The story of Mores last days is terribly affecting. He was the child Margaret had been carrying when her brother Warwick was executed. In 1509, when Henry VIII came to the throne after his fathers death, he married his brothers widow, Catherine of Aragon. In 1541, Margaret was executed, protesting that she had not taken part in any conspiracy and proclaiming her innocence. If, however, the subject lives a life of great extravagance, tell him he, too, can afford to give largely, the proof of his opulence being evident in his expenditure.. London Review of Books Both men were enthusiastic Humanist scholars, but they parted ways with regard to the kings prerogative. She was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1886 as a martyr.Occupation:Lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, manager of her estates as Countess of Salisbury.Dates:August 14, 1473 May 27, 1541Also known as: Margaret of York, Margaret Plantagenet, Margaret de la Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Margaret Pole the Blessed. Margaret remained in the Tower of London for more than two years. Her life, marked by stunning reversals of fortune, is an irresistible subject, but it presents a familiar difficulty for the historian. When Henry gave the nod for the execution to take place, no one was give. But that was years in the future. But it is difficult to detect in her conduct the heroic virtues assumed by Rome, and easier to see self-protective caution at work. It took the inexperience executioner a grand total of 11 swings to finally sever her head at the neck . In Utopia, he identified himself as a citizen of London, and it was in London that he was born on 7 February 1477, the only surviving son of John More and his first wife, Agnes Graunger. 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 . For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions. Yet if you were to ask Mores contemporaries to describe him, their words would be as conflicted and contradictory as the man himself. Margaret reminded Reginald what they all owed to the Tudors, and urged him to give up his enterprise, to take another way and serve the king: his renegade actions, she said, had plunged her into grief and fear, and trust me, Reginald, there never went the death of thy father or of any child so nigh my heart. Thomas Cromwell, who spied efficiently on the whole family, tried to have Reginald abducted or assassinated. She was attended by servants and received an extensive grant of clothing in March 1541. The relationship between the King and Margaret wavered a bit in 1518 when Henry repossessed some of her Salisbury lands saying they belonged to the duchy of Somerset. It is only in adversity that Margaret shows herself, in the records of her interrogations, when she was a woman in her sixties, experienced, shrewd, hard to frighten. Pole and his hagiographers gave several later accounts of Pole's activities after Henry met Anne Boleyn. Margaret Pole was born about four years after her parents had married, and was the first child born after the couple lost their first child on board a ship fleeing to France during the Wars of the Roses. To ease the situation, Margaret devoted her third son, Reginald Pole, to the Church; he was to have an eventful career as a papal Legate and later as Archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Roman Catholic Church on 29 December 1886. 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). We come now to the great event of Henrys reign. 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. The king added that his lack of a legitimate son was clear proof of Gods displeasure. . Joan, wife of John Langton. Towards the block I shall not go! 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. The reasons were various, but the most important was Katharines position as aunt to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Charles would not let his aunt be cast aside (he was also considering the dynastic appeal of her daughter with Henry), and he pressured the pope to deny Henrys petition. He died on 8 August 1420. On 18 February 1478, aged 28, George, Duke of Clarence, brother to the King of England, was executed. Margarets later life, at least, is well documented, but we cannot approach her story from the inside. On his accession he granted her an annuity of 100 a year and on 14 Oct 1513 he created her Countess of Salisbury and gave her the family lands of the earldom of Salisbury. Margaret's destiny, as an heiress to the Plantagenets, is not for a life in the shadows. Mores adolescent years were spent under the reign of Henry VII, the first Tudor king. 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. [13], In 1537, Reginald (still not ordained) was made a Cardinal. It was unlawful before man and God and thus void. 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. A third account in Burke's Peerage, possibly apocryphal, described the appalling circumstances of the execution. In 1537, after the split from the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed by Henry VIII, Pope Paul II created Reginald Pole who, though he had studied theology extensively and served the church, had not been ordained a priest Archbishop of Canterbury, and assigned Pole to organize efforts to replace Henry VIII with a Roman Catholic government. Basically, they disliked and mistrusted one another. This blatant disrespect could not be tolerated and Mores name was included in a Bill of Attainder against Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, who had prophesized against the kings annulment. The honor was tremendous; notably, More was the first layman to hold the office. This was on 16 May 1532, the date on which the archdiocese of Canterbury, as head of the English clergy, sent a document to Henry VIII in which is promised to never legislate or even convene without royal assent, thus making the king a lay person head of the spiritual order in England. Its influence upon William Shakespeares Richard III is immense. By Caroline Hallemann Published: Nov 24, 2020 Margaret's mother died when she was three; her father had two servants killed when he thought they had poisoned her. He married Anne Cheney, daughter of Nicholas Cheney. 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. 