The story of Margaret has attracted more attention in Belgium than it has in England. She is recognised as a major bibliophile and has received considerable attention from specialists in this field. Her interests as a collector of fine books also placed her at the forefront of printing technology. In English history however, references to Margaret are confined to a few brief appearances at the time of her marriage and the conspiracies against Henry VII. Yet her life and the events in which she took part had a wide-reaching influence on England. Apart from her participation in the reigns of Edward IV and Henry VII, her action in bringing the Habsburgs into the Netherlands had a lasting impact on relations between England and the Low Countries.
This book aims to examine Margaret’s political activity, motivation and lifestyle. It is also a study of how a woman living in the second half of the fifteenth century could ensure her personal survival and prosperity, even in the face of a series of disasters which removed all her most powerful relations and which left her as the relict of a failed alliance. Margaret was a woman who took a keen interest in all that her status and society had to offer and used her considerable talents to the advantage of others as well as for her own advancement.
The completion of this book is my tribute to the very happy years I spent in Belgium and also to all the scholars, both Belgian and British, who gave me such kindness, many of whom are cited in the Notes and Bibliography. Throughout my research I received liberal assistance in all the various archives, libraries and public record offices which I used. I am particularly thankful for the generous help from Roger Tavernier of Leuven University Library, who was a reliable source of information during all the time that I have been working on this subject. I also owe a particular debt to the British Public Libraries Lending Service and to the librarians of many small branch libraries who still made it possible for books from the British Library or from the university libraries to be available to individuals who are working at some distance from a major library.
No historian works in isolation and I am well aware of my debt to all those who have written on these themes before me, especially to Richard Vaughan whose three books on the Valois Dukes first attracted me to the fascinating world of Burgundian history, to C. A. J. Armstrong whose studies on this period are both penetrating and entertaining, and to Patricia Robins whose comprehensive thesis on Margaret’s dower is available in the University library at Brussels and in the archives at Mechelen. My thanks for advice and encouragement are also due to R. A. Griffiths, P. W. Hammond, M. A. Hicks, Rosemary Horrox, and to David Morgan of the University of London, who kindly read through the almost completed work and made many helpful comments and suggestions.
Above all I am grateful to my husband John whose encouragement and patience has sustained this study over ten years, through three house moves, and who has read and reread the emerging text. I would also like to thank my daughter Elizabeth, who was such a useful contact in Brussels during my search for the illustrations. In the last resort, however, I remain solely responsible for any remaining errors, and I hope this study will provide a springboard for future work on the subject.
Christine Weightman, 1989
Twenty years later I am pleased to see a new edition of this book which has undergone some minor revisions and a slight reordering of the chapters. Although there have been many books on the period during these two decades, our basic knowledge about the life of Margaret has not changed and therefore there have been no major changes or additions to the original text. One book which sheds additional light on Margaret’s relationship with Perkin Warbeck is Ann Wroe’s Perkin - A Story of Deception, London 2003.
Christine Weightman, 2009