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Elizabeth Goff

Margaret Pole's downfall

Margaret Pole; another great Tudor woman, whose lineage and beliefs were both her pride, and ultimately her sad undoing.

Unknown Woman, Formally Known as Margaret Pole – Unknown Artist, 1535. National Portrait Gallery



When King Henry VIII had decided to remarry, as his wife Catherine of Aragon hadn’t provided him with any living sons, all those who were associated with the Queen were immediately put in danger. This included Margaret, Countess of Salisbury. Not only as she was a great friend and ally to Catherine, being involved with the Princess Mary’s upbringing, she also shared the same faith of being a devout Roman Catholic. Faith alone had become dangerous topic in Henrician England; being too devout to Rome and the Pope was a crime, as was being too Lutheran! It was a fine line to walk.

During the time of Catherine’s fall, Margaret mainly kept to herself, and out of court life. She didn’t shy away from the fact that she firmly supported the Queen and her daughter, not the ‘great whore’ Anne Boleyn. She remained looking after the Lady Mary ( no longer a Princess ) until 1533, when Mary’s household was disbanded. At this point, when demanded to give back to the Crown Mary’s jewels and plate, Margaret refused as she insisted that Mary was the rightful Princess, and no one else would be as deserving of them.


During this dangerous time, her son Reginald Pole was making his feelings known about England’s potential break with Rome, and essentially the Roman Catholic faith. As he was a member of his family, King Henry wanted to use Pole’s position in the church to potentially move his divorce case forward. After Reginald was sent to the universities, as advised by Archbishop Cranmer to gain opinions of the great minds of the world, Reginald came to his own conclusion about Henry’s folly. Despite being offered several lucrative positions if he would put his stamp of approval on the Great Matter, Reginald refused. This then culminated in Reginald absolutely denouncing his cousins divorce case, and his newly created role of Supreme Head of the Church in England. He even went so far as to write a pamphlet on the issue, batting away each of Henry’s claims for the divorce case, and urging all the other Kings in Europe to denounce him immediately.


This, Reginald did from the safety of Europe, far out of Henry’s reach. What he didn’t countenance on is the fact that all of his family that remained in England would suffer, including his poor mother. Henry of course demanded that Margaret chastise her son, and make him see reason. This was to no avail. What didn’t help Margaret’s case is that Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador, was urging Reginald to marry the Lady Mary, thus uniting their claims to the throne. Just to be seen speaking about planned marriages with members of the Royal family could be construed as treason, and didn’t add anything positive to the Pole family’s case.


One of Margaret’s other sons, Geoffrey, was discovered to be in talks with his brother Reginald via letters; as soon as the King found out, he was promptly arrested and sent to the Tower in 1538. This was the start of the ‘Exeter Conspiracy’; this was a group of nobles that had supposedly banded together to overthrow King Henry with another of his cousins, Sir Henry Courtenay. The Poles were supposedly at the centre of this conspiracy. It’s thought now that the charges were wildly exaggerated by Thomas Cromwell, but there was enough ‘evidence’ produced to damn the Poles for good, Margaret included.


Can you imagine the sheer terror and fear Margaret must have been experiencing?! To have been put in a perilous position due to her religious beliefs, and then by her loyalty to the old Queen and her daughter…to then be watched and regarded as a traitor due to the actions of your own children? Children whom you can’t have any control over, and can only watch from afar as they burn your good name to the ground, endangering their own lives and yours in the process? Margaret came from an extremely noble household, one of the ancients of England. To see it fall down about her must have been horrifying.


Margaret had to endure Geoffrey being found guilty of treason, but thankfully, the King showed mercy to him and had him pardoned in January 1539. Another of her sons was also caught up in the treasonous plot, but wasn’t so lucky as his brother; Henry, her eldest son was executed in January 1539. It must have felt like she was given one son as a sacrifice to the other.


