Women and Ambition in Fifteenth-Century England: Eleanor Cobham, Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort

This thesis explores how ambition was understood and how it was justified in fifteenth-century England. Through an exploration of the lives of three women of exceptional status, Eleanor Cobham (c.1400-1452), Elizabeth Woodville (1437?-1492) and Margaret Beaufort (1443-1509), I argue that the different life stories of these women reveal much about the ideas underpinning ambition in this period and the circumstances under which the ambitious behaviour of these women could be justified.