Torn Between Two Queens

by Wendy J. Dunn

Katherine

There’s a chorus of an old song that I’m sure most people have heard at least once in their life:

Torn between two lovers,
feelin' like a fool,
Lovin' both of you
is breakin' all the rules.

I’m not torn between two lovers, but I have to admit to feeling torn between Tudor queens. Yes – I have my fair share of Anne Boleyn replica jewellery, an Anne Boleyn Iphone case, Anne Boleyn note paper and even devoted years of my life giving voice to Anne Boleyn in my fiction, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I feel just as devoted to Katherine of Aragon. I even have an unpublished manuscript to prove it – a novel that focused on her childhood in Castilla, which I had hoped to be the first work of a planned trilogy about her life.

Now that my young adult Tudor novel, The Light of the Labyrinth, has stepped out into the published world, I have been thinking about returning to this work. It is actually crying out to me to return to it. That’s not surprising; I spent three years of my life committed to putting Catalina’s story onto the page. Since putting the work aside over four years ago, I have had a lot of time to think about why it didn’t hit the bull’s eye, and what I should do to start again.

So many people think of Katherine of Aragon as a Spanish princess, but she wouldn’t have described herself in that way – not really. It was the marriage of her father and mother, King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabel of Castilla, two monarchs who ruled over different parts of what is now known as Spain, that resulted in the gradual union of their two countries that became one of the most powerful dominions in Christendom.

As a daughter of King Ferdinand, Katherine was a princess of Aragon. Her mother – the Queen of Castilla, a far more powerful country than Aragon – could have made it very difficult for her husband, but her great ability in diplomacy was apparent even on the home front. She chose to wield her power in such a way that always included her husband. Her immense gifts as a ruling monarch makes me wonder if this was the reason history renamed her Isabella – a name, it is believed, the English brought into being when they wanted to belittle the grandmother of Mary I, as well as in response to the Spanish Armada (Liss 2002).

Born on the sixteenth day of December in 1485, Katherine of Aragon, or Catalina as she was known at her mother’s court, was the fifth and last child of these two monarchs. At three, Katherine was betrothed to Prince Arthur, the first-born son of a new royal English dynasty: the Tudors.

Extremely intelligent, pious and educated by the best tutors her mother could find, Katherine was also trained – like her three older sisters – by her mother to be a devoted and obedient wife who was able to be a good helpmeet for their husband. Katherine was not only able to care well for her husband’s stomach, but also was an excellent embroiderer and maker of manly shirts. She would one day anger Anne Boleyn when she refused to stop making shirts for Henry VIII. As his wife, it was her duty to make them (Fraser 1998).

Anne

There are many stories from the pages of history about Katherine I can visualise as a fiction writer. One story I especially love - when Wolsey visited Katherine during the time of "The King's Great Matter". Busy sewing with her women, Katherine doesn’t invite him into her chamber, but speaks to him at the door, with skeins of threads over her shoulder and I suspect a needle in her hand. Like Anne, Katherine did not like Wolsey, especially in this time when she was being pressured to step aside as Henry’s Queen. Did she feel tempted to accidently brush against Wolsey and prick him with her needle? Make him bleed, because she saw him as one of the reasons her husband now rejected her, making her own heart bleed.

Katherine arrived in England just before her sixteenth birthday, after a long and perilous journey from her mother's kingdom of Castile. The sea journey was even more dangerous, with her ships being driven back once by terrible storms before venturing out to sea again. A chronicle of the period said:

It is reported that this lady Katherine thought and feared such an unhappy chance might come, (the death of her husband, Prince Arthur) for when she had embraced her father and taken leave of her noble and prudent mother, and sailed towards England, she was continually so tossed and tumbled hither and thither with boisterous winds that what with the raging of the water and the contrary winds her ship was prevented many times from approaching the shore and landing (2014 Primary Sources, online).

