Richard Beauchamp, 2nd Baron Beauchamp

Richard Beauchamp, 2nd Baron Beauchamp of Powick (c. 1435 – 19 January 1502/3) was an English peer.

He married on 27 January 1447 Elizabeth, d. of Humphrey Stafford of Grafton. They had Sir John, died young; Elizabeth (d.1503), married, Robert Willoughby, 2nd Baron Willoughby de Broke (d. 1521), Anne, married, Thomas Lygon, of Madresfield, Worcs and Margaret, married, William Rede of Gloucester[(father of Richard Rede/Reade)^[1]].

As Sir Richard Beauchamp, of Kemerton and Boddington, he threw aside his father's Lancastrian ties to hold the gates of Gloucester closed against Queen Margaret on the morning of Friday, 3 May 1471, so denying her army use of the Severn Bridge and an escape route into Wales. As she moved north he harried the Lancastrian rear and captured some guns on the road to Tewkesbury. He fought at the battle of Tewkesbury and was knighted. Soon after, his adulterous wife, Elizabeth, was accused of conspiring his death, with her relation and Beauchamp's litigious neighbour, Thomas Burdet. John Stacey and Thomas Blake were also involved and all three were later accused of imagining the King's death. Burdet and Stacey were hanged at Tyburn. Blake was pardoned.

Beauchamp died on 19 January 1502/1503, at Broomhill when the Barony expired. His three surviving daughters, Elizabeth, Margaret and Anne, became his co-heirs.

References

1. Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists 2nd Ed. by David Faris