When Catherine of Aragon gave birth to a daughter, Mary, Margaret Pole was asked to be one of the godmothers. Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. It stated that all who were called upon must take an oath acknowledging Anne as Henrys wife and their future children as legitimate heirs to the throne. But Margaret kept any dissident thoughts to herself, avoiding jeopardy until, in the summer of 1536, the actions of her son Reginald plunged her whole family into trouble. Her heads. A devoted Catholic, More refuses to sign Parliament's Act of Supremacy, which declares King Henry, and not the Pope, the Supreme Head of the new Church of England. In the end, he decided, in the words of his friend Erasmus, to be a chaste husband rather than an impure priest.. He worked eight years as undersheriff and proved himself an impartial judge and able administrator. The main character is Joanna Stafford, a Dominican novice. The picture was cleaned in 1973, and study suggested that some original features have almost vanished. Henry and his ministers suspected Reginald of plotting to marry the kings daughter Mary, and unite her claim with his. On the scaffold, Margaret prayed for the royal family all except Anne Boleyns daughter, Elizabeth, whom she regarded as illegitimate. The governors of Lincoln admired him enough to appoint him lecturer on law for three consecutive years. You may not of heard of Margaret Pole so I will fill you in because her death was quite brutal and makes an interesting read, (if you like the darker side of the Tudors). London, WC1A 2HNletters@lrb.co.uk He was sentenced to a traitors death to be drawn, hanged, and quartered but the king changed it to beheading. Margaret would have been too young to remember her mother, and it is likely that she was brought up within her fathers princely household, then after his execution lived with her cousins, the many daughters of Edward IV. The grave of Anne Boleyn. A third account in Burke's Peerage, possibly apocryphal, described the appalling circumstances of the execution. Gregory had been corresponding with Reginald; the investigation of Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter (Henry VIII's first cousin and Geoffrey's second cousin), had turned up his name. Birth Country: United Kingdom. Perhaps more than any other courtier of Henrys reign, More embodied the searching, troubled spirit of the early 16th century. Margaret Pole, Tudor Matriarch and Martyr. She was executed in 1541, the act of attainder rendering a trial unnecessary. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. It mattered to London shopkeepers, and to great churchmen. His position at court meant that he was to be the kings advocate before parliament. [7] However, her brother's Warwick and Spencer [Despencer] estates remained in the hands of the crown.[8]. Katheryn Howard was fortunate. He returned to Padua in 1532 and received a last English benefice in December of that same year. Soon, young Edward, a potential York claimant to the throne, was moved to the Tower of London. Margarets husband Richard died in 1504, leaving her with five young children and very little land or money. [12] In May 1536, Reginald finally and definitively broke with the king. Rebecca Benson as Margaret Pole in The White Princess (2017)(Screenshot/Fair Use) Margaret Plantagenet was born on 14 August 1473 at Farleigh Castle near Bath as the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville. She built herself a castle at Warblington, close to the sea on the Hampshire-Sussex border. According to some stories, which are not accepted by many historians, she refused to lay her head on the block, and guards had to force her to kneel. It was his great popularity that saved him. In an effort to force their co-operation, Henry separated his wife and child, and Margaret who was Marys godmother offered to serve the young girl at her own expense. He wore many hats: chief diplomat, speechwriter, advisor. Margaret Poles death, notoriously, was not a clean end. Managed all schedules for company and . It was More's execution - far more than those of Anne Boleyn or Thomas Cromwell or Margaret Pole - which established the king's reputation for capricious cruelty. The story of Mores last days is terribly affecting. In 1520 Margaret was appointed governess to Henry's daughter Mary. This phrase has been interpreted as meaning Edward was of low intelligence; it only means that he was unworldly, and Higginbotham sees this. Chapuys wrote that, "at first, when the sentence of death was made known to her, she found the thing very strange, not knowing of what crime she was accused, nor how she had been sentenced". In 1499, Margarets brother Edward apparently tried to escape from the Tower of London to take part in the plot of Perkin Warbeck who claimed to be their cousin, Richard, one of the sons of Edward IV who had been taken to the Tower of London under Richard III and whose fate was not clear. But Reginald stayed in Italy through the reign of Anne Boleyn supposedly preparing a learned statement on the kings case. Afterwards, More's head was displayed on a pike at London Bridge for a month. In 1512, an Act of Parliament restored to Margaret the Earldom of Salisbury and some of her brother's land which had belonged to it, for which she paid 5000 marks (2666.13s.4d), equivalent to 2,164,602 in 2021. At Bisham, where her forebears had founded a monastery, the remains of her executed brother lay with those of her grandfather the Kingmaker, slaughtered at the Battle of Barnet. Her early years are obscure. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Roman Catholic Church on 29 December 1886. I am no traitor, no, not I! Mores piety was the defining aspect of his character; even as the circumstances of his life changed, it remained constant and unyielding. Seven years after the strange liquid death of Margarets father, her uncle Richard III was defeated at Bosworth by Henry Tudor. EXECUTED: 27 MAY 1541. When Arthur died in 1502, the Poles lost that position. It is unlikely she had seen him for many years, but in any case, mourning for a traitor was inadvisable. More's trial took place on 1 July. The date of the marriage is uncertain; 1487 is likely. Princess Mary But in 1520 Margaret was clearly in favor with the King and Queen when she was appointed governess of the Princess Mary. Her husbands career flourished. [5] When Perkin Warbeck impersonated Edward IV's presumed-dead son, Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, in 1499, Margaret's brother Edward was attainted and executed for involvement in the plot. Her many fortified houses and castles, the number of tenants she could turn out, the belligerent propaganda from abroad all these brought the whole family into deep suspicion. Christ in Thy Mercy, save Thou me! On this date in 1541, 68-year-old Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, was beheaded within the confines of the Tower of London, as befitted her rank. She was now one of the richest people in England. It was time to be rid of Warwick. In the end, he could not be persuaded. St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Bridge Gate, Derby, Our Lady and the English Martyrs' church in Cambridge. Both men were enthusiastic Humanist scholars, but they parted ways with regard to the kings prerogative. He was Dean of Exeter and Wimborne Minster, Dorset, as well as a canon of York. Ursula married into the powerful Stafford family; of Margarets sons, only Reginald did not marry; by the age of seven he was given utterly to God. But in the meantime, More had eighteen months of seclusion and study at his home in Chelsea. Biography. Six months later, Cromwell produced a tunic marked with the wounds of Christ, claiming it had been found in that search, and used that to arrest Margaret, though most doubt that. Because of this, she becomes an unprovoked target for the King's anger. [15][16], On the morning of 28 May 1541, Margaret was told she was to die within the hour. However, things suddenly change in May 1541 when a decision was made to execute her. She was attended by servants and received an extensive grant of clothing in March 1541. London Review of Books, He grew up cultivated and cosmopolitan, sensitive, lively-minded. She was by necessity hostile to the Catholic church. But Reginald Pole refused to do so, leaving for Europe in 1532. It seems Margaret was questioned about her contacts with Barton, but she came to no harm as a result and, unlike Gertrude, she escaped without grovelling. Margaret was not executed with her eldest son, but was held in the Tower for the last years of her life the king paying her bills, outfitting her as became a great lady in furred petticoats and a satin nightgown. Margaret de la Pole married Sir Robert de Neville, Sheriff of Yorkshire, Constable of Pontefract Castle, son of Sir Robert de Neville and Joan de Atherton, before September 1344. It was the beginning of a fertile new line. It was unlawful before man and God and thus void. Her father, already Duke of Clarence, was then created Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick. But Margaret herself was an ornament to Henry. Sir Thomas Pole was a member of the aristocracy in England. How to Be Tudor: Can a King Have Friends. She was cousin to Henry VIII's mother, and well trusted by the king for years. It was More who coined the term, a pun on the Greek words for no place and good place. Most aristocratic women outlived their husbands, and once a woman was widowed she was able to assert her independence and have a say in her family affairs, while cultivating the trope of the defenceless widow in any dealings with the authorities. Now he decided to seriously test his religious convictions. She also had restored to her the title to the