Fit for a King? The Architecture of the Beauchamp Chapel

One of the two wealthiest men of his generation in England, Richard Beauchamp, thirteenth Earl of Warwick, served under three Lancastrian kings: he had been tutor to the young Henry VI, ambassador to the Council of Constance, variously Captain of Calais and of Rouen, and he had, of course, fought in the service of the kings of England in France. In 1437 he was made Lieutenant-General and Governor of France and Normandy, leaving for France in August of that year and it was during this trip, two years later, that he died, in 1439, in Rouen, aged fifty-eight. He had made a good first marriage in 1397 to Elizabeth, only daughter and heir of Thomas Berkeley, followed by an excellent second in 1423, to Isabel, daughter of the Earl of Gloucester and eventually sole heir to the Despencer fortune, and also widow of Richard's cousin and namesake the Earl of Worcester (who had died in 1422).