Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury
Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, and his wife Isabel Neville. As a result of Margaret's marriage to Richard Pole, she was also known as Margaret Pole. She was one of just two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right without a husband in the House of Lords.
One of the few members of the House of Plantagenet to have survived the Wars of the Roses, Margaret was executed in 1541 at the command of King Henry VIII, the second monarch of the House of Tudor, who was the son of her first cousin, Elizabeth of York. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Catholic Church on 29 December 1886. One of her sons, Reginald Pole, was the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.
Early life
Margaret was born at Farleigh Castle in Somerset. She was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, and his wife Isabel Neville. George was a son of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, and a brother of both Edward IV and Richard III. Isabel was the elder daughter and coheiress of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and his wife Anne Beauchamp, 16th Countess of Warwick.Warwick was killed fighting against Margaret's uncles at the Battle of Barnet. Her father, already Duke of Clarence, was then created Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick. Edward IV declared that Margaret's younger brother, Edward, should be known as Earl of Warwick, but only as a courtesy title, and no peerage was ever created for him. Margaret would have had a claim to the Earldom of Warwick, but the earldom was forfeited on the attainder of her brother Edward. She was most likely named after her paternal aunt Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy.
Isabel died suddenly on 22 December 1476, when Margaret was only three years old. Two months earlier she had given birth to a son, Richard. The death of his wife led Clarence to believe that her lady-in-waiting and midwife, Ankarette Twynho, and a servant, had poisoned her and his son with a "venomous drink of ale". He had them brought to trial, found guilty and executed on very slim evidence by a rigged court in April 1477. His grief over his wife's death, and the midwife having been a distant cousin of the Woodvilles, suggested by his sister-in-law Elizabeth Woodville, made him distance himself from his brother, Edward IV.
The Duke of Clarence plotted against Edward IV, and in February 1478 was attainted and executed for treason. His lands and titles were thereby forfeited. Edward IV died in 1483 when Margaret was ten. The following year, the late King's marriage was declared invalid by the statute Titulus Regius, making his children illegitimate. As Margaret and her brother, Edward, were debarred from the throne by their father's attainder, their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, became King Richard III in 1483. He reinforced young Margaret and Edward’s exclusion from the line of succession, and married Anne Neville, Margaret’s maternal aunt. In 1484, Margaret and her brother were residing in the King's Northern estates in the care of their aunt. Pole learned how to play the virginals as a child.
In 1485, Richard III was defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth by Henry Tudor, who succeeded him as Henry VII. The new King married Margaret's cousin, Elizabeth of York, Edward IV's eldest daughter. Margaret and her brother were taken into their care as wards of the crown. They lived with the King's mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, and Margaret is recorded as attending the christening of the King's and Queen's first child, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, in Winchester during September 1486.
The new Tudor King suspected anyone with blood ties to the Plantagenets as coveting the throne, and as young Edward was the last male Plantagenet and a potential House of York claimant, he was moved to the Tower of London in 1485. 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. When Perkin Warbeck impersonated Edward IV's presumed-dead son, Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, in 1499, Margaret's brother Edward was attainted and executed. His lands and titles were confiscated.
Marriage
Margaret remained important to the new Tudor dynasty due to her Yorkist lineage and unquestionably royal blood. When she was 14 years old, Henry VII arranged her marriage to his favoured cousin and loyal servant, Richard Pole, who was 11 years her senior and from a gentry family. Whilst Richard's mother Edith St. John was an older half-sister of the King's mother, Margaret Beaufort, making him from a Lancastrian supporting family, he was of a lower status compared to his new wife. It has been argued by historians such as Tracy Borman that this was intended to undermine her status, weaken her claim to the English throne and ensure that she was married to a loyal supporter. Horace Walpole later reflected in his correspondence that "Henry had married her to the insignificant Sir Richard Pole who is called a Welsh Knight". Nevertheless, the King and Queen attended the marriage ceremony. Historians debate the date of the marriage; it may have taken place in 1487 or 1491.After the marriage, Margaret lived at her husband's manor of Bockmer, Buckinghamshire and gave birth to five children. She was in attendance at court for important events such as at the Feast of St George in April 1488.
Margaret's husband Richard prospered under the Tudor regime and held various offices in Henry VII's government. He was appointed as a Knight of the Garter in 1499, and he was entrusted with the prestigious role of Chamberlain for Arthur, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to the throne. Around the time when Richard was appointed Arthur's Chamberlain, Margaret received a generous gift of £20 from Henry VII.
When the Prince of Wales married the Spanish Infanta Catherine of Aragon in 1501, they established an independent household at Ludlow Castle. Margaret was appointed as one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting. Despite a ten year difference in age, she and the Princess became loyal friends. The friendship lasted throughout their whole lives and they exchanged frequent correspondence. Margaret held her position until Catherine's entourage was dissolved, after Arthur died on 2 April 1502.
