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's own favour at Court varied. At this point, Reginald delivered him a nasty surprise, in the shape of a letter denouncing him as a schismatic, heretic and disgrace to Christendom: a Nero, a wild beast. We do not know. He was sentenced to a traitors death to be drawn, hanged, and quartered but the king changed it to beheading. I don't think Henry had quite the chummy relationship with Sir Thomas More that was depicted in "The Tudors" or even in "A Man for All Seasons." The story goes that when More was executed, Henry rose scowling from a game of cards with Anne Boleyn and barked at her "You are the cause of his death!" This was an obvious lie; More had never said anything of the sort to any other visitor, why Rich? The 8-episode season follows Catherine of Aragon (Charlotte Hope) and King Henry VIII's (Ruari O'Connor) tumultuous marriage. Whatever her private feelings at this point, in public she was pragmatic and circumspect. Margaret, warned of the threat he represented to her own interests and life, said: I trow he is not so unhappy that he will hurt his mother, and yet I care neither for him, nor for any other, for I am true to my Prince., At this point she was questioned rigorously by Henrys councillor William Fitzwilliam. When her husband died in 1505, Margaret became a widow with five children. In the end, he could not be persuaded. To that end, he spent the next three years in study and prayer, wearing a hair shirt next to his skin (a practice he never abandoned), and struggling to reconcile his genuine religious fervor with the demands of the outside world. More also engaged in a public war of words on the kings behalf with Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation. Margaret's loyalty was to Katherine of Aragon and to her daughter Princess Mary to whom she was governess and godmother. Geoffrey Pole, who had given the government what it needed, was pardoned. Henry VIII was a Catholic ruler, and enjoyed friendly relations with the papacy until he sought to divorce Katharine. Margaret was 14, and probably remained at court rather than living with her husband. She was married to James IV of Scotland from 1503-1513, which united the royal houses of England and Scotland. Ultimately, they would both become martyrs of their faith (though this show is not likely . The new memorial that has been erected in front of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula on Tower Green marks the spot 'identified' in the Victorian period as being the . It was the Act of Succession, passed the following month, that sealed his fate. The only people to escape the toxicity of the court were Lina (Stephanie Levi-John) and Oviedo (Aaron Cobham), who decided to seek a new life in the Ottoman Empire. She was, Pierce says, intelligent, unquestionably virtuous, traditionally pious, and possessed an easy familiarity with the convoluted etiquette of a royal court. Cromwell was an astute politician whose beliefs changed at the whim of his royal master. [15][16], On the morning of 28 May 1541, Margaret was told she was to die within the hour. Posted By Claire on May 27, 2012. He later studied at . 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? Family solidarity, the code of survival, did not mean much to Reginald, brought up under an alien roof; if he were to lose his earthly family, he said, he would still have the fellowship of the saints in paradise. Mores wife had been like most women of her time ill-educated, and during their brief marriage, he taught her Latin and other subjects. (2020, August 26). He died young (about 1526) having married the heir of Roger Lewknor. [2] His heir was his son Thomas. Henry VII paid for Richard's funeral. Birth Country: United Kingdom. (Edward would have had a better right to the throne as son of Richards older brother.) Margaret remained in the Tower of London for more than two years. Cardinal Wolsey and the king needed no further reason to bring More into the kings service. A Yorkist pretender had been crowned in Dublin, a child who claimed to be the Plantagenet heir, Edward, Earl of Warwick, Margarets 12-year-old brother. But polite prevarications only worked for so long and soon More was a genuine courtier, with all its attendant duties and benefits. It was during this trip that he began to write Utopia, his most famous work. Pole and his hagiographers gave several later accounts of Pole's activities after Henry met Anne Boleyn. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 7, "Unheard-Of Cruelty", describing the trial and execution of Sir Thomas More. 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. But he knew what was coming. Margarets youngest son, Geoffrey, probably under threat of torture, denounced not only his own family but the Courtenay clan and other prominent members of the old families. 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. Richard III sent the children to Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire. In 1535, Englands ambassador began suggesting that Reginald Pole marry Henrys daughter Mary. With Margarets female peers, there is a gap between what they say and what they do, what they are and what they appear to be. A Professional theme for architects, construction and interior designers Chapuys wrote two weeks after the execution that one hundred and fifty witnesses were present for the execution, including the Lord Mayor of London. Sir Thomas having continued a Prisoner in the Tower somewhere more than a Twelvemonth, for he was committed about the middle of April 1534, and was brought to his Trial on the 7th of May, 1535. he went into the Court leaning on his Staff, because he was much weakened by his Imprisonment, but appeared with a cheerful and composed Countenance. Unfortunately for More, Henry appointed him Lord Chancellor of England. We do know that he tried in vain to support the kings position. The boy, born in 1519, was welcome proof to Henry that he could father a son and that