Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! : Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

I rose up from the dead/ I do it all the time

Before we get into Margaret Pole’s saga, let’s dive into some ROYAL FAMILY TREE TIME because this is all very confusing.

Once upon a Late English Medieval wartime, there were three Plantagenet brothers. The eldest, Edward, was handsome, talented and clever, and he usurped the English throne to become King Edward IV, husband of Elizabeth Woodville. The middle brother, George, supported Edward’s campaign to become King… then changed his mind and switched sides. Eventually, Edward had George executed as a traitor. When Edward unexpectedly and suddenly died young, the youngest brother — Richard — became King Richard III, who you may know from maybe murdering the princes in the tower.

Out of this clusterfuck of brotherly scheming emerges our lovely Margaret, the oldest surviving child of the traitorous middle son, George. Margaret was biologically related to basically everyone fighting over the English throne. In addition to her royal uncles, she was the daughter of Isabel Neville and, therefore, the niece of Richard III’s wife, Anne Neville. She was also, through marriage, connected to both Margaret Beaufort and the entire Beaufort family. These connections brought her security of wealth and put her in danger due to her proximity to all the various schemes around her. It feels like a considerable time between the Wars of the Roses era and Queen Elizabeth I’s era. Still, Margaret Pole lived through it all, a human personification of how fortunes can ebb and flow depending on who’s in power. She was a force upon herself, but so much of what went on in her life was just blowback from the bonkers schemes everyone around her constantly got up to. That being said, she repeatedly got herself out of incredibly dire situations, so she was more than up for the challenge of surviving and thriving in this chaotic environment.

Unknown woman, often assumed to be Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, by an unknown artist c. 1535.

To begin her life with tragedy and scheming, Margaret’s mother, Isabel, died as a result of giving birth to one of Margaret’s younger siblings. George, already paranoid and prone to suspicion, decided that Isabel had been poisoned to death by her servants. And so, he marched an amazingly-named Welsh (?) servant named Ankarette Twynyho into court to put her and another random servant on trial for poisoning Isabel to death. They were both found guilty and were executed immediately; shortly afterward, George’s brother, King Edward IV, had both servants posthumously pardoned. This made George even madder at his brother Edward, which resulted in a lot of scheming, and finally, Edward executed George as a traitor. By this point, Margaret was three years old and was sent (along with her brother, also named Edward) to be raised by their Uncle Richard and Auntie Anne.

Now, Margaret was likely too young to understand the fallout of George’s treason, but it becomes very important, so I’ll do my best to spell it out. George’s land and property were seized from him and returned to the King because traitors don’t get to be in charge of land or keep their own money. But the thing is, Margaret’s maternal grandfather — who did not die a traitor — had left behind an inheritance, too. And this Neville money was divided between Margaret’s dead mother, Isabel, and Margaret’s Auntie Anne. Because Anne hadn’t had any children yet, the current heir to this Neville inheritance was, at this time, Margaret’s younger brother Edward, because: primogeniture! So, though Margaret and her brother didn’t have any of their father’s money to inherit, her brother Edward was still the heir to their Neville grandfather’s fortune.

This whole inheritance scenario remained unchallenged because, five years later, her uncle Edward died in battle, and her Uncle Richard took over the throne as Richard III. Shortly after that, Anne Neville died in childbirth, leaving behind no children. Margaret and her brother Edward, now sort of heirs to the throne (but not really, because of George’s treason, but enough that Richard was a little skittish about keeping them around), were shipped to a separate household. When Richard III died in battle, a new King claimed the throne: a certain Henry “daughter of Margaret Beaufort” Tudor, aka King Henry VII. But our Margaret was still related to the royals, as Henry VII married her cousin, Elizabeth of York. This new royal couple became the new guardians to Margaret and her brother, so they moved back to the royal court. And pretty soon after that, Henry arranged a marriage for his fourteen-year-old niece: his thirty-year-old cousin, Sir Richard Pole. This marriage, between Margaret (a York) and Pole (a Lancaster), helped cement the merger between these two royal houses that began with Henry VII’s marriage to Elizabeth.