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. Montagu, Exeter, and Margaret were arrested in November 1538. He dictated letter after letter. Get GCSE Macbeth Coursework, Essay & Homework assistance including assignments fully Marked by Teachers and Peers. Bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, once Chancellor of England and a close royal friend, had both . Cromwell was an astute politician whose beliefs changed at the whim of his royal master. 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. As a newly elected representative for London in Parliament and an undersheriff in the city, he was deeply involved in public life. 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. Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, recorded the Countess's execution in a letter to the Queen of Hungary: In 1512, Parliament, with Henrys assent, restored to her some of the lands that had been held by Henry VII for her brother while he was imprisoned, and then had been confiscated when he was executed. She answered that no crime had been imputed to her. Nothing worked. Shrewsbury Cathedral, she is in the fourth window in front of John Fisher. 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. He blindfolded himself and exhorted the assembled crowd to witness his end in the faith and for the faith of the Catholic Church, the kings good servant but Gods first. Even Mores Protestant enemies did not believe him a traitor; his death was almost universally held to be nothing less than martyrdom. 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. But Margaret Pole, one of the great magnates of Tudor England, is not overlooked. Looking to her last end, Margaret commissioned a chantry at Christchurch Priory. Thomas More and Catherine herself were wise enough to steer clear of the nun. But time and impatience had made him emphatic in his righteousness. It was not a bloodbath, but a selective cull, carried through by process of law. And so he was. 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. Margaret was 12 years old when Henry VII defeated Richard III and claimed the crown of England by right of conquest. In 1539 Henry VIII allowed (or ordered) Thomas Cromwell to throw Lady Salisbury into the . It states that Margaret refused to lay her head on the block, declaiming, "So should traitors do, and I am none". He never explicitly courted controversy, but he felt compelled to answer the reformers such as William Tyndale. He would arrive unbidden, to either eat with the family or walk in the garden with More, his arm slung casually about Mores shoulders. Despite such evidence of royal favor, it is likely that More chafed at his service to the king. Margaret Pole was one of only two women in the 16 th century to hold a peerage in her own right. He was a brilliant scholar of the Renaissance who died rather than betray the Catholic church. We do not know. Certainly Henry wanted Mores support. First I went on the Internet to find some ways of measuring wind speed. It was sumptuously furnished and built of brick a modern material but moated, crenellated, archaic in form. Whether the countess was up to this is hard to say, but later the Imperial ambassador was to declare that Mary regarded her as a second mother. Hilary Mantel. 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. The Imperial Ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, suggested two years later that Mary be handed over to Margaret, but Henry refused, calling her "a fool, of no experience". Please change your browser settings to allow Javascript content to run. Margaret's only surviving sibling was Edward, Earl of Warwick. Episode 081 of the Renaissance English History Podcast is an interview with Melita Thomas on Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. Margarets daughter Ursula would have 13 children, and three of her four sons would marry heiresses and have large families. The following poem was found carved on the wall of her cell: For traitors on the block should die; Her mother, Isabel, daughter of the above-mentioned "King-maker," died 22nd December, 1476, and her father in the Tower nearly two years later. The hands are the standard-issue long-fingered type; a black ribbon, added later, may conceal damage to the paint. Margaret was perhaps guilty only by association, but at this distance it is impossible to tell. Pole, Reginald (1500-58). Geoffrey appealed to Thomas Cromwell, who had him arrested and interrogated. Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was born at Farley Castle, near Bath, on 14th August, in or about the year 1473. They married less than a month after Jane Colts death and More had to seek special dispensation from the church. He could now only write to his wife and favorite daughter Margaret with a piece of coal or burnt stick on scraps of paper. It was also due to Henrys deep and unfeigned friendship with More. Her heads. There have been rumors of an alleged relationship with Lady Margaret (see the White Queen series, for example). The new king married Margaret's cousin, Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's daughter, and Margaret and her brother were taken into their care. These are not consistent; and ifas he claimed at one pointPole rejected the Divorce in 1526 and refused the Oath of Supremacy in 1531, he received benefits from Henry for a course of action for which others were sentenced to death. She was, Pierce says, intelligent, unquestionably virtuous, traditionally pious, and possessed an easy familiarity with the convoluted etiquette of a royal court. 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. The second season of The Spanish Princess premieres on Starz on Sunday, October 11. 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. This was an obvious lie; More had never said anything of the sort to any other visitor, why Rich? 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. The Tower's professional executioner was away, so a young novice was given the job. It did not matter. He badgered Katharine ceaselessly. Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor and let it down where there's less wind, and the fishing's better. She managed her lands quite well, and became one of the five or six wealthiest peers in England. 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thomas more and margaret pole relationship