his lack of an heir was entirely Katharines fault. And his patron Morton was infamous as the architect of that kings very successful and subsequently very unpopular tax policy. Quite the opposite. As a young king, he was named Defender of the Faith by the pope for defending the church against Protestant heresy; his Lord Chancellor was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. The main character is Joanna Stafford, a Dominican novice. It should be noted that Mores affinity for the monastic life never left him, despite his later marriages, family, and career. He then disappeared into his private closet, and after an hour, came out as cheerful as before. Elizabeth Throckmorton. A pearl necklace is just a shadow now. ODNB, which argues that the restoration was a tacit admission of her brother's innocence; however, lands and titles had been restored to the heirs of guilty peers during the previous century. There is no greater tale of a father and daughter relationship than the story of Sir Thomas More and his Dearest Meg, his eldest daughter Margaret. She managed her lands quite well, and became one of the five or six wealthiest peers in England. 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. Thomas More was born on 7 February 1478 in London, the son of a successful lawyer. As part of the evidence for the bill of attainder, Cromwell produced a tunic bearing the Five Wounds of Christ, symbolizing Margaret's support for the Church of Rome and the rule of her son, Reginald, and the king's Roman Catholic daughter, Mary. Sir Thomas Pole was a member of the aristocracy in England. More importantly, he developed a personal relationship with Henry VIII, and because known as the kings intellectual courtier. As the heir to the throne, Mary enjoyed a separate household, and in 1525 she was sent to Ludlow to hold court. Yet if you were to ask Mores contemporaries to describe him, their words would be as conflicted and contradictory as the man himself. Following Richard's death in 1504, Margaret no longer had the fortune to support. He was keenly interested in theology, but he was not ordained; he was free to marry if he wished, and propagate a Plantagenet family. Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, recorded the Countess's execution in a letter to the Queen of Hungary: Edward IV died in 1483 when Margaret was ten. Her first son, Henry Pole, was created Baron Montagu, another of the Neville titles, speaking for the family in the House of Lords. 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. 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. See me safe up, he told the lieutenant who escorted him, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.. Her father, already Duke of Clarence, was then created Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick. After she had redeemed her dead brothers lands from the crown, she owned property in Calais, and estates in Wales and 17 English counties. His position at court meant that he was to be the kings advocate before parliament. She built herself a castle at Warblington, close to the sea on the Hampshire-Sussex border. Even as he secretly wore a hair shirt, he openly and consistently fasted, prayed, and maintained a relatively modest household. Wolsey was destined to die for his failure to secure the annulment. He was knighted in 1521, became speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, and earned the title of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He could now only write to his wife and favorite daughter Margaret with a piece of coal or burnt stick on scraps of paper. The two children were of use to him; their maternal family, the Nevilles, commanded allegiance in the north. Henry Tudor had the real Warwick in custody, and was able to produce him, so the rebellion came to nothing. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/margaret-pole-tudor-matriarch-and-martyr-3530618. Under interrogation, Geoffrey said that his eldest brother, Lord Montagu, and the Marquess had been parties to his correspondence with Reginald. There are panel paintings of Pole in the following churches: There are stained glass windows of Pole in the following churches: On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. According to the account, she turned her head "every which way", instructing the executioner that, if he wanted her head, he should take it as he could. Of the many executions ordered by Henry VIII, surely the most horrifying was that of sixty-seven-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, hacked to pieces on the scaffold by a blundering headsman. 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. For Maid star Margaret Qualley, her job was all about building a relationship with child actor Rylea Nevaeh Whittet and making her feel safe on the set of the Netflix series that delves into . Margaret was perhaps guilty only by association, but at this distance it is impossible to tell. They were preventing her marriage to the king. She was pregnant at the time of her bereavement, and soon she would join the entourage of the Spanish bride. A Bill of Attainder disinherited Margaret and her younger brother, Edward, and removed them from the line of succession. When not at Court, Margaret lived chiefly at Warblington Castle in Hampshire and Bisham Manor in Berkshire. 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. Those two could only get along for short while before things got heated. Yet even as his legal future seemed assured, More was deeply conflicted about his future. The new king married Margaret's cousin, Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughter, and Margaret and her brother were taken into their care. He blundered badly, hacking at Margaret's neck and shoulders until she was dead. Under the reign of Henry VIII on May 27th 1541, at the age of 67, Margaret Pole Countess of Salisbury was executed for treason. Managed all schedules for company and . In practice, pre-nuptial agreements, trusts and the legally sanctioned breach of entails created some flexibility. Nevertheless, she was taken from her cell to the place within the precincts of the Tower of London where a low wooden block had been prepared instead of the customary scaffold.