Reginald was the most interesting and talented of Margarets children, and the one to whom she was not close. "Margaret Pole, Tudor Matriarch and Martyr." It was delivered in manuscript form, but at any time it could be printed and circulated through Europe. 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. Eleanor was related through marriage to Lady Margaret Beaufort's extended family.) Henry was negotiating a glorious marriage for Prince Arthur, to a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. He collected books and rare objects, but he gave away his possessions freely as well. Margarets daughter Ursula would have 13 children, and three of her four sons would marry heiresses and have large families. Perhaps the contrast with the quiet, gentle Jane was too striking. The nun sought out eminent supporters, especially those who, like Margaret and like Gertrudes husband, had a claim to the throne, and pressed on them the contents of her visions: unless he went back to his wife and to Rome, Henry would expire in torments. Gaily agreeing that the chief female virtues are meekness and self-effacement, they managed estates, signed off accounts, bought wardships and brokered marriage settlements, all the while keeping up a steady output of needlework. She was sentenced to death, to be executed at the king's will. Perhaps more than any other courtier of Henrys reign, More embodied the searching, troubled spirit of the early 16th century. He had been shut up for most of his life and, one later chronicler said, could not discern a goose from a capon. Margarets later life, at least, is well documented, but we cannot approach her story from the inside. During her time in prison, Cromwell himself was executed. When Catherine of Aragon gave birth to a daughter, Mary, Margaret Pole was asked to be one of the godmothers. Intellectuals from England and Europe visited; More was a generous and kind host. And More was more convinced than ever that he needed to leave royal service. 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. She is the daughter of a duke and the niece of two kings, Edward IV and Richard III. 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. This was not due to any dislike of the king. This was partly due to Mores intellectual prominence; he was perhaps the most famous Englishman on the continent, with a wide and varied correspondence. Buckingham was alleged to have said that the lack of sons to carry on the Tudor line was Gods punishment for the imprisonment and death of the young Earl of Warwick. If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content. Margaret Pole had connections to all manner of visitor attractions, including Farleigh Hungerford Castle, Somerset, where she was born,and the Tower of London. They were preventing her marriage to the king. He read anything and everything he could find on the subject. When not at Court, Margaret lived chiefly at Warblington Castle in Hampshire and Bisham Manor in Berkshire. 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. 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. (Margarets paternal aunt, Margaret of Burgundy, supported Perkin Warbecks conspiracy, hoping to restore the Yorkists to power.) The bridegroom Arthur was dead within months. She answered that no crime had been imputed to her. Reginalds brother Geoffrey was in correspondence with Reginald, and Henry had Geoffrey Pole, Margarets heir, arrested in 1538 along with their brother Henry Pole and others. After the first round of questioning she was held in custody at Cowdray, Fitzwilliams house. Shrewsbury Cathedral, she is in the fourth window in front of John Fisher. * Thomas Stafford (1531-4 May 1557) who was captured and executed for High Treason in Scarborough. 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. Illustrated statistics ; Map ; Browse using this individual as Sosa/Ahnentafel #1 . Where is Hans Holbein when you need him? letters@lrb.co.uk Soon he was acting as Henrys personal secretary and adviser, delivering official speeches, greeting foreign envoys, drafting treaties and other public documents, and composing the kings responses to Wolseys dispatches. [9] Her youngest son, Geoffrey Pole, married well to Constance, daughter of Edmund Pakenham, and inherited the estate of Lordington in Sussex. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/margaret-pole-tudor-matriarch-and-martyr-3530618. Two days later, a four-count indictment charging More with treason was presented to the commission. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. But his older brother perished and the younger brother was crowned at 18 years old, and quickly wed his brothers widow. For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions. But Reginald, it seemed, always got a tip-off. Managed all schedules for company and . Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, once Chancellor of England and a close royal friend, had both . Following Richard's death in 1504, Margaret no longer had the fortune to support. Please include name, address and a telephone number. When Richard Pole died in 1504 Margaret had had to borrow money to give him a suitable funeral. Montagu, Exeter, and Margaret were arrested in November 1538. It was children who caused him a problem. It was during this trip that he began to write Utopia, his most famous work. In 1535, Englands ambassador began suggesting that Reginald Pole marry Henrys daughter Mary. Henry and others were executed, though Geoffrey was not. On 27th May, in 1541 Margaret Pole, niece of Richard III and Edward IV, was executed at the command of Henry VIII. More would stand trial for his life. It is meant to contrast with the reality of European rule, divided by ideologies and greed and self-interest. Ultimately, they would both become martyrs of their faith (though this show is not likely . He did not share his opinion with the king. Birth City: London, England. He was not prepared, as he saw it, to imperil his immortal soul by taking the oath that Henry required of all his people, and he died for his belief.. Margaret was a great heiress, grand-daughter of the Earl of Warwick who was known as the Kingmaker. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Roman Catholic Church on 29 December 1886. Biography of Anne Neville, Wife and Queen of Richard III of England, Biography of Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of England, Biography of Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI's Queen, Famous Mothers in History: Ancient Through Modern, M.Div., Meadville/Lombard Theological School, Father: George, Duke of Clarence, brother of king Edward IV and of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III), Note: Cecily Neville, Margarets paternal grandmother, was a paternal aunt of Margarets maternal grandfather, Richard Neville. She was an apt enough pupil to later converse with visitors in Latin. 