And More was more convinced than ever that he needed to leave royal service. In 1535, Englands ambassador began suggesting that Reginald Pole marry Henrys daughter Mary. 1 Through his father he was descended from Edward III's son, Thomas of Woodstock, and his mother was Catherine Woodville, sister of Edward IV's queen, Elizabeth Woodville; she afterwards married Henry VII's uncle, Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford. It was a housekeeping matter, the French ambassador said; Henry, now with his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, wanted to make a progress north, and to empty the Tower before he set off, either by acts of mercy or the condemnation of detainees. In 1539 Henry VIII allowed (or ordered) Thomas Cromwell to throw Lady Salisbury into the . Shrewsbury Cathedral, she is in the fourth window in front of John Fisher. . Such was his reputation that the the great universities Oxford and Cambridge made him high steward. The king raged. Margaret's destiny, as an heiress to the Plantagenets, is not for a life in the shadows. And he was a father who insisted his three daughters have the same education as his son. Fitzwilliam despaired of getting anything out of her but denials, and paid her a twisted compliment in the way Tudor men did: We may call her rather a strong and constant man than a woman she has shown herself so earnest, vehement and precise that more could not be. When he told her that her goods had been seized, she must have known it was the beginning of the end, and seemeth thereat to be somew[hat] appalled, but neither then nor at any later point did she profess anything but loyalty to Henry and regret at her familys folly. Afterwards, he made a botched suicide attempt. When Arthur died in 1502, the Poles lost that position. But in the meantime, More had eighteen months of seclusion and study at his home in Chelsea. The governors of Lincoln admired him enough to appoint him lecturer on law for three consecutive years. They were preventing her marriage to the king. Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury (14 August 1473 28 May 1541), also called Margaret Pole, as a result of her marriage to Sir Richard Pole, was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, a brother of Kings Edward IV and Richard III (all sons of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York), by his wife Isabel Neville. Here is where it gets complicated. Now he decided to seriously test his religious convictions. Higginbotham follows Pierce in refusing to vilify Henry for his treatment of the Poles. 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. Mores letters indicate that he was not particularly keen to enter royal service. [18][19][20][21][22] Margaret was buried in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower of London. Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots. In 1520 Margaret was appointed governess to Henry's daughter Mary. And he was well-connected enough to later secure his sons appointment as household page to John Morton, the archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England. Henry VIII helped provide good marriages or religious offices for Margarets sons, and a good marriage for her daughter as well. Chapuys wrote two weeks after the execution that one hundred and fifty witnesses were present for the execution, including the Lord Mayor of London. Perhaps more than any other courtier of Henrys reign, More embodied the searching, troubled spirit of the early 16th century. And his old friend, the duke of Norfolk, took care to warn him of his danger, Indignatio principis mors est. To which More famously replied, Is that all, my lord? Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (14 August 1473 - 27 May 1541), was an English peeress.She was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel Neville and was niece of kings Edward IV and Richard III.Margaret was one of two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right with no titled husband. May 28, 2015. She lived one of the more turbulent lives of the 16th century, starting off as the niece of the King, and ending up nearly 70 years later penniless in the Tower, executed by an inexperienced executioner. Margaret was looked after well in the Tower, with Henry VIII paying for her food, clothing and a woman to attend her. Contact was made with Warwick; a plot began, or perhaps was manufactured by agents provocateurs; just at this time, to increase the alarm of Henry Tudor, another Warwick impersonator showed his face in Kent. [10], When Mary was declared a bastard in 1533, Margaret refused to give Mary's gold plate and jewels back to Henry. Gender: Male. But if the great Sir Thomas More believed the king to be wrong? 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. When Richard Pole died in 1504 Margaret had had to borrow money to give him a suitable funeral. 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. He answered their queries as best he could, assuring them of his loyalty to king and state and stressing the matter of his personal conscience. The danger the Tudors saw lay not in the present disposition of the Pole family who vehemently protested their loyalty but in their claim to the throne, and in Reginalds actions while he was out of the jurisdiction. Seven years after the strange liquid death of Margarets father, her uncle Richard III was defeated at Bosworth by Henry Tudor. She also had restored to her the title to the Earldom of Salisbury. He was Dean of Exeter and Wimborne Minster, Dorset, as well as a canon of York. [9] Her youngest son, Geoffrey Pole, married well to Constance, daughter of Edmund Pakenham, and inherited the estate of Lordington in Sussex. He waited five days before being summoned to the scaffold on Tower Hill. Wolsey was destined to die for his failure to secure the annulment. [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. But to Mores credit, he made an impassioned plea for greater freedom of speech in parliament. Thomas More was living in his home called The Barge at Bucklersbury, off the east end of Cheapside about 500 yards north of the Thames. As the heir to the throne, Mary enjoyed a separate household, and in 1525 she was sent to Ludlow to hold court. Sir Thomas Pole was a member of the aristocracy in England. Cromwell was an astute politician whose beliefs changed at the whim of his royal master. Either her sons had not made her aware of their dealings, Fitzwilliam concluded, or she was an adept in brazen deceit. This discovery resulted in removal of Mores books and writing materials. To help with her financial situation, she gave one of her sons, Reginald, to the church. It was unlawful before man and God and thus void. As a young man, he seriously contemplated joining the priesthood, only to become one of the most successful politicians of his time. 