Margaret of York - Early Life

Early Life

Duchess Isabella of Burgundy, the mother of Charles the Bold, was through her blood-ties and her perception of Burgundian interests pro-English. As a granddaughter of John of Gaunt, she was consequently sympathetic to the House of Lancaster. She believed that Burgundian trade, from which the Duchy drew its vast wealth, depended upon friendly relations with England. For this reason she was prepared to favour any English faction which was willing to favour Burgundy. By 1454, she favoured the House of York, headed by Margaret's father, Richard, 3rd Duke of York. Although the King of England, Henry VI, was the head of the House of Lancaster, his wife, Margaret of Anjou, was a niece of Burgundy's bitter enemy, Charles VII of France, and was herself an enemy of the Burgundians; the Duke of York, by contrast, shared Burgundy's enmity towards the French, and preferred the Burgundians. Because of this, when the Duke of York came to power in 1453–54, during Henry VI's first period of insanity, negotiations were made between himself and Isabella for a marriage between Charles the Bold, then Count of Charolais, and one of York's unmarried daughters, of whom the 8-year old Margaret was the youngest. The negotiations petered out, however, due to power struggles in England, and the preference of Charles' father, Philip the Good, for a French alliance. Philip had Charles betrothed to Isabella of Bourbon, the daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, and Agnes of Burgundy, in late March 1454, and the pair were married on 31 October 1454.

Margaret, being a useful bargaining tool to her family, was still unmarried at age 20, when Isabella of Bourbon died in September 1465. She had borne Charles only a daughter, Mary, which made it an imperative for him to remarry and father a son. The situation had changed since 1454: Charles was now highly respected by his father, who had in his old age entrusted the rule of Burgundy to his son; Charles was pro-English, and wished to make an English marriage and alliance against the French. For her own part, Margaret's family were far more powerful and secure than they had been in 1454: her father had been killed at the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460, but her brother was now Edward IV, opposed ineffectively only by Margaret of Anjou and her son, Edward of Westminster; this made Margaret a far more valuable bride than she had been as the mere daughter of a Duke. Because of this, Charles sent his close advisor, Guillaume de Clugny, to London weeks after Isabella's death, to propose to Edward IV a marriage between Charles and Margaret. Edward responded warmly, and in the Spring of 1466 sent his brother-in-law, Lord Scales, to Burgundy, where Scales made a formal offer of Margaret's hand in marriage to Charles, and put forward Edward's own proposal of a reciprocal marriage between Charles' daughter Mary and Edward's brother, George, 1st Duke of Clarence.