Margaret Tudor was queen of Scots as the wife of James IV and the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots, the link through which the Stuarts eventually inherited the English throne. Born at the Palace of Westminster in 1489, the eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, she was married to James IV in 1503 under the settlement known as the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. Widowed at Flodden in 1513, she served briefly as regent for her infant son James V, then married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, by whom she had a daughter, Margaret Douglas. Scottish politics for the next two decades turned largely on the rivalry between her, the Douglases and the Duke of Albany. She died at Methven Castle in 1541.
Gen 4 · 1491 - 1547
Henry VIII was king of England from 1509 to 1547, the second Tudor monarch and the one whose break with Rome reshaped English religion and government. Born at Greenwich in 1491, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, he became heir on the death of his elder brother Arthur and succeeded at seventeen, marrying Arthur's widow Catherine of Aragon. When the papacy would not annul that marriage he broke with Rome, was declared Supreme Head of the Church of England, and dissolved the monasteries, transferring their lands and wealth to the crown. He married six times, and his three surviving children, Mary, Elizabeth and Edward, each reigned in turn. A lavish patron, palace builder and founder of a standing navy, he died at Whitehall in January 1547.
Gen 5 · 1512 - 1542
James V was king of Scots from 1513 to 1542, the son of James IV and Margaret Tudor and the father of Mary, Queen of Scots. Born at Linlithgow Palace in 1512, he succeeded before his second birthday and spent his minority under a succession of regents and, from 1525, in the custody of his stepfather the Earl of Angus, from whom he escaped in 1528 to rule in his own right. He rebuilt royal finances, kept Scotland aligned with France and with Rome against the reformation pursued by his uncle Henry VIII, and remodelled the palaces of Falkland and Stirling in the new Renaissance style. His first wife, Madeleine of Valois, died soon after their marriage; his second, Mary of Guise, bore him a daughter six days before his own death at Falkland Palace in December 1542.
Gen 5 · 1515 - 1578
Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was an English and Scottish noblewoman, the daughter of Margaret Tudor and the Earl of Angus and the grandmother of James VI and I. Born at Harbottle Castle in Northumberland in October 1515 while her mother was in flight from Scotland, she was brought up largely at the English court as a favoured niece of Henry VIII and a close companion of Princess Mary. She was twice imprisoned for making marriage arrangements without royal consent before marrying Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, in 1544. Her persistent dynastic manoeuvring secured the marriage of her son Lord Darnley to Mary, Queen of Scots, uniting the two strongest claims to the English succession. She died in London in 1578.
The House of Bernadotte is the royal family of Sweden, founded by the French marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who was elected Swedish crown prince in 1810 and reigned from 1818 as King Charles XIV John, and it has held the throne in an unbroken line ever since, down to King Carl XVI Gustaf, Crown Princess Victoria and Princess Estelle. ## Origins The dynasty began far from Sweden, in the Gascon town of Pau, where Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was born in 1763 as the son of a provincial lawyer. He rose through the revolutionary French army to become a Marshal of the Empire and Prince of Pontecorvo. In 1810 the Swedish Riksdag, left without an heir after the deposition of Gustav IV Adolf and the accession of the childless Charles XIII, unexpectedly offered the succession to the French marshal. He accepted, converted to Lutheranism, took the name Charles John and in 1818 became king of both Sweden and Norway. His marriage to Desiree Clary, a Marseille merchant's daughter once engaged to Napoleon, produced the dynasty's second king, Oscar I. ## Notable members Oscar I's marriage to Josephine of Leuchtenberg, a granddaughter of the Empress Josephine, brought a descent from Sweden's older royal houses into the line, and Gustaf V's marriage to Victoria of Baden, a great granddaughter of the deposed Gustav IV Adolf, reinforced it. Later generations produced an unusual number of figures known for work outside the court: Prince Eugen, one of Sweden's foremost landscape painters; Gustaf VI Adolf, a working archaeologist and botanist; and Sigvard Bernadotte, an industrial designer. The family's daughters carried the name into the other Scandinavian monarchies and into Belgium: Ingrid became queen of Denmark, Astrid queen of the Belgians and Martha crown princess of Norway, which makes this tree a close relative of the Glucksburg line. ## Significance Under the Bernadottes the Swedish monarchy moved from real political power to a purely ceremonial role, settled by the constitution of 1974. In 1980 Sweden became the first monarchy to adopt full absolute primogeniture, making the infant Crown Princess Victoria heir ahead of her younger brother. Carl XVI Gustaf, who became heir at nine months old and king in 1973, is the longest reigning monarch in Swedish history. Several princes of the house lost their royal titles by marrying commoners and were created Counts of Wisborg by the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, a kinsman through Queen Sophia of Nassau, which is why the Bernadotte name is borne today both by a reigning royal house and by a line of counts. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Family name | House of Bernadotte | | Country | Sweden, and Norway until 1905 | | Founder | Charles XIV John, born Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (1763 to 1844) | | Reigning since | 1818 | | Monarchs | Charles XIV John, Oscar I, Charles XV, Oscar II, Gustaf V, Gustaf VI Adolf, Carl XVI Gustaf | | Current head | King Carl XVI Gustaf, reigning since 1973 | | Heir apparent | Crown Princess Victoria, Duchess of Vastergotland | | Principal residences | Stockholm Palace, Drottningholm Palace, Haga Palace | | Royal motto | "For Sweden, with the times" (Carl XVI Gustaf) |