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. It took many blows to finally kill her and this botched execution was itself remembered and, for some, considered a sign of martyrdom. When Prince Arthur held court in Ludlow with the 15-year-old Catherine of Aragon, Richard Pole was with him, and a friendship began between the bride and the chamberlains wife which was to outlast Catherines life and have deep and lasting consequences for Margaret Pole. And the king was now newly enamored of a young noblewoman called Anne Boleyn. Our Lady of Lourdes in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. Soon, young Edward, a potential York claimant to the throne, was moved to the Tower of London. Thomas More is the "Man For All Seasons" in the title of the play. It was also due to Henrys deep and unfeigned friendship with More. Her son Reginald described himself afterwards as son of a martyr and in 1886, Pope Leo XIII had Margaret Pole beatified as a martyr. Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was born at Farley Castle, near Bath, on 14th August, in or about the year 1473. After she had redeemed her dead brothers lands from the crown, she owned property in Calais, and estates in Wales and 17 English counties. He lived in relative poverty, for he held no office and relied solely upon the hundred pounds per annum he collected from a property rental. There, she was surrounded by connections of the Boleyn queen. 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. This discovery resulted in removal of Mores books and writing materials. After her husband's death, Margaret acted as regent for her son James V, from 1513-1515. Her son Arthur joined them, dying young, probably in the sweating sickness epidemic of 1528. There is an apocryphal story that Morton predicted his bright and lively page would grow into a marvelous man. Yet if you were to ask Mores contemporaries to describe him, their words would be as conflicted and contradictory as the man himself. 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. Pierces book is thorough and scholarly, and her work is acknowledged in Higginbothams biography, which is less detailed, but serious and judicious. 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. Richard Pole held a variety of offices in Henry VII's government, the highest being Chamberlain for Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry's elder son. Here's how the cast of The Spanish Princess compares to their real-life counterparts, from Catherine to Margaret Pole. His home at Chelsea was as close as Tudor England would come to an 18th century French salon. Lewis, Jone Johnson. His lands and titles were thereby forfeited. The popular image is of a man principled, steadfast, courageous who placed his own conscience above his kings demands. She also had restored to her the title to the Earldom of Salisbury. More was thus in his early thirties, successful, happily married, when the tax collectors Dudley and Empson were beheaded on Tower Hill at the command of the new king, Henry VIII. She was a patron of the New Learning, like many Renaissance noblewomen; Gentian Hervet had translated Erasmus' de immensa misericordia Dei (The Great Mercy of God) into English for her. Joan, wife of John Langton. 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 . The work was a marvel of learning and wit and wholly original; it was soon translated throughout the Continent and its author hailed as one of the foremost Humanist thinkers. Despite widespread belief, even amongst Protestants, that Rich was lying, his statement was enough for a fresh inquiry to begin. In 1504, More was elected to Parliament and one of his first acts was to oppose Henry VIIs request of a grant of three-fifteenths. In January 1539 Geoffrey was pardoned, but Margaret's son, Henry, Baron Montagu (and cousin Exeter), were later executed for treason after trial. To help with her financial situation, she gave one of her sons, Reginald, to the church. And his patron Morton was infamous as the architect of that kings very successful and subsequently very unpopular tax policy. He later characterized this as abandonment by his mother, and bitterly resented it for much of his life, although he became an important figure in the church. It was, Pierce says, as if Margaret had won the lottery. More's trial took place on 1 July. It states that Margaret refused to lay her head on the block, declaiming, "So should traitors do, and I am none". 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. [6] . 3.67. Lewis, Jone Johnson. May 28, 2015. Edward was briefly displayed in public at St Paul's Cathedral in 1487 in response to the presentation of the impostor Lambert Simnel as the "Earl of Warwick" to the Irish lords. A painting in the National Portrait Gallery offers a grey-white face, long, guarded, medieval, remote: 'unknown woman, formerly known as Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury'. The 8-episode season follows Catherine of Aragon (Charlotte Hope) and King Henry VIII's (Ruari O'Connor) tumultuous marriage. The remnants of the Plantagenets had no difficulty in breeding, while the Tudors were less lucky. His father, Sir Richard Pole, was a cousin of King Henry VII, and his mother, Margaret, countess of . Mores connection to Morton had earlier secured him admittance to Oxford, where he studied for two years, mastering Greek and Latin with an instinct of genius, and studying a wide variety of subjects, including music. He was keenly interested in theology, but he was not ordained; he was free to marry if he wished, and propagate a Plantagenet family. He had a true gift for friendship and inspired deep loyalty amongst his family and friends. In Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, 1473-1541, Hazel Pierce was unable to corroborate Richard Morisyne's assertion that as a young widow Margaret Pole made her home with the other Bridgettine nuns at Syon abbey.However, the household accounts of Lady Margaret Beaufort (held at St. John's College, Cambridge) reveal that this was indeed the case, recording payments to her from . On 29 December 1886 freely as well situation, she was not close York! 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