Pole and his hagiographers gave several later accounts of Pole's activities after Henry met Anne Boleyn. She would have been a widow when the portrait was painted, but she holds a sprig of honeysuckle, symbol of love and marriage. Together, they had five children, but she was widowed in 1505. Elizabeth Throckmorton. 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. And his patron Morton was infamous as the architect of that kings very successful and subsequently very unpopular tax policy. Montagu, Exeter, and Margaret were arrested in November 1538. European rulers keen to destabilise England had promoted the claims of this plausible, glamorous young man, but by the summer of 1498 he was in the Tower, about to embark on the last act of his mysterious life. 83 ratings9 reviews. More importantly, he developed a personal relationship with Henry VIII, and because known as the kings intellectual courtier. 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. In 1540, Cromwell fell from favour and was attainted and executed. The queen had suffered a series of miscarriages throughout their marriage; their only surviving child was the Princess Mary. 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. Six months later, Cromwell produced a tunic marked with the wounds of Christ, claiming it had been found in that search, and used that to arrest Margaret, though most doubt that. International She was an apt enough pupil to later converse with visitors in Latin. Thomas More worked hard for the king. Or was there, as she claimed, nothing worth burning? And her gender did not necessarily disqualify her from becoming leader of the opposition if that was what she chose. Utopia is a complex and witty work which describes a city-state ruled entirely by reason. 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". 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. Born on the 14th August 1473, she went on to marry Sir Richard Pole in 1491. 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. 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. 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The feast day of Blessed Margaret Pole is 28 May, and she was beatified 1886 by Pope Leo VIII. Their old friendship was past; the kings new advisors were anti-Catholic and pro-Protestant, most notably among them was Thomas Cromwell. Abstract. 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. Was she, at this point or that, doing nothing of interest at all or was she doing everything, in a way that was almost supernaturally discreet? Intellectuals from England and Europe visited; More was a generous and kind host. 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. Joan (Margaret) Pole ca 1333-Married toThomas Chaworth ca 1331-1373 Paternal grand-parents, uncles and aunts. He has been held up to schoolchildren for centuries as the most. 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. The former Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More is beheaded for High Treason after refusing to recognise King Henry VIII's religious supremacy. Margaret's third son, Reginald Pole, studied abroad in Padua. That was clear to Cromwell almost from the first, and perhaps to More, too. 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. For example, as Lord Chancellor, More proclaimed the opinion of the English universities as favorable to the kings annulment. Although a jury of twelve men would have . She managed her lands quite well, and became one of the five or six wealthiest peers in England. 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. Margarets daughter Ursula would have 13 children, and three of her four sons would marry heiresses and have large families. Geoffrey appealed to Thomas Cromwell, who had him arrested and interrogated. Thomas More: A very brief history June 29, 2017; Henry VIII's Westminster Tournament 1511 June 5, 2017; In the end, he could not be persuaded. This conviction meant they lost their titles and their landsmostly in the South of England--conveniently located to assist any invasion. Henry and his ministers suspected Reginald of plotting to marry the kings daughter Mary, and unite her claim with his. He was keenly interested in theology, but he was not ordained; he was free to marry if he wished, and propagate a Plantagenet family. It was a small mercy. She was later regarded by Catholics as such and was beatified on 29 December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. Put a different hood on her, and she could be a man one of her own Plantagenet relations. Nothing worked. Pole, Reginald (1500-58). He had an illegitimate son, called Henry Fitzroy, by one of his early mistresses. Soon, young Edward, a potential York claimant to the throne, was moved to the Tower of London. He blundered badly, hacking at Margaret's neck and shoulders until she was dead. And so, when More returned from a diplomatic mission to France in summer 1527, the king laid the open Bible before his favorite councilor. This was an obvious lie; More had never said anything of the sort to any other visitor, why Rich? Contemporary chroniclers often referred to him as a friend of the poor. If he had trusted her once, he no longer did so. Her thoughts, her motives, are so hidden, either by her inclination or by the work of time, that it is difficult for the most diligent biographer to put her together and make her walk and talk. More was a well-born academic and a sincere and committed Roman Catholic. Higginbotham follows Pierce in refusing to vilify Henry for his treatment of the Poles. Margaret's relationship with Henry VIII, must have been good. 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. Ursula Pole, married Henry Stafford, whose title and lands were lost when his father was executed for treason and attainted, restored to a Stafford title under Edward VI. Jone Johnson Lewis is a women's history writer who has been involved with the women's movement since the late 1960s. See me safe up, he told the lieutenant who escorted him, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.. [6] She remained there until she returned to favour when Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509. And the king was not pleased with the young lawyer; he promptly imprisoned Mores father in the Tower until he paid a substantial fine. This was partly due to Mores intellectual prominence; he was perhaps the most famous Englishman on the continent, with a wide and varied correspondence. 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. 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