Earldom of Salisbury. Thick as thieves, More and the king continued to establish a close relationship, with More rising up in the ranks. The sons of Edward IV, 11 and 13 years old, had been held in the Tower by their uncle Richard III, and last been seen by Londoners in the summer of 1483. Margarets daughter Ursula would have 13 children, and three of her four sons would marry heiresses and have large families. Under the reign of Henry VIII on May 27th 1541, at the age of 67, Margaret Pole Countess of Salisbury was executed for treason. And More determined that their daughters would receive the same education as their son. The little Earl of Warwick remained alive and shut away. When Arthur married Catherine of Aragon, she became a lady-in-waiting to the princess. The Duke of Clarence plotted against Edward IV and in February 1478 was attainted and executed for treason. International Henry VIII was a Catholic ruler, and enjoyed friendly relations with the papacy until he sought to divorce Katharine. letters@lrb.co.uk Margaret's only surviving sibling was Edward, Earl of Warwick. [2] As one of the few members of the House of Plantagenet to have survived the Wars of the Roses, she was executed in 1541 at the command of King Henry VIII, the second monarch of the House of Tudor, who was the son of her first cousin, Elizabeth of York. Margaret was 14, and probably remained at court rather than living with her husband. She was born on the 14th August 1473 and married Sir Richard Pole in 1491, having five children before she was widowed in 1505. Cecilys parents and Richards grandparents were Ralph Neville and, Siblings: 2 who died in infancy and a brother, Edward Plantagenet (February 25, 1475 - November 28, 1499), never married, imprisoned in the Tower of London, impersonated by Lambert Simnel, executed under Henry VII, Husband: Sir Richard Pole (married 1491-1494, perhaps on September 22, 1494; supporter ofHenry VII). But Margaret Pole, one of the great magnates of Tudor England, is not overlooked. Born 14 August 1473, Margaret was one of the few Plantagenets who had survived the Wars of the Roses She was the mother of . As a boy, More spent some time in the household of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury. He waited five days before being summoned to the scaffold on Tower Hill. Her daughter Ursula married the Duke of Buckingham's son, Henry Stafford, but after the Duke's fall, the couple were given only fragments of his estates. As widows, or as deputies to living husbands, they handled complex legal and financial affairs with aplomb, while assenting outwardly at least to their status as irrational and inferior beings. Ursula Pole, Baroness Stafford the daughter of Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury and Sir Richard Pole. The alleged plot between the earl and Warbeck was flimsy and perhaps government-sponsored, but both men were tried and executed. Based in North Carolina, Higginbotham is a lawyer by background and has written several historical novels, spanning different eras. Hilary Mantelwasthe author of nine novels and three collections of short stories in addition to her prize-winning trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. Despite such evidence of royal favor, it is likely that More chafed at his service to the king. Later, he would castigate her in the accents of a hurt child for what seemed to him abandonment, telling her that as she had given him up when he was so young, she should not interfere between him and his conscience. He moved into the Carthusian monastery adjoining Lincolns Inn and participated in the monks way of life as much as he could, while still pursuing his legal career. Margarets uncle Richard of Gloucester became king in 1483 as Richard III, and reinforced young Margaret and Edwards exclusion from the line of succession. The threat seemed even greater by 1538, when the two great powers, France and the emperor, signed a peace treaty which left them free to turn their attention to the pariah nation. In January 1539 Geoffrey was pardoned, but Margaret's son, Henry, Baron Montagu (and cousin Exeter), were later executed for treason after trial. Either her sons had not made her aware of their dealings, Fitzwilliam concluded, or she was an adept in brazen deceit. Ten years on, her situation was more difficult to negotiate. "Margaret Pole, Tudor Matriarch and Martyr." Margaret Pole was one of only two women in the 16th century to hold a peerage in her own right. Or was there, as she claimed, nothing worth burning? Margaret was a great heiress, grand-daughter of the Earl of Warwick who was known as the Kingmaker. In 1487, an imposter, Lambert Simmel, pretended to be her brother Edward, and was used to try to gather a rebellion against Henry VII. Margaret Pole, fdd 14 augusti 1473 i Bath, Somerset, England, dd 27 maj 1541 i London, England, grevinna av Salisbury, var en engelsk hovfunktionr. Allida is tongue-tied with An Impossible Thing to Say by Arya Shahi, in which an Iranian American teen in Arizonafalls in love with the new girl at school, Shakespeare, and rap music while . Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, recorded the Countess's execution in a letter to the Queen of Hungary: The kings mother, Margaret Beaufort, was protective of young brides; her own body had been wrecked by a pregnancy at 13. In May 1515, More was sent to Bruges as part of a delegation arranged by Wolsey to revise an Anglo-Flemish commercial treaty. And while this reasoning worked to replenish the royal treasury for Henry VII, it also provided the second Tudor king with a chance to curry popular favor when he in one of his first acts as Henry VIII imprisoned and later executed Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson, who were Mortons (and his fathers) tax collectors. Thomas came from wealthy families, from trade (his father was a wealthy baker) and the law. It is meant to contrast with the reality of European rule, divided by ideologies and greed and self-interest. In 1554, Mary reversed the attainder against Reginald Pole, and he was ordained as a priest in 1556 and finally consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1556. His son-in-law William Roper, whose biography of More is one of the first biographies ever written, tells us that More chose his wife out of pity: [A]lbeit his mind most served him to the second daughter, for that he thought her the fairest and best favored, yet when he considered that it would be great grief and some shame also to the eldest to see her younger sister preferred before her in marriage, he then, of a certain pity, framed his fancy towards Jane. Reginald studied in Italy in 1521 through 1526, financed in part by Henry VIII, then returned and was offered by Henry the choice of several high offices in the church if he would support Henrys divorce from Catherine. At their trial, a Cromwellian observer said, the noblemen stood at the bar with castyng up of eies and hands, as though those thyngs had ben never herd of before, that thenne were laid to theyr charge. It is painted on a dateable oak panel, and the dates suit the presumed subject, but the artist is anonymous. Quite the opposite. On 18 February 1478, aged 28, George, Duke of Clarence, brother to the King of England, was executed. She was sentenced to death, to be executed at the king's will. It was five years after the likely date of Margarets marriage that her first son was born. Margaret and Richard Pole had five children, born between about 1492 and 1504: four sons and the youngest a daughter. On 1 July 1535, he was indicted on high treason. Margarets whole family had been elevated with her on the wheel of fortune. Credit: PjrWindows / Alamy Stock Photo. Her father was the younger brother of Edward IV and Richard III. When she reached her teens, a marriage was arranged with Richard Pole, a modest landowner with solid Tudor connections, who had been rewarded for loyalty by being made constable of several Welsh castles. A Professional theme for architects, construction and interior designers But eventually the break between the king and his chief minister could not be ignored. This was partly due to Mores intellectual prominence; he was perhaps the most famous Englishman on the continent, with a wide and varied correspondence. More also engaged in a public war of words on the kings behalf with Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation. She was pregnant at the time of her bereavement, and soon she would join the entourage of the Spanish bride. It was a small mercy. It was also due to Henrys deep and unfeigned friendship with More. Reginald was the most interesting and talented of Margarets children, and the one to whom she was not close. The resulting trial was mere show; despite his impassioned and brilliant defense, no one ever expected More to be found anything other than guilty. Episode 081 of the Renaissance English History Podcast is an interview with Melita Thomas on Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. During her time in prison, Cromwell himself was executed. Cardinal Wolsey and the king needed no further reason to bring More into the kings service. , as she claimed, nothing worth burning be the kings prerogative More embodied the searching troubled! Himself was executed in 1541, the Poles lost that position defeated at by. His position at court meant that he was Dean of Exeter and Wimborne Minster,,... And good place, is not overlooked was defeated at Bosworth by Henry Tudor with the king 's.! And Queen when she was an adept in brazen deceit apocryphal, described the circumstances... Thomas Pole was a great heiress, grand-daughter of the Renaissance English History Podcast is an interview with Melita on! 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