Widowhood
Richard Pole died of an illness in 1505, leaving Margaret a widow with five young children. She borrowed £40 from Henry VII to pay for Pole's funeral, with Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, standing in surety for the loan. She had a small estate of land inherited from her husband but her jointure provided little income or means of supporting herself and her children.She took lodgings at Syon Abbey, on the banks of the River Thames, along with her daughter Ursula and youngest son Geoffrey, as guests of the Bridgettine nuns. To ease the difficult financial situation, her eldest sons were likely sent to other noble households. She devoted her third son, Reginald Pole, to the Church, relinquishing all financial responsibility for him and sending him to the Carthusian Monastery at Sheen to be educated with the monks of the Charterhouse. Margaret was also supported by monthly payments from the King's Mother from May 1505 until May 1509. She remained at Syon Abbey until Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, and her fortunes improved.
Countess of Salisbury
Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon in 1509, and Margaret was once again appointed as one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting. She attended to the new Queen during the coronation. Her son Henry was also immediately given a place in the King's household.In July 1509, the King granted Margaret an annuity of £100 a year. Then on 4 February 1512, after Margaret's petition to the King, her brother's attainder was reversed and an Act of Parliament restored the Earldom of Salisbury to her. It included some of her brother's former land. Henry VII had controlled these lands while Margaret's brother was a minor and then during his imprisonment; he confiscated them after Edward's trial. She paid 5,000 marks for the restoration of her lands,. These terms were generous when compared to the amounts other peers were made to pay for restoration of land.
Edward's Warwick and Spencer estates remained in the hands of the Crown, but Margaret now owned property in Calais, estates in Wales and 17 English counties, and the London palace Le Herber. In 1517, Margaret commissioned the building of Warblington Castle, Hampshire, which would become her principal seat. It was built in brick, was sumptuously furnished and had a moat. The King and Queen are known to have visited for extended periods and Henry VIII reportedly enjoyed the hunting there. She had many church livings under her control. She also commissioned a chantry at Christchurch Priory.
As Countess of Salisbury, she played an active role in administering her estates. By 1538 she was the fifth-richest peer in England and ranked among the most powerful tenants in-chief during Henry VIII’s reign. She was a patron of the New Learning, like many Renaissance noblewomen. Gentian Hervet translated Erasmus' de immensa misericordia Dei into English for her.
Margaret’s lineage was continued through her five children, Henry, Ursula, Arthur, Reginald, and Geoffrey, who all rose to prominence. Her first son, Henry Pole, was created Baron Montagu in 1514, another of the Neville titles in its first creation, speaking for the family on Margaret's behalf in the House of Lords. His mother negotiated his marriage to the coheiress Jane Neville, daughter of Lord Bergavenny.
Her second son, Arthur Pole, had a successful career as a courtier, becoming one of the six Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber and one of the noblemen who accompanied the king's sister Mary Tudor to France for her marriage to King Louis XII in 1514. Arthur suffered a setback when his patron Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was convicted of treason in 1521 but was soon restored to favour. He died young, having married Jane Pickering, the heiress of Roger Lewknor. Margaret and her son Henry pressed Arthur's widow to take a vow of perpetual chastity to preserve her inheritance for the Pole children.
Margaret's daughter Ursula married Henry Stafford, the only son of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Lady Alianore Percy, in 1519. She was about 15 years old, and he was not yet 18 at the time of the marriage. After the Duke of Buckingham was beheaded for treason and posthumously attainted by an Act of Parliament in 1521, the couple were given only fragments of his estates. Ursula's husband was created 1st Baron Stafford by King Henry's son and successor, Edward VI in 1547. They had a total of seven sons and seven daughters.
Margaret's third son, Reginald Pole, was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and studied abroad at the University of Padua in Italy, with a £100 stipend from the king. He was Dean of Exeter and Wimborne Minster, Dorset, and a canon of York. He had several other livings, although he had not been ordained a priest. In 1529, he represented Henry VIII in Paris, persuading the theologians of the Sorbonne to support Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He was the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England.
Margaret's youngest son, Geoffrey Pole, married Constance, daughter of Edmund Pakenham, and inherited the estate of Lordington in Sussex.
Margaret's own favour at Court in these years varied. She received a New Years gift from the King valued at forty shillings, which was equal to the value of gifts given to the Dukes of Buckingham and Norfolk. She also had a dispute over land with Henry VIII in 1518 when he awarded contested lands to the Dukedom of Somerset, which had been held by his Beaufort great-grandfather, and was then in the possession of the Crown.