Not long after her sons execution, King Henry came after Margaret herself. Margaret was by now around sixty-six years old; she had certainly lived a life. She had seen the tragedy of the War of the Roses, and it’s supposedly peaceful conclusion with the start of the Tudor dynasty. What she hadn’t counted upon was the King dividing the entire country, splitting them away from the Pope’s God-given power, and the King abandoning his wife with lunatic trumped up charges to satisfy his conscience. To someone with such ardent beliefs, these changes must have been terribly hard, and to see your children suffer for their sheer rage at such changes must have been horrific.


Whilst being questioned by members of the King’s Privy Council, Margaret completely held her cool; she answered all questions clearly and precisely, and there was no evidence to say that she was involved in any of the treasonous activity of her extended family. This must have angered the Councillors and Henry no end.


Due to the fact of having no evidence against her, Margaret was sent to the Tower of London in May 1539 under an Act of Attainder, the only way that Henry could finally place her where he wanted her. There was some ‘evidence’ found in one of her houses; a banner hidden away showing her support of the Roman Catholic faith. It’s been suggested that this was a plant by Cromwell ( and we all know he certainly wasn’t adverse to completely making up evidence, as per the trial of Queen Anne Boleyn ).


As she had been arrested under the Act of Attainder, all of her lands and titles were taken from her, so she now quite literally had nothing to her name. As she was still a great lady, she wasn’t kept in a cell at the Tower, but in comfortable rooms at least. Even so, the harsh Winters over her incarceration period of two years did nothing for her health; the Tower is a cold, uncomfortable place with only yourself for company. Alison Weir writes about how when Katherine Howard was made Queen ( Henry’s fifth wife ), she felt pity for the poor old woman, and begged Henry to allow her to send her some clothes and comfortable things, so that she might endure he sorrows at least with some warmth.


It mustn’t have been lost on Margaret that the woman Henry had fractured the world for, and destroyed her family for their views on it, lay rotting in the chapel just a few feet away from her. No one in the world could have predicted the way her cousin King Henry’s reign would have turned out, not from it's glittering and glorious start, all those years ago.


On the 28th May 1541, Margaret was told that she was to die in a few hours. This was almost unheard of; she had no trial, no formal accusations set against her, no crime for which she was guilty. She had the Act of Attainder against her name, but everyone knew that was an excuse for Henry to keep her under close watch in the Tower. Unfortunately, Margaret’s death has become far more famous than her life. . . .


19th Century Engraving of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury Execution – Tudor Faces Blog


As the country was in civil unrest due to the Pilgrimage of Grace in the north, the Tower’s

‘regular’ executioner wasn’t available for the unpleasant task. They had his apprentice in his place, and this wasn’t to bode well for Margaret. She was thankfully allowed the small dignity of being killed within the Tower walls, much as Queen Anne Boleyn had been all those years before. When she was led out of her prison rooms to the scaffold, she had a low block on which to rest her head and neck for the blow to be dealt. There is one account that says Margaret refused to place her head on this low block as she wasn’t a traitor, and the headsman would have to just get at her neck as best he could, as she was ducking and moving about the place. Whether this is true or not, it cannot be confirmed, but what we do know is that her death took at least eleven blows of the axe to sever her head completely. ELEVEN. This was entirely due to the blundering apprentice, who hacked at her shoulders, her head, and anywhere else he could manage, before finally finishing the job that should have been over in one clean blow. The pain, the indignity, the injustice of her end is almost too much to bear. She was buried with no ceremony, as is the case with traitors, in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. She remains there to this day.


She is one of the most famous ghosts of the Tower of London; the nightmarish vision of her execution is supposedly replayed year after year, on the anniversary of her death.


The death of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, is regarded as one of the extreme low points of Henry VIII’s tenure as King. In her old age and frail state, she was no danger to him. He had ripped apart her family thoroughly enough that there was nothing to endanger him further. He knew it, the world knew it. She was the unfortunate victim of the Henry that had become a tyrannical and often unjust man. Her son Reginald regarded her as a Catholic martyr, and she was beatified by the Pope in 1886.

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