Stained glass window containing the arms of John Beaumont, 1st Viscount Beaumont, English nobleman and magnate from Folkingham, Lincolnshire. Councillor to King Henry VI and rewarded for his services, becoming a leading member of E. Anglian nobility.
"John Beaumont, 1st Viscount Beaumont (c. 1409–1460), was an English nobleman and magnate from Folkingham, Lincolnshire. He was a councillor to King Henry VI and was rewarded for his services, becoming a leading member of the East Anglian nobility. Beaumont held numerous offices for the crown, and was promoted up the peerage to become the first man with the rank of viscount. He also amassed immense personal wealth, acquired through inheritance, marriage, and royal patronage.
Beaumont was present for some of the most notable events of Henry VI's reign. He was present at the arrest of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester in 1447, helped defend the king against Jack Cade's Rebellion in 1450, and helped suppress the rebellion of Richard, duke of York in 1452. While York and his allies ended up fighting against the king, Beaumont remained loyal to the Lancastrian crown during the 1450s, which saw the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. His personal loyalty to Henry VI eventually cost him his life – he was killed, bodyguarding the king, at the battle of Northampton in 1460. Beaumont's son, William Beaumont, continued the struggle against the Yorkists.
Born at Folkingham Castle, the eldest son of Henry Beaumont, 5th Baron Beaumont, and orphaned by the age of four, Beaumont became Henry V's ward, who quickly put him in the custody of Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. On 24 July 1425 his marriage rights were granted by the council to Sir John Radcliffe as part-payment for debts owed him by the crown. He was first summoned to parliament as Lord Beaumont in 1431, and at some point between 1425 and 1436 he married Elizabeth Phelip. She was the daughter and heiress of Sir William Phelip, a knight of the Garter who was recognised as sixth Lord Bardolf. On his death in 1441, his large East Anglian estates went to his daughter, and so to Viscount Beaumont. This made him a leading figure in the region. Combined with his own inheritance in Leicestershire, he was a figure worthy of the association of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk (died 1450) and from there entered the household of King Henry VI. In 1429 Beaumont was knighted by the seven-year old king on the eve of his coronation and was in France with Henry the following year. Dr. John Watts has suggested that, as a royal ward, he may have been brought up in the king's household as a young man, and that his later generous treatment was a consequence of this. Watts noted that a council act of 1425 brought wards of his status 'permanently about the king.'
Royal service -
His first major activity on the king's behalf was in France with the king's uncle, the duke of Gloucester in June–July 1436, which had the goal of relieving Calais, in a short, sharp campaign; albeit using the largest English army seen on French soil since Henry V's campaign. He briefly reinforced the Duke of York in Normandy, but all returned to England in late July 1437. For this service he was granted the county of Boulogne in reward; he was not, however, to ever return, even though the earl of Warwick had named him as one of the preferred nobles to accompany him back to France that year to relieve York. On 5 January the following year (by now a 'prominent Household servant,' according to Ralph Griffiths) he was made steward of the Duchy of Lancaster and steward of Leicester, Castle Donington, and Higham Ferrers. In 1439 he was sworn onto the king's council, which was effectively running the country during the king's minority, and in 1446 he was 'intimately involved' in peace negotiations with the French. In 1445, he was appointed Constable of England, an envoy to France that same year beginning those negotiations, and five years later, to the Scots.
In June 1457 he was personally responsible for intervening in the activities of Bishop Pecock, a virulent anti-Lollard. However, his virulence led to suspicions of heresy, which resulted in Beaumont's instigation of a formal examination into the bishop's sermons and writings; Peckock agreed to recant and abjured his heresy in November 1457, resigning his bishopric a year later.
Royal favour -
By 1440 he was firmly in the king's favour, being made in succession the first ever English viscount as Viscount Beaumont (1440), possibly because by then Boulogne was effectively lost to him and then granted royal lands in East Anglia, further official positions in royal castles, Lord Great Chamberlain, elected to the Garter and the feudal Viscountcy of Beaumont in France. In 1445 he was made premier viscount, and granted precedence over any other- as-yet unmade- viscounts. These consistent promotions and favouritism have been the subject of some speculation by historians; John Watts has questioned why he 'attracted such an extraordinary heap of honours and perquisites from the crown in these years.' He suggests that as a major noble in East Anglia- with all the territorial and regional significance that meant- was enough to make him worthy of promotion. Beaumont commissioned a contemporary manuscript on chivalry, Knyghthode and Bataile, an adaption of Vegetius for presentation to the king, and was also a major benefactor of Queens' College, Cambridge which the king had granted by charter to his wife Margaret in 1448."
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