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Henry Beaufort (c. 1375 – April 11, 1447), was an medieval English clergyman and Bishop of Winchester.^[1]

The second son of John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford, Beaufort was born in Anjou (France) in about 1374 and educated for a career in the Church. Subsequently their cousin Richard II of England declared he and his two brothers and one sister legitimate about 1390. (There is some confusion on this point; there seems to have been another such procedure in 1397, involving Parliament.) On February 27, 1398 he was nominated to be Bishop of Lincoln and on July 14, 1398 he was consecrated.^[2] When his half-brother deposed Richard and took the throne as Henry IV of England, he made Bishop Beaufort Chancellor of England in 1403.^[3] Beaufort resigned that position in 1404 when he was appointed Bishop of Winchester on November 19.^[4]

Between 1411 and 1413 Bishop Beaufort was in political disgrace for siding with his nephew, the Prince of Wales, against the King, but when King Henry IV died and the Prince became Henry V of England, he made his uncle Chancellor again in 1413; however, Beaufort resigned the position in 1417.^[3] Pope Martin V offered the Bishop a cardinal's hat, but King Henry V would not let him accept it. Henry V died in 1422, shortly after making himself heir to France by marrying the French King's daughter, and their infant son became Henry VI of England. Bishop Beaufort and the baby King's other uncles were Regents, and in 1424 Beaufort became Chancellor once more, but was forced to resign again in 1426^[3] because of disputes with the King's other uncles.

The Pope finally made him a Cardinal in 1426,^[3] and in 1427 made him Papal Legate for Germany, Hungary, and Bohemia. Beaufort continued to be active in English politics for years, fighting with the other powerful advisors to the King and always managing to extricate himself from the snares they set for him. He died on April 11, 1447^[4] and was laid to rest in a tomb in Winchester Cathedral. He suffered from delirium on his deathbed and, as he hallucinated, offered Death the whole treasury of England in return for living a while longer (according to legend).

During his youth, most likely while studying at Cambridge University, Henry had an affair with, some believe, Alice Fitzalan (1378–1415), the daughter of Richard Fitzalan and Elizabeth de Bohun, though there is no real evidence to support this. He fathered an illegitimate daughter, Jane Beaufort, in 1402. Both Jane and her husband Sir Edward Stradling, were named in Cardinal Beaufort's will. Their marriage about 1423 brought Sir Edward into the political orbit of his shrewd and assertive father-in-law, to whom he may have owed his appointment as chamberlain of South Wales in December of 1423, a position he held until March of 1437.^[5] The idea of Jane's mother being Alice Fitzalan is possibly a legend of Tudor-era descendants of Sir Edward and Jane Stradling. There is no late-14th/early-15th century documentation to support this affair at all, and the surviving documentation entirely discounts it. However, a blood connection to Cardinal Beaufort would itself be prestigious, regardless of the mother or her marital status. Illegitimacy was not viewed as overly detrimental in Wales in political families.

• List of bishops of Lincoln and precursor offices
• List of bishops of Winchester
• List of Lord Chancellors and Lord Keepers

• Powicke, F. Maurice and E. B. Fryde Handbook of British Chronology 2nd ed. London: Royal Historical Society 1961