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. "Margaret Pole, Tudor Matriarch and Martyr." Quite the opposite. Not only did this mean that Margaret came of royal stock, but it meant that she came from the family that was historically opposed to the reign of the Tudors, a fact that would affect her throughout her life. And so he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on 17 April 1534. It proved to be another happy marriage, though Mores friends remarked upon Alices sharp tongue and occasionally brusque ways. The sitter might as well be carved, for all she suggests flesh or circulating blood. Margaret Poles house had been searched in the efforts to find evidence to back of the attainders of those executed. BORN: 1473. It is only in posteritys schoolroom view that Bosworth was the end of the Middle Ages or the end of anything; the noble families didnt think their wars were over, and indeed they were not, because in 1487 the new king was defending his throne at the Battle of Stoke. Soon, young Edward, a potential York claimant to the throne, was moved to the Tower of London. 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. More essentially argued that communal life is the only way to end the ill effects of self-interest on politics. [4] After her husband's death, Margaret had such inadequate means to support herself and her children that she was forced to live at Syon Abbey as the guest of the Bridgettine nuns. Higginbotham is more comfortable with biography, but this has not deterred her publisher from dressing up her new book like a historical novel of the type she doesnt much like, with a moody wash of colour and a woman with trailing skirts and half a head. For at least five years, Montagu, Exeter and others had been passing information to the emperor through his ambassador, urging the invasion of England, and Reginald himself had assured the readers of his 1536 letter that a host of disaffected subjects were lurking within the realm, ready to support the invaders against Henry as soon as foreign troops landed. Stoke was a decisive victory. In this first biography of a significant female figure in the male-dominated world of British Tudor politics, Hazel Pierce reconsiders the life and martyrdom of Catholic duchess Margaret Pole against the changing social and political landscape of her times. Montagu, Exeter, and Margaret were arrested in November 1538. After Henry VIII and then his son Edward VI had died, and Mary I was queen, with the intention to restore England to Roman authority, Reginald Pole was appointed papal legate to England by the Pope. If my head should win him a castle in France, he told his son-in-law in 1525, it should not fail to go.). [27] She is commemorated in the dedication of the Church of Our Lady Queen of Peace & Blessed Margaret Pole in Southbourne, Bournemouth.[28]. In 1539, Reginald was sent to the Emperor to organize an embargo against Englandthe sort of countermeasure he had himself warned Henry was possible.[14]. I decided to investigate anemometers, because I wanted to look at different ways of measuring wind speed. The pilgrimage was an effort to organize a march on London to install a conservative Catholic government instead of Henry's increasingly Protestant-leaning one. But Margaret Pole, one of the great magnates of Tudor England, is not overlooked. Inventories paint the picture: tableware of silver and gold, Venetian glass, mother-of-pearl, tapestries portraying the journeys of Ulysses and the discovery of Newfoundland; the countess herself, tall, stately, wears ermine, tawny damask, black satin and black velvet. But that was years in the future. It is unlikely she had seen him for many years, but in any case, mourning for a traitor was inadvisable. In practice, pre-nuptial agreements, trusts and the legally sanctioned breach of entails created some flexibility. In April 1523, he was elected speaker of the House of Commons. Birth date: February 7, 1478. She is the daughter of a duke and the niece of two kings, Edward IV and Richard III. [15][16], On the morning of 28 May 1541, Margaret was told she was to die within the hour. His father, Sir Richard Pole, was a cousin of King Henry VII, and his mother, Margaret, countess of . Lady Fitzwilliam would not stay in the house alone with the countess, and the Lord Admiral soon requested Cromwell to take his guest away, sending his complaints with a few Shelsea cockles for the ministers table: I beg you to rid me of her company, for she is both chargeable and troubles my mind. When Margaret was attainted in May 1539, Cromwell displayed a mute witness against her, a coat-armour found among her effects, painted with the royal arms and the emblems of the family, pansies for Pole, and marigolds for my Lady Mary, as one witness explained: Pole intended to have married my lady Mary, and betwixt them both should again arise the old doctrine of Christ.. St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Bridge Gate, Derby, Our Lady and the English Martyrs' church in Cambridge. 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. He could now only write to his wife and favorite daughter Margaret with a piece of coal or burnt stick on scraps of paper. Her mother, Isabel, daughter of the above-mentioned "King-maker," died 22nd December, 1476, and her father in the Tower nearly two years later. Her first son, Henry Pole, was created Baron Montagu, another of the Neville titles, speaking for the family in the House of Lords. The axe hit her shoulder instead of her neck, and she escaped the guards and ran around screaming as the executioner chased her with the axe. A tradition has grown up that George was drowned in a vat a malmsey, an expensive sweet wine. Utopia is a complex and witty work which describes a city-state ruled entirely by reason. Lewis, Jone Johnson. Margaret's mother died when she was three; her father had two servants killed when he thought they had poisoned her. As part of his 'Random Histo. After Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, was arrested, and eventually executed, Margaret was permitted to return to Court, albeit briefly. The charge was treason. Tragedy throws her into poverty and rebellion against the new royal family, luck restores her to her place at court where she becomes the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine and watches the dominance of the Spanish queen over her husband, and her fall. Because she was a girl Margaret did not represent the same threat. Her early years are obscure. More later memorialized her as uxorcula Thomae Mori; her gentle personality is attested to by Erasmuss letters, as he was a frequent visitor to Mores home. Through her website she keeps lively links with readers and writers. 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