Katherine met her future husband and his father at the Bishop’s palace at Dangerfield in Hampshire. At this palace – against all Castilian custom, a custom historically influenced by the Moors – Henry VII insisted on lifting the veil of his son’s bride. He saw a pretty girl with grey eyes. Her skin colour appeared to be what is still described of as the English rose, which she inherited from her English ancestors. Katherine’s grandmother was Catherine of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt (Fraser 1998). Katherine’s greatest beauty was her thick red/gold hair, hair that cascaded past her waist. When she first met Henry VII and Prince Arthur, her hair would have flowed free – as a symbol of her virginity. Sigh. I always feel somewhat cross when I see Katherine of Aragon recreated in movies or television shows as a woman with black-hair. She wasn’t. Thomas More said of her: ‘There is nothing wanting in her that the most beautiful girl should have’ (2014 Historic Royal Palaces, Online source).

Arthur Prince of Wales

The King and Prince Arthur expressed themselves fully pleased with Katherine. Arthur wrote later about his joy at first seeing ‘the sweet face of his bride’ (Fraser 1998, p. 24). But Arthur’s happiness was short-lived. Within only a few months of marriage, the fifteen-year-old prince was dead and Katherine fighting for her own life. They had both been stricken with one of those sudden deadly illnesses of the period – probably the English sweat - that struck fast and hard.

Katherine was pious and honest. After Arthur’s death, Katherine said, over and over, that their marriage had never been consummated. Her father wrote, in 1503, ‘It is well known that the princess is still a virgin’. But he was also a wily politician. In arranging Katherine’s betrothal to Prince Henry, her husband’s younger brother, her father asked the Pope to write up the dispensation in a way that made the question of her virginity unimportant and would safeguard Katherine’s later marriage. Henry VII also protected his own child and son, not forgetting his political back – the marriage would only go forward when Henry the younger was old enough to agree to the match.

Katherine endured seven dreadful years after Arthur’s death. A political pawn – in the hand of a father-in-law who often acted towards her like an utter miser – she was kept short of funds, as well as powerful friends. I agree with Antonia Fraser that these years of deprivation shaped her in such a way that made it impossible for her to bend when Henry VIII later sought to take a new wife (Fraser 1998). In that future time, Katherine probably remembered her time of triumph after seven years of hell while a widow. It is possible that she thought that all she needed to do was to keep faith and God would answer her prayers again.

I also find myself wondering if this time of deprivation impacted upon her health. Katherine spent many hours praying and days fasting during these bleak years. Perhaps this led to some kind of physical damage that caused complications during her pregnancies, making it difficult for her to bear living children. Alison Weir also suggests this in Henry VIII, King and Court, that Katherine’s deep piety and habit of fasting – behaviours reinforced during her widowhood – may have caused reproduction problems (Weir 2001).

Just before Henry VII died, a desperate Katherine contemplated taking the veil. She was saved from this destiny for another destiny when the King died in 1509 and she married – just weeks later – his son, Henry VIII.

During the early years of Katherine's marriage to the young Henry Tudor, the English court had a reputation for learning as well as piety. I have no doubt that Katherine influenced and encouraged her husband's better traits. Greatly respected for her intelligence, Katherine acted as her father’s ambassador during the early years of her marriage to Henry. Henry VIII also had no hesitation in entrusting his Kingdom to his wife whenever he decided to ride off to war with France, his country's traditional enemy.

Katherine did her very best to provide Henry with a royal heir. She believed she had done her duty by giving her husband their daughter, Mary, the only child of their union to survive infancy and live to adulthood. Perhaps if the fates had been kinder – if her husband hadn’t convinced himself that their marriage was accursed, and indeed was no marriage after his hopes for a son had been dashed time after time by the birth of yet another dead or soon to be dead baby – Mary could have been a valid answer to the English succession.

18 Year Old Henry in 1509

Katherine took her responsibilities as Queen very seriously. She gave money to the poor, was a patron of scholars and poets, and enriched religious orders not only with her presence, but also with her wealth. As the events of the Evil May Day, in 1517, proved when she begged for four hundred lives of those who had rioted in London, protesting against foreigners making their livelihoods in London, she was willing to stand up to her husband for those deprived of power. Her actions on during that terrible May were long remembered in a ballad:

What if (she said) by Spanish blood,
have London's stately streets being wet,
Yet will I seek this country’s good
And pardons for their children get;
Or else, the world will speak to me,
And say, “Queen Catherine was unkind,”
And judge me still the cause to be,
These young men did misfortune find.
And so disrobed of rich attire,
With hair unbound she sadly hies,
And of her gracious lord required,
A boon, which hardly he denies…

For which, kind Queen, with joyful heart,
She heard their mothers’ thanks and praise;
And so from them did gently part,
And lived beloved all her days… (Luke 1971, p.195).

