Margaret also exercised good ladyship by intervening on behalf of people who were seeking secular positions. Most of them had no detectable personal connection to the queen. Instead, they were recommended to her by persons within the royal establishment, usually identified only by vague and general allusion (e.g., ‘certain [of] our servants right nigh attending about our person’ in the first letter). In the last two letters she followed up on appointments made by King Henry. In these, as in her letters recommending her clerics or praising the virtues of marriageable women desired by would-be suitors, Margaret often took pains to assert the candidates’ abilities and suitability for the position in question as if they were known quantities.

We still speak of an ‘old boy's network’, often with deprecation. In Margaret's day, networking was the accepted way to obtain career advancement. The jobseeker would approach a friend or relative who was in a position to assist. That person tended to have higher status or better connections than the petitioner. The appeal might then be passed to yet another party, deemed to be in an even better position to influence the outcome. If successful, the result was a credit to whoever helped to speed it on its way; it affirmed that person's status and importance. When Margaret's intervention or influence encroached upon established rights of provision or election, they were heartily resented. Many of her efforts to dispense patronage involved walking a tightrope between well-perceived benefaction and ill-perceived interference. The letters concerning Alexander Manning are a case in point.

[20] Queen to the Mayor, Bailiffs and Commons of Coventry re T[homas] Bate, 6 March [1446 preferred, but no later than 1448]

(BL, Add. MS 46,846, fol. 47v; Monro, pp. 139–40)