[5]. When Richard Pole died in 1504 Margaret had had to borrow money to give him a suitable funeral. She, her grandson, Henry (son of her own son Henry), and Exeter's son were held together and supported by the king. Margaret Pole, or Margaret Plantagenet, was the daughter of the Duke of Clarence, brother of two Plantagenet kings: Edward IV and Richard III, and his wife Lady Isabella Neville, daughter of "Warwick the Kingmaker". The pope would not relent. The prestige of her ancient family, her traditionalist stance in religion, and her status as a peer in her own right all these defined a woman who might wish to resist the new order. 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. (We should note, however, that More brilliant and perceptive was never especially comfortable in his kings good graces. In January 1539 Geoffrey was pardoned, but Margaret's son, Henry, Baron Montagu (and cousin Exeter), were later executed for treason after trial. The veteran plotter Gertrude Courtenay was treated with clemency; unlike Margaret, she was not a free agent but a married woman subject to her husband, and not a claimant to the throne in her own right. Born in 1473 into a world of bloody dynastic feuds, she survived under the first Tudor and thrived under the second, until she and her family, long suspected of plots against the regime, were destroyed. When Reginald was seven, and Margaret a widow with an uncertain future, she sent him to be educated at Sheen with the monks of the Charterhouse. And why such an obvious and clumsy admission? The former Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More is beheaded for High Treason after refusing to recognise King Henry VIII's religious supremacy. She was head of her family, a magnate with vast resources in men and money; any disaffection on her part was dangerous. Cardinal and archbishop of Canterbury.Pole was a younger son of Margaret, countess of Salisbury, daughter of George, duke of Clarence: he was therefore of the blood royal and his mother was governess and companion of Princess Mary.Intended from the beginning for the church, he spent 1521-7 on the continent in study. Thomas More worked hard for the king. His choice was Jane Colt, the eldest daughter of a gentleman farmer. 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]. The honor was tremendous; notably, More was the first layman to hold the office. On 14 November 1538, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was arrested. But literacy was their usual weapon, not spells, and many of them picked up enough legal knowledge to fight their corner in civil disputes. You see, we speak of being anchored to our principles. It was Mores execution far more than those of Anne Boleyn or Thomas Cromwell or Margaret Pole which established the kings reputation for capricious cruelty. Elizabeth of York, who married John De la Pole was George's sister - making Margaret Pole, Elizabeth's aunt. Her mother, the great heiress Isabel Neville, died in 1476 after giving birth to her fourth child; this last baby, like Isabels first child, did not live. Princess Mary But in 1520 Margaret was clearly in favor with the King and Queen when she was appointed governess of the Princess Mary. Reginald also urged the princes of Europe to depose Henry immediately. The bridegroom Arthur was dead within months. 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. 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. In the spring of 1536 the Boleyn family were destroyed, and the Pole family and other English grandees grouped themselves about the incoming queen, Jane Seymour. His natural piety was at odds with other courtiers, all of whom jockeyed ceaselessly for the kings favor. But Reginald stayed in Italy through the reign of Anne Boleyn supposedly preparing a learned statement on the kings case. Henry VII also decided, about that time, to marry the 15-year-old Margaret to his half-cousin, Sir Richard Pole. And "Look," we say, "look, I'm anchored! After Richard was killed, Margaret came to court under the new regime, and in September 1486 she attended the christening of Arthur, the first Tudor prince. 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. And so he was. The accounts differ slightly; Marillac's report, dispatched two days afterwards, recorded that the execution took place in a corner of the Tower with so few people present that, in the evening, news of her execution was doubted. Mores piety was the defining aspect of his character; even as the circumstances of his life changed, it remained constant and unyielding. Pierces book is thorough and scholarly, and her work is acknowledged in Higginbothams biography, which is less detailed, but serious and judicious. In The Kings Curse (2014) she was ground up by the great fictionalising machine that is Philippa Gregory, and in 2003 she was the subject of a major biography by Hazel Pierce: Margaret Pole: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership. In 1536, Pole sent Henry a treatise which not only opposed Henrys grounds for divorce that he had married his brothers wife and thus the marriage was invalid but also opposing Henrys more recent assertion of Royal Supremacy, power in the church in England above that of Rome. Margaret may have been deprived of her dynastic importance, but her marriage was honourable and stable, and she retained her status, if not her familys great titles and wealth. More essentially argued that communal life is the only way to end the ill effects of self-interest on politics. It is at this moment that we must step back and consider the England in which More now lived. He returned to Padua in 1532 and received a last English benefice in December of that same year. 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