Henry Beaufort

Henry Beaufort was a legitimised son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, bishop of Winchester and later a cardinal. He served as chancellor under Henry IV and Henry V and became one of the wealthiest and most experienced figures in the government of the young Henry VI. Beaufort repeatedly clashed with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, over policy and control of the regency. He also financed campaigns and promoted a crusade against the Hussites.

Beaufort appears in Conn Iggulden’s Wars of the Roses series and in other novels about the final stages of the Hundred Years’ War. Fiction commonly casts him as a calculating churchman opposed to the more popular Gloucester, an image influenced by political propaganda and Shakespeare. His wealth and longevity make him a useful figure through whom to follow several reigns and the growing weaknesses of Lancastrian government.

In Paul Doherty’s The Whyte Harte, the suspicious death of the Richard II prompts an unground movement known as the White Harte...The turbulent times of the 15th century are perfectly captured in in an Augustinian monastery. Paul Doherty’s The Serpent Amongst the Lilies places Henry Beaufort within a narrative shaped by crime, espionage and covert power.