Penelope Keith as Lady Margaret
Lisa Jardine, Penelope Keith and David Starkey joined David Reynolds, Charles Saumarez Smith and Quentin Skinner in a day celebrating th
e life of the College's foundress, Lady Margaret Beaufort.
On 27 June 2009 Christ’s College celebrated the life and generosity of its foundress, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who died 500 years ago, almost to the day. Her extraordinary life, spanning seven decades of the most turbulent period of late medieval English history, culminated in the accession of her son as Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs. Her great personal wealth was then put to good use – founding professorships in both Oxford and Cambridge, supporting the development of printing, newly arrived in England and, in 1505, re-founding the impoverished God’s House as Christ’s College.