The Belgian royal family, formally the House of Belgium and dynastically a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is the reigning family of Belgium, founded when the German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld accepted the throne of the newly independent kingdom in 1831 and continuing today through King Philippe and his heir, Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant. Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830 and chose a constitutional monarchy. Its National Congress looked abroad for a sovereign who could balance French and British interests, and settled on Leopold, a widowed, well-connected and famously cautious prince who had already turned down the crown of Greece. He took the constitutional oath on 21 July 1831, still the Belgian national day. Seven monarchs have reigned since: Leopold I, Leopold II, Albert I, Leopold III, Baudouin, Albert II and Philippe. ## Origins The dynasty's roots are in the small Thuringian duchy of Saxe-Coburg, whose princes married into half the thrones of nineteenth-century Europe. Leopold I was the uncle of both Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, and his second marriage, to Louise-Marie of Orleans, daughter of the French king Louis Philippe I, tied the new kingdom to Paris as well as London. The crown did not pass in a straight line: Leopold II's only son died at the age of nine, so the succession moved to Leopold II's brother Philippe, Count of Flanders, and then to Philippe's son, Albert I. Every Belgian monarch since 1909 descends from that collateral branch. ## Notable members Leopold II is the most studied and most criticised figure in the family, remembered for the industrial boom and monumental building of his reign and, above all, for his personal rule over the Congo Free State. Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Bavaria became wartime symbols of Belgian resistance behind the Yser in 1914. Leopold III's surrender in 1940 and his conduct under occupation triggered the political crisis known as the Royal Question and ended in his abdication. Baudouin reigned for 42 years and presided over Congolese independence and Belgium's transformation into a federal state. Daughters of the house carried its blood outward: Charlotte became Empress Carlota of Mexico, Marie-Jose was the last Queen of Italy, and Josephine-Charlotte was Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. ## Significance In a country divided by language, the monarchy has been the one institution claimed by both Flemish and Walloon Belgians, and the king's role in brokering coalition governments remains politically real rather than ceremonial. The family has also changed with the country: equal succession was introduced in 1991, making Princess Elisabeth the first female Duchess of Brabant and the future first queen regnant of the Belgians, and in 2020 a court recognised Delphine of Saxe-Coburg as a daughter of Albert II. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Dynasty | House of Belgium (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) | | Country | Kingdom of Belgium | | Founder | Leopold I, King of the Belgians (1790-1865) | | Reigning since | 21 July 1831 | | Monarchs to date | Seven, from Leopold I to Philippe | | Current head | King Philippe (born 1960), reigning since 2013 | | Heir apparent | Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant (born 2001) | | Principal residences | Royal Palace of Brussels, Castle of Laeken | | Motto | L'union fait la force / Eendracht maakt macht |
The Rockefeller family is an American business and philanthropic dynasty founded on the Standard Oil fortune of John D. Rockefeller, whose descendants have shaped American banking, conservation, medicine, modern art and national politics across five generations. From a modest upstate New York farmhouse the family rose to control the largest industrial enterprise of the Gilded Age, then spent the twentieth century converting that fortune into foundations, museums, parks and public office. ## Origins The line begins with William Avery Rockefeller (1810-1906), a traveling salesman from Granger, New York, and his wife Eliza Davison (1813-1889), who married in 1837 and raised six children in Richford, Moravia and Owego before the family moved to Ohio. Their eldest son, John D. Rockefeller, began as a Cleveland bookkeeper, entered oil refining in 1863 and incorporated the Standard Oil Company in 1870 together with his younger brother William Rockefeller. By the 1880s Standard Oil refined the great majority of American petroleum, until the Supreme Court ordered its dissolution in 1911. ## Notable members John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller had four children who reached adulthood, among them the Chicago arts patron Edith Rockefeller McCormick and the family's only son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. With Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, a co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art, John Jr. had six children who defined the family's public face: Abby "Babs" Rockefeller Mauze, the philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, Nelson Rockefeller, who served four terms as Governor of New York and then as Vice President of the United States, the conservationist and venture capitalist Laurance Rockefeller, Winthrop Rockefeller, Governor of Arkansas, and the banker David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan. Their children, known within the family as the Cousins, include Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the Asmat art collector Michael Rockefeller, Lieutenant Governor Winthrop Paul Rockefeller of Arkansas, the economist Neva Goodwin and the Synergos founder Peggy Dulany. ## Significance The family's lasting mark is institutional rather than dynastic. The Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, Rockefeller University, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art, Colonial Williamsburg, Lincoln Center, the Asia Society and several national parks all trace their founding or their endowment to a Rockefeller. Few American families have moved so completely from industrial fortune to organized philanthropy and elected office within three generations. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Surname | Rockefeller | | Origin | Richford, New York, United States | | Founder | John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937) | | Family business | Standard Oil, later Chase Manhattan Bank | | Known for | Standard Oil, the Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art | | Public offices held | Vice President of the United States, Governor of New York, Governor of Arkansas, United States Senator | | Generations covered | Five, from William Avery Rockefeller to the fourth-generation Cousins |
John Beaufort has 1 recorded child: Margaret Beaufort.
John Beaufort married Margaret Beauchamp.
John Beaufort is recorded as 1st Duke of Somerset, military commander in the Tudor family tree.
John Beaufort's recorded native place is England.
0 ancestors and 21 descendants of John Beaufort are recorded so far, within a tree of 51 people.
John Beaufort is recorded as Henry VIII Tudor's Great-Grandfather.
John Beaufort is recorded in the Tudor family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 50 other people.
Trace John Beaufort's connections across the Tudortree, or begin preserving your own family's history today.
Free. Private by default. GEDCOM export any time.