John Beauchamp, 1st Baron Beauchamp of Powick

John Beauchamp, 1st Baron Beauchamp of Powick, KG, (died April 1475) was an English nobleman and administrator. He was the son and eventual heir of Sir William Beauchamp of Powick in Worcestershire (ca. 1370–ca. 1421), Constable of Gloucester, and his wife, Katherine Usflete (d. after 1436).

Beauchamp's father, a near kinsman of the Earls of Warwick, had been a royal retainer under Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. On his father's death he also entered the king's service in the Hundred Years' War. During the 1420s Beauchamp served under the Duke of Bedford in medieval France : he was captain of Pont-de-l'Arche in 1422–1429, lieutenant of Rouen Castle in 1429, a participant in the Maine–Anjou campaigns, and a counsellor to the duke and member of his household. About the time of Henry VI's visit to France for his coronation, in 1430–1432, however, he seems to have taken up a permanent post within the king's domestic establishment. Some time before 1434 he married Margaret de Ferrers, possibly daughter of Edmund de Ferrers, 5th Baron Ferrers of Chartley.

The death of his kinsman Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick in 1439 seems to have been the first major turning point of John Beauchamp's career, when he became joint guardian of the extensive lands of Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick. During the following decade Beauchamp's importance grew. In 1439 or 1440 he rose up the household ladder to become Master of the King's Horse. In 1445 he became a Knight of the Garter. At about the same time he seems to have inherited his father's estates, with their centres at Powick and at Alcester in Warwickshire, and became the major power in the west midlands. On the death of the Duke of Warwick in 1446, Sir John felt sufficiently confident to launch a claim for the earldom of Warwick itself. While the powerful interests clustered around the duke's female heirs ensured his failure, Beauchamp was able to exact a handsome price for his acquiescence. Amid a series of grants made in 1446–7, including his father's old office of Constable of Gloucester and the post of Justice of South Wales, he was on 2 May 1447 elevated to the peerage as Lord Beauchamp of Powick.

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