John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset

John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, was the eldest surviving son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. Born before his parents’ marriage, he and his siblings were later legitimised by papal and royal acts, although Henry IV added a restriction excluding them from the crown.

John served Richard II and Henry IV in military and diplomatic roles and founded the Beaufort line from which Margaret Beaufort and Henry VII descended. John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset died in Royal Foundation of St Katharine.

Nathen Amin’s The House of Beaufort follows John Beaufort as the eldest son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, born outside marriage but later legitimised with his siblings and elevated into the peerage. His career as Earl of Somerset, royal kinsman and Lancastrian noble establishes the political position from which later Beaufort descendants would become central to the fifteenth-century succession struggles and, eventually, to Henry Tudor’s claim.