As far as anyone knows, the marriage between Margaret and Richard was as good as any arranged marriage back in the day. They had good luck vis-a-vis children not dying in their infancy. Between 1492 and 1504, they had five surviving children: Henry (born 1492), Arthur (born 1499), Reginald (born 1500), Geoffrey (born 1501), and Ursula (born 1504). But of course, it wasn’t all sitting around and glamorously giving late-Medieval/early-Renaissance childbirth; Margaret was also amid an awful lot of courtly scheming throughout this period. For instance, midway through this series of babies, a man known as Perkin Warbeck (great name) appeared on the scene, claiming to be one of the long-lost grown-up princes in the tower in a proto-Anastasia Romanov scenario.

Perkin Warbeck was almost definitely not Margaret’s long-lost cousin/heir to the throne, but his presence was convenient for anyone wanting to get Henry off the throne. And guess who one of his supporters was? Margaret’s brother, Edward! So the thing is, the King was like, “Pretending to be a long-lost Prince is not technically illegal, but let’s keep an eye on this guy, OK?” Things were weirdly fine until evidence showed that Perkin had been scheming with Margaret’s brother Edward to overthrow King Henry VII. And so both Edward and Perkin were set up in the Tower of London and then executed for their not-very-skillful scheming. The death of Edward meant that Margaret was now the last remaining Plantagenet — and more importantly, that Edward’s inheritance (from his maternal grandfather, remember?) was now returned to the crown. Margaret was now without any inheritance at all.

Luckily, her brother’s scheming didn’t affect Margaret to any significant degree, as both she and her husband were awarded prestigious positions within the royal household. Margaret was named lady in waiting to Katherine of Aragon, newly arrived to marry Henry VII’s son Prince Arthur; Richard was named Arthur’s Chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. Then, things took a turn when Arthur passed away unexpectedly in 1502. Katherine and Arthur’s entourage was dissolved, sending Margaret away from the royal court. But remember, she was still only midway through giving birth to her five children. 1504 found her welcoming her fifth and final child, Ursula, and seeing the death of her husband, Richard. Margaret, a titled noblewoman, was effectively now a penniless widow and mother of five. With nowhere else to turn, she went with her children to live in an abbey among nuns. She cut costs by shipping her son Reginald off to be trained for the priesthood (remember that; he becomes very important later on).

But then, in a way that I wonder if she wound up half-expecting, her fortunes turned again in 1509. While Henry VII hadn’t been a massive fan of Margaret, his successors were. When Henry VIII took the throne in 1509 and, along with it, married his brother’s widow, Katherine of Aragon, they were happy to invite Margaret back to court in the position of lady-in-waiting once more. Three years later, Henry VIII further elevated Margaret’s status by restoring her former title of Countess of Salisbury and some of her last brother’s seized lands. Her favour at court waxed and waned, partly due to her actions and partly due to those of her children. In 1516, she fought with Henry VIII over some lands she felt should go to her due to her connection to the Beaufort family; Henry disagreed, retaining them for himself. Yet, he clearly favoured her when she was selected in 1520 as Governess to his daughter Princess Mary.

Around that same time, her son Arthur was appointed to be one of the gentlemen of the King’s Privy Chamber. However, Arthur’s patron — Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham — was found guilty of treason and was gruesomely executed. Buckingham’s actions tainted the reputation of Arthur, as well as of Margaret’s daughter Ursula, who was married to one of Stafford’s sons. Margaret was removed from the position of Governess due to her connection to the scandal. Yet, as regular as clockwork, Margaret regained her previous standing and was re-appointed to Princess Mary’s Governess in 1525. Yet, when Henry VIII annulled his marriage to Mary’s mother, Katherine, the girl was demoted from Princess to Lady and had all her household staff removed. Fiercely loyal to the young woman, Margaret offered to stay on as Governess — even offering to pay her own salary. Henry refused her proposal, and Margaret was again sent from the royal court.

Frankly, that was probably calmer for her anyway, as things at court were going bonkers with the whole Anne Boleyn-being-tried-and-executed-for-totally-fake-charges-of-adultery scenario. Margaret’s eldest son, Henry Pole, was one of the jurors who found Anne Boleyn guilty. After Anne Boleyn’s beheading in 1536, Margaret was invited back to royal court… but her son Reginald (remember, I said he’d be important later on!!) would soon complicate things yet again.

