[citation needed] 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 weapons on the road to Tewkesbury.
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.
On 27 January 1447 in his private chapel at Beauchamp's Court, Alcester, Warwickshire he married Elizabeth, daughter of Humphrey Stafford of Grafton by special licence.