Margaret Beauchamp

Margaret Beauchamp, Countess of Shrewsbury (1404 – 14 June 1468) was the eldest daughter of Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick and his first wife Elizabeth de Berkeley. As the eldest child of a family without male issue, Margaret was expected to inherit from her father until her stepmother Isabel le Despenser gave him a son.

She was the granddaughter and heir-general of Thomas de Berkeley, 5th Baron Berkeley; however, the Barony and castle of Berkeley had passed to his nephew James Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley on his death in 1417. These lands were also claimed by her mother, to whom she and her two sisters were coheirs.

Her paternal grandfather was Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick who fought for John of Gaunt in Spain and imprisoned in the Tower of London by Richard II and pardoned by Henry IV. However he died 3 years before Margaret was born.

On 6 September 1425 she had married John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury; he and her two brothers-in-laws, the Duke of Somerset and the Baron Latimer, vigorously maintained the claim to the Berkeley lands. However, Latimer's claim was possessed by his brother, the Earl of Salisbury, as Latimer had been declared insane.

By Talbot, she had five children: