Henry Beaufort - Affair and Daughter

Affair and Daughter

When Henry was Bishop of Lincoln, he had an affair with, some believe, Alice FitzAlan (1378–1415), the daughter of Richard FitzAlan and Elizabeth de Bohun, though there is no real evidence to support this and the theory has been countered by Brad Verity. He fathered an illegitimate daughter, Jane Beaufort, in 1402, who some make Alice's daughter. Both Jane and her husband Sir Edward Stradling, were named in Cardinal Beaufort's will. Their marriage about 1423 brought Sir Edward into the political orbit of his shrewd and assertive father-in-law, to whom he may have owed his appointment as chamberlain of South Wales in December 1423, a position he held until March 1437. The idea of Jane's mother being Alice Fitzalan is possibly a legend of Tudor-era descendants of Sir Edward and Jane Stradling. There is no late-14th/early-15th century documentation to support this affair at all, and the surviving documentation entirely discounts it. However, a blood connection to Cardinal Beaufort would itself be prestigious, regardless of the mother or her marital status. Sir Edward and Jane were ancestors of John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the U.S.A.