So, we haven’t yet discussed Eustace Chapuys, the Spanish Ambassador. He hung around Tudor court for years, reporting to Katherine of Aragon’s parents how their daughter and granddaughter were being treated. Much of what we know about life in Tudor court is from Chapuys’s biased records, but amid the messy bitch living for drama of it all, he was very thorough in his writings. Chapuys, a supporter of Lady Mary to be returned to the status of Princess, seems to have been encouraging Margaret’s son Reginald to marry her. Because of Margaret’s Plantagenet background, her children were — to some — seen as potential heirs to the throne. A marriage between Reginald Pole and Lady Mary would, perhaps, present a powerful Catholic alternative to Henry VIII and his latest Protestant Queen. Since Chapuys was in England and Reginald was off on the continent, they communicated by letters — many of which went through Reginald’s brother Geoffrey Pole as an intermediary. But Reginald was not content merely to scheme a way to marry Lady Mary; he was also running around Europe, doing his best to convince other Princes that Henry VIII should be deposed for how he had broken with the Catholic church. The other princes were mostly like, “I mean… go ahead if you want to, but we’re not touching this with a zillion-foot pole.”

In 1537, Reginald attained the role of Cardinal, and the Pope assigned him a significant job: to help coordinate a series of English marches and protests meant to force Henry VIII to replace his Protestant government with a Catholic one. Part of this was the infamous Pilgrimage of Grace, which quite terribly failed and wound up with more than 200 Catholics executed for being involved in it. So basically, Reginald was all up in every plan to dethrone Henry VIII, which was communicated in letters through his brother Geoffrey. The King’s right-hand goon, Thomas Cromwell, knew what he was up to and sent assassins to Italy to kill Reginald; no luck. With Reginald hanging out on the continent and therefore making it impossible for Henry to arrest, the King turned his vengeance against the Pole family members still in England. Letter-holder Geoffrey Pole was the first arrested; under torture (administered by Thomas Cromwell), Geoffrey implicated his older brother Henry Pole, as well as a man named Henry Courtenay, who was both Henry VIII’s and Margaret Pole’s cousin, on the York side. In response, Henry VIII had every Pole family member arrested he could find, including Margaret herself.

Following the investigation and torture, only Geoffrey was pardoned. Everyone else, including Margaret, was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to be executed. Just as had happened to her father, the crown seized Margaret’s property, leaving her again without any assets to her name. She remained a prisoner in the Tower of London for two and a half years, kept in a room together with her grandson (Henry Pole’s son, also named Henry), as well as the young son of Henry Courtenay — a sort of return to her previous job as Governess, but in the saddest possible way. As per many of the royals and aristocrats held in the Tower as prisoners, Margaret lived a fairly luxurious life with servants and an allowance for new clothing. During her time imprisoned, Cromwell himself was arrested and executed; she may have hoped that fortune was, yet again, turning once more in her favour.

But despite Cromwell’s fall from grace, Margaret’s execution date was set. She was beheaded, aged 67, on May 27, 1541. Due to her noble birth, this was not to be held publicly but before a group of about 150 notable witnesses. This group included Chapuys, from whom we learned details such as Margaret continuing to deny any involvement in treasonous activities. It is also his account that notes that, with the regular executioner unavailable, her execution was performed by a less-skilled man “who literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces in the most pitiful manner.”

Following her execution, Margaret Pole was buried in the Tower of London in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Her eldest son, Henry Pole, was executed at the same time, as was her cousin, Henry Courtenay; all other family members were eventually released from the Tower of London. Her son Reginald became the most notable of all. When Henry VIII’s Catholic daughter took the throne as Queen Mary I, Reginald was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. He was the last Catholic to hold that post.

On December 29, 1886, Margaret Pole was beatified by Pope Leo XIII as a Catholic martyr.

This newsletter is part of the Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! series. Click here to see other posts in the series.

Vulgar History a la Carte is a companion newsletter to the Vulgar History podcast. This week on the podcast, I’m talking about Nanye’hi, a Cherokee leader during the American Revolution.

Sources

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership by Hazel Pierce