Henry VIII may have rejected her as his wife, but England never rejected her as one of their most beloved Queens. To this day, also like Anne Boleyn, flowers are placed on her tomb.

Sometimes, I find myself imagining Katherine and Anne, alone together, in a heavenly, Tudor garden. The sun shines brightly as they sit close together, heads bent, their hands busy at completing exquisite embroideries. They murmur and laugh together, and I hear the often-repeated name of Henry: a man they both loved until their last living breath. I think, in Heaven, free of life’s sorrows and the battles to live and to love, Anne and Katherine would at last discover their common ground and find an eternal friendship.


References:

Fraser, A, 1998, The six wives of Henry VIII, Arrow Books, London
Weir, A, 2001, Henry VIII, King and court, Ballantine Books, New York
Luke, M. L 1971, Catherine, the Queen, Paperback Library, New York

Liss, P. K 2002, “Isabel, Myth and History”, in Isabel la Católica, Queen of Castile: Critical Essays, David A. Boruchoff (Editor), 2002, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

2014. Primary Sources: The death of Prince Arthur Tudor, 1502. [ONLINE] Available at: http://englishhistory.net/tudor/darthur.html. [Accessed 17 September 2014].

2014 Historic Royal Palaces: Hampton Palace, viewed 17 September 2014,

[this is an Editors' Choice post, first published on 19/09/2014]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian writer who has been obsessed by Anne Boleyn and Tudor History since she was ten-years-old. She is the author of two Tudor novels: Dear Heart, How Like You This?, the winner of the 2003 Glyph Fiction Award and 2004 runner up in the Eric Hoffer Award for Commercial Fiction, and The Light in the Labyrinth, her first young adult novel.

While she continues to have a very close and spooky relationship with Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, serendipity of life now leaves her no longer wondering if she has been channeling Anne Boleyn and Sir Tom for years in her writing, but considering the possibility of ancestral memory. Her own family tree reveals the intriguing fact that her ancestors – possibly over three generations – had purchased land from both the Boleyn and Wyatt families to build up their own holdings. It seems very likely Wendy’s ancestors knew the Wyatts and Boleyns personally.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Wendy is married and the mother of three sons and one daughter—named after a certain Tudor queen, surprisingly, not Anne.

Wendy tutors at Swinburne University in their Master of Arts (Writing) program. She also works at a primary school as a literature support teacher.
For more information about Wendy J. Dunn, visit her website at www.wendyjdunn.com. 

The Tombs of Henry VIII's Queens: Part One

by Linda Fetterly Root

Katharine[i] of Aragon (1485-1536):

On the morning of her death, Henry VIII’s discarded wife dictated two letters, one to her kinsman The Holy Roman Emperor, and the other, to the husband who had put her aside. It is not the scornful lament to which she was entitled and which the king deserved. In it, she wishes him well and requests Henry to extend benevolence toward their daughter and generosity to her servants. But it ends as the last letter written by a lover: 'Lastly, I make this vow. That mine eyes desire you above all things.’

When the king heard of her death, he donned clothes of celebratory yellow and frolicked the night away. He was not dancing with his wife, Queen Anne, for whom he had all but moved mountains to marry. He had already tired of her.

And thus, the daughter of the legendary lovers Ferdinand and Isabella was taken to the nearby Abbey of Peterborough and interred in the choir aisle to the north of the altar, with no more pomp than due a Dowager Princess of Wales, the title to which she had been demoted. She was put to rest as Arthur’s wife, not Henry’s. Katharine died on January 2, 1536, and was buried 22 days later. A mere three months after that, on May 2, Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested, and 17 days later, she was dead. Four months and a week after Katharine's death, Lady Jane Seymour was Queen of England.[ii]

In his excellent biography Catherine of Aragon, written in 1941, Garrett Mattingly remarked that few of the hopes the Queen still held when she died had been realized.[iii] However, her burial site at Peterborough may well have been an incidental beneficiary of her death. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, achieved by a legislative scheme orchestrated by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, Peterborough Abbey Church was confiscated but spared. By royal edict, Henry granted Letters Patent to Peterborough making it a Cathedral and named the former abbot as its bishop.[iv] Thus, Peterborough was appropriately Anglicanized. Some historians think it was spared because it housed the remains of a royal who had once been considered Queen of England. It is just as likely that Henry saw it as a potential source of revenue for the Crown.

The site of Katherine’s burial did not fare well. It was desecrated in 1586 and the culprits caught. During the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell’s troops ravaged both the Cathedral and the town. Their onslaught is described in the Royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus as worse than what would have been expected of either the Goths or the Turks.[v]

In 1895, the dignity of Queen Katharine’s burial site was restored, when the wife of one of Peterborough’s canons, Catharine Clayton, solicited funds from women named Catherine, no matter where they lived or how they spelled the name. Then, Mary Teck, King George V’s consort, grandmother of Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II, joined in the cause, and Katharine's place of interment became clearly marked as the tomb of a Queen of England. Her successor did not fare as well.

Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons.

Anne Boleyn (c. 1501- May 19, 1536):

Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Chris Nyborg

Many historians attribute Catherine of Aragon as having captured the hearts and minds of the English people. Albeit unjustly, not even her successor’s apologists extend the honor to her predecessor. There are as many accounts of Anne’s demise as there are screenwriters and historical novelists, and many versions propounded by historians are scarcely more than musings. One thing is certain: the queen was executed for treason within the grounds of the Tower of London on May 19, 1536. Her remains were disposed of according to the custom of the time. As an aristocrat, she was buried beneath the floor within the confines of the Royal Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula. Much haste accompanied her beheading, and no one had thought to order a coffin. Apparently, her remains were carried from the place of her beheading to her place of burial by her ladies and placed into a wooden box.

At the time, notes may have been made as to where the bodies of Royals executed during that bloodiest of weeks were buried, but none survive, and the accuracy of notations used to identify bones found under the floor during a renovation in the late 19th century are unauthenticated.

St. Peter ad Vincula, Wikimedia, Courtesy of Creative Commons
www.graveyards, Matt Hucke,

There are indeed bones of women scattered in at least two locations, but sources differ as to which if either set were Queen Anne's. A commission formed when the floor was torn up during Victoria’s reign, and a surgeon declared a set of female bones to be of the proper age and configuration. 21st-century historian Alison Weir disagrees and believes bones identified as Anne’s sister-in-law Lady Rochford were the Queen's.

While Dr. Weir does not have sufficient facts to declare the issue resolved, she certainly has enough to raise substantial doubt. It will be ironic if further studies show that Weir is correct since Lady Rochford and Anne Boleyn were reputed rivals for Anne’s brother George’s affections. And to add to the controversy, recent research implies that even that assertion may not be true. Jane Boleyn may not be Anne's jealous sister-in-law after all. She may just have been a scapegoat.

The fact that Anne’s burial site has not been resolved is further evidence of how little dignity her remains were afforded at the time of her death. As it stands, all that commemorates her final resting place is a plaque in the floor placed at the behest of Queen Victoria, marking the spot where a wooden box with copper screws in embedded in the concrete, and which may or may not contain the bones of Anne Boleyn. Alison Weir suspects they belong to Kathryn Howard, wife #5.

Jane Seymour (1509-October 24, 1537):

Perhaps it is time to look at Queen Jane Seymour in a different light than the one in which she has been cast. At least insofar as Henry VIII was concerned, of his six wives, Jane was special. His affections for her are usually explained by her ability to present him with a male heir, an achievement not to be downplayed. However, some recent research suggests there was more to Queen Jane Seymour than her label as ‘a little mouse' implies. At the very least she lasted a year without offending Henry as long as she kept her opinions to herself, a lesson learned when she approached him about pardoning the peasants who had taken part in the Pilgrimage of Grace.

The reign of Henry Tudor’s third wife was painfully brief. She triumphed over both of her predecessors by giving Henry the son he craved, but the birth cost Jane her life. Twelve days later, she was dead, either of a partially unexpelled placenta or puerperal fever. Henry's plans for her elaborate coronation became arrangements for a royal funeral. She was the only one of Henry’s wives to receive one. The funeral procession began at Hampton Court where she had died and thereafter, laid in state, and ended at Windsor Castle, where Henry planned to be interred. Because of the elaborate nature of his tomb, which remained very much a work-in-progress, she was placed in what was planned as a temporary crypt in the Quire of Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor Palace, while Henry sorted the details of the elegant tomb he had been planning for decades. He had hired a series of celebrated Italian sculptors to render elaborate designs, none of which pleased their patron.

Later representation of Henry VIII's family as
he defined it. (Wikimedia Commons, (PD)

Henry had begun planning his tomb during the happy early days of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Years later, after five more marriages, he chose to share it with Queen Jane. All he had to do was live long enough to see it finished. He died in 1547, leaving a partially completed set of ornaments for an unfinished tomb.

Sharing a crypt with the mighty Henry VIII should have assured Queen Jane's remains a resting place superior to all others, but such was not the case. Finances and what moderns call regime change intervened. In Henry's will and again, on his deathbed in 1547, he reaffirmed his desire to be buried at Windsor, with Jane alongside him. He anticipated his son and heir, Edward, Prince of Wales, and Edward's powerful Seymour uncles would see to the tomb’s completion, including life-size effigies of Henry and Jane, and a marble statue of himself upon a warhorse. He had not considered continental politics, religious strife in England, or the threat of Calvinism and the Scottish Reformation. Henry's death left Edward Seymour, then Earl of Hereford, and Protector of the Realm, with more pressing problems than a dead king's tomb. As he approached majority, studious and devoutly Protestant Edward VI had no time for such frivolities. During the Catholic restoration that occurred in Mary I’s reign, in spite of her deep affection for Queen Jane, she had no desire to deify the father who had rejected her. When Protestant, parsimonious Elizabeth Tudor succeeded her half-sister, she found other uses for her money. When Elizabeth I died in 1603, and the Tudor Dynasty made way for the House of Stuart, King James VI of Scotland and I of England, was preoccupied with rehabilitating the image of his mother, Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, who had been beheaded in 1587 on a warrant signed by Elizabeth Tudor, and buried at Peterborough on the opposite side of the altar from Katharine of Aragon. It was she, who never set foot in England other than as a fugitive, and later, as a prisoner, who was reinterred in a glorious tomb in the Lady Chapel at Westminster. 

To finance the Civil War, Cromwell's Commonwealth parliament sold the effigy of Henry VIII and other substantially completed components of Henry VIII’s planned memorial. The author of the commentary at the Saint George’s Chapel page cited below remarks that ‘a less ambitious scheme achievable during his lifetime would have been a wiser choice’.

CONCLUSION OF PART I ~ Tombs of Henry VIII’s Queens

St.George's Chapel,Wikimedia, courtesy of Alan Thoma

The only marking above the royal vault at Windsor Castle where Henry VIII and his third wife, Queen Jane are buried dates to the 19th century and is as follows:[vi]

IN A VAULT BENEATH THIS MARBLE SLAB ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF

JANE SEYMOUR QUEEN OF KING HENRY VIII 1537

KING HENRY VIII 1547

KING CHARLES I 1648

AND AN INFANT CHILD OF QUEEN ANNE.

THIS MEMORIAL WAS PLACED HERE BY COMMAND OF KING WILLIAM IV. 1837

Join me in September for a look at the burial sites of Henry VIII's last three consorts, Anne of Cleves, Kathryn Howard, and Katharine Parr.

Notes:
[i] The author uses the spelling that appears at the site where the Queen is buried. Mattingly uses the popular spelling of the name. The queen herself signed as Katalina.

[ii] Garrett Mattingly, infra, states the King secretly married Jane Seymour the day after Anne’s execution, i.e., on May 20, 1936, not May 29.

[iii] Mattingly, Garrett, Catherine of Aragon, 1941, Book of the Month Club Edition, 1990, pages 429-430.

[iv] See the official Peterborough Cathedral website for an excellent recap of Katherine’s life, the present festival held in her honor, and a short biography. http://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/newsarticle.aspx/41/katharine-festival-2016.

[v] The entire quote is found infra.

[vi] http://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/assets/files/LearningResources/BackgroundNotesHenryVIII.pdf

~~~~~~~~~~

Historical novelist Linda Root left a career as a major crimes prosecutor anticipating a retirement spent writing Historical Crime Fiction. She began compiling a Murder Book, aimed at convicting Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots of conspiracy in her husband Lord Darnley’s murder. Instead of the book she planned, her research inspired her to write a novel, The First Marie and the Queen of Scots, first published in 2011. It was followed in 2013 by The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots and four stand-alone books in the The Legacy of the Queen of Scots series, with a fifth in progress: They are: 1) Unknown Princess (formerly The Midwife's Secret; 2) The Last Knight’s Daughter, (formerly The Other Daughter); 3) 1603: The Queen’s Revenge;  and 4) In the Shadow of the Gallows. The Deliverance of the Lamb will be published this winter..She has also published an adult fantasy, The Green Woman, as J. D. Root.Visit her Amazon Author Page for a complete list:
http://www.amazon.com/Linda-Root/e/B0053DIGM8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1461277095&sr=1-2-ent

Margaret Pole’s Wild Ride on Fortune’s Wheel

by Samantha Wilcoxson

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, is possibly best known for her botched execution. One of the last victims of Henry VIII’s temper and insecurities, Margaret was sent to her death without trial at the age of sixty-seven. However, if that is all you know of this dynamic woman, you are missing out on an adventurous story.

Painting of unknown woman
believed to be Margaret Pole

In the late medieval world, faith was an important element of daily life but it was sprinkled with superstition. One of these philosophies related to Rota Fortunae or the Wheel of Fortune that was blindly spun and could drastically affect the life of any person, great or small. We might call it twists of fate or destiny, but the idea is the same. While the poor might pray for an unexpected rise in fortune, the great could be quickly brought low. Few endured greater shifts in fortune than Margaret Pole.

Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium showing Lady Fortune spinning her wheel.

She was born August 14, 1473, to George of Clarence and Isabel Neville. He was the brother of King Edward IV, and she was the oldest daughter of the Earl of Warwick, the man most credited with placing Edward upon the throne. George was no longer heir presumptive, since Elizabeth Woodville had recently presented Edward with one son and another would join him within days of Margaret’s birth. Still, George’s position was a favorable one, and Margaret had every reason to anticipate a bright future.

George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence

Before Margaret was old enough to know what was happening, the Wheel of Fortune made the first of many turns in her life. The Duke of Clarence had betrayed his brother even before Margaret’s birth, but he had always been forgiven. In 1477, the king was pushed too far. Wild with grief over his wife’s death after childbirth that he convinced himself was a poisoning, George once again rebelled. By the spring of 1478, Margaret and her younger brother Edward were orphans. Many theories revolve around George of Clarence’s execution, but to these small children the only thing that mattered was that their father was gone, executed by his own brother.

Despite their status as the orphaned children of an attainted traitor, Margaret and Edward enjoyed the remainder of the Plantagenet dynasty within households of royal cousins and may have believed that Fortune’s Wheel was creeping its way back upward. Then came the year 1485.

After Henry Tudor was victorious at Bosworth, the royal children who had been tucked away at Sheriff Hutton were brought south to London. Margaret and Edward were among them. We have no way of knowing whether their cousin, Elizabeth of York, was eager to meet the new king to whom she was betrothed, but all of the York children must have been anxious to learn what the future would hold and which way Fortune’s Wheel would turn for them.

At this point Margaret’s path veered away from her brother’s. Edward was imprisoned in the Tower for his excess of royal blood, while Margaret was married to a distant relative of Margaret Beaufort. Richard Pole was a faithful supporter of Henry Tudor, and, as such, he and Margaret were soon sent to serve Prince Arthur at Ludlow. During this time, Margaret formed a close relationship with Arthur’s bride, Catherine of Aragon.

Edward, never more than a pawn in older men’s games, had been executed in 1499 in order to clear the way for Catherine’s arrival, but Margaret does not seem to have held it against her. The two remained lifelong friends well beyond the brief time at Ludlow. After the deaths of their husbands, Margaret and Catherine shared a low point on the Wheel of Fortune. Both women, accustomed to rich lifestyles, were left in relative poverty by King Henry VII. Gifts from his wife, Elizabeth of York, would help ease their burden that was only to be lifted with the ascension of Henry VIII.

King Henry VIII
by unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, NPG 4690

By marrying Catherine and bestowing an old family title upon Margaret, Henry VIII appeared to be the women’s savior. For a time. The Countess of Salisbury thrived during this high point on Fortune’s Wheel. Building projects, advantageous marriages for her children, and a coveted place at the queen’s side occupied her time. She mourned with Catherine over the loss of the queen’s babies, one after another, until the birth of a healthy auburn haired girl. In a few years, Margaret became Princess Mary’s governess.

Queen Mary I

by Master John, NPG 428 

Her place must have seemed entirely secure when the whispering began in the mid-1520s. Henry had a new love. He did not believe that Catherine could give him the son he wanted. Needed. Margaret had a decision to make. Stand by her queen and the princess she had grown to love as much as her own children, or look to her own future and rally to the side of her cousin the king?

She attempted a balancing act, which worked for some time. Margaret would not give up her friend or her religion, but neither did she antagonize the king. That job was left to her son.

Reginald Pole had enjoyed the patronage of both Henry Tudors, and the education that they had provided him with placed him close to the Pope. Henry hoped that Reginald would support his case and convince the pope to approve his divorce. Instead, Reginald took advantage of the safety provided to him by his distance from England to speak vociferously against Henry’s Great Matter, eventual multiple marriages, and self-proclaimed status as Head of the Church of England.

Henry’s rage could not bring Reginald within his reach, so he lashed out at his family instead in a devastating turn of the Wheel of Fortune for Margaret Pole. The final blow began with the arrest of her youngest son, Geoffrey, and grew into the legalized mass murder known as the Exeter Conspiracy in 1538. In this vicious blow against the York remnant, Henry executed Margaret’s oldest son, Lord Montague, along with several others. Montague’s son, a young boy named Henry, was also taken to the Tower, never to be seen again. Geoffrey attempted to commit suicide.

Margaret was first placed under house arrest, then taken to the Tower herself, though no charges were ever brought against her. There she would endure this low point, knowing that her family was being torn apart, until she was informed that Henry was done with her. On May 27, 1541, Margaret was informed that her execution would take place that morning. She had committed no crime and been given no trial, yet she prepared herself with the royal dignity she was born to.

Tower of London

After her brutal beheading by an unprepared and inexperienced executioner, these words were found on the wall of Margaret’s Tower cell:
For traitors on the block should die;
I am no traitor, no, not I!
My faithfulness stands fast and so,
Towards the block I shall not go!
Nor make one step, as you shall see;
Christ in Thy Mercy, save Thou me! 

Margaret Pole Memorial

Additional Reading:
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership by Hazel Pierce

Image credits:

Painting of unknown woman believed to be Margaret Pole. Public Domain(?),  by Unknown

Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium showing Lady Fortune spinning her wheel. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=466545, FortuneWheel.

George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, by Lucas Cornelisz - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7500733

King Henry VIII, by unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, NPG 4690, CC BY-NC-ND

Queen Mary I, by Master John, NPG 428, CC BY-NC-ND

Tower of London. Author's personal photo

Margaret Pole Memorial. Author's personal photo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author Bio:
Samantha Wilcoxson is a first generation American with British roots. She is passionate about reading, writing, and history. Her novel, Plantagenet Princess, Tudor Queen: The Story of Elizabeth of York has been recognized as an Editors’ Choice by the Historical Novel Society. Her next book, Faithful Traitor: The Story of Margaret Pole, is currently available for pre-order and will be released June 14, 2016.

Samantha has also published two middle grade novels, No Such Thing as Perfect and Over the Deep: A Titanic Adventure.

When not involved in reading or writing, Samantha enjoys traveling and spending time at the lake with her husband and three children. You can connect with Samantha on her Blog, Twitter,  Goodreads, Booklikes, and Amazon.
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The Birth of Cipher in England

by Lizzy Drake

Finally, forasmuch as the ciphers which sir Thomas Spynell (whose soule God pardon!) had, have come to the hands of sundry persons since his decease, soe that damage might ensue, by the disclosing of seacrets, unles a new ciphr were provided; thereofre the kings highness, by the advice of his counsaile, hath not only conceyved and made such a cipher, but also sent the same, by his serveaunt, this bearer; who is purposely sent only for the sure deliverance of them to his said ambassadours; by which ciphers they may have knowledge in the contents of such articles as shall be written in ciphers to them at any time hereafter.

Henry VIII's Instructions to Sir Thomas Bolayn and Doctor Sampson (Galt, Appendix, p.lxxxv-xcvii)

The use of ciphered letters was well in use in other countries before it reached the court of Henry VII in Tudor times. Ferdinand of Spain, among others, was reputed to have been using cipher in correspondence for some time; a coded letter that only the recipient (in theory) could decipher via a cipher key (held within the cipher itself or sent separately). When Catherine of Aragon was sent to Henry VII's court as a bride-to-be to his firstborn son, Arthur, Catherine's father continued to send ciphered and coded letters to avoid spies getting wind of what he was planning. Catherine, clever and highly educated, would have been aware of the use of cipher, but didn't hone her own unique ciphering skills until she was deep within Henry's court. She was, as believed by some, to be Ferdinand's pawn in securing England's support of his war campaigns and suffered greatly while the two men played their political games.

England at this point was new to the cipher, but with Catherine's constant use of the code, it became more and more common for political players to adopt a code of their own. Spanish ciphers were reputed to use two ciphers for one text, a style that the first (this is arguable by some) ciphered letter to be used in England was written (in 1505 written by Henry VII in regards to approaching Maximilian of Rome about both a marriage and the fate of Edmund de la Pole. It was deemed to be of such sensitive nature that it was advised to be made in cipher, though historians have different theories on the nature of the letter and its encoding). This document has the key to the cipher embedded within the document itself. The cipher was supposedly hidden within one paragraph whilst a second cipher key was within a postscript to aid the location of the first cipher in the text.

The use of cipher is well known by many an amateur historian, but not so much the actual ciphers themselves. Not many of them survive today, but the 19th century historian Bergenroth, describes one cipher beautifully, remarking on how three lines contained twenty-one signs each, corresponding to the number of the letters of the alphabet while other lines contained between twenty-two to twenty-three letters. He had come to suspect that the lines look very much like the rest of the writing, and had concealed within them the key to the cipher. The man placed the alphabetical letters, starting with A (in the same order that we learn them today) over the signs, which he claimed to provide him with the key. If this is true, it was a cleverly hidden cipher and key in one document, that only few would be able to decode and only when they knew what they were looking at in the first place.

The Spanish ambassador De Puebla had once written to Ferdinand that he had deciphered, on his own, the letters that were to be delivered to Henry VII. Later, Catherine of Aragon had confessed to her father that De Puebla was not to be trusted as he was more of an ambassador to the king of England than that of the Spanish Ambassador (once again showing her strong alliance with Spain when she was in the English court). This is when she began to write many of her correspondences to Spain in her own cipher that she was confident could not be intercepted or transcribed by De Puebla and thus pass on to Henry VII who made her life at court difficult both before her marriage to Arthur and after his death. Yet while De Puebla even admitted that Catherine's was 'one of three ciphers' he was unable to decipher, Ferdinand still sent his ciphers to Catherine via De Puebla; ciphers that he knew De Puebla could translate (according to De Puebla) and share with the king of England. One can only assume that Ferdinand's attempts were to make Henry feel he was not being made a fool of.

In one of Catherine's first letters to her father Ferdinand in July 1509 (just a month after her marriage to Henry VIII), she gushes her deep affection for her new husband. However, in what is deemed by some as an 'important part of the letter' (Earliest English Diplomatic Ciphers) was written in a cipher. What is strange about this is that she did not use the usual Spanish cipher she was known for, but instead used a cipher made up of strange symbols. This part of the letter is left undeciphered by historians who have viewed it and Bergenroth leaves it out of his history (though it may have been because he himself could not decode it, something that he seemed to pride himself on).

Catherine's first use of the Cipher was probably in 1507 when her sister Juana was being thought of as a match for Henry VII. Ferdinand decided in the spring that his daughter Catherine should be the ambassador for this match and all letters and correspondences went through her. 'When she turned to the subject of the prospected marriage between Henry VII and Juana, Queen of Castile, she said she would like to be able to write in cipher. Although she had succeeded in deciphering his letters, she did not dare to make use of cipher in her writing, and much less to confide the ciphering of her letter to any other person. Thus, she wrote in plain Castilian.'(Earliest English Diplomatic Ciphers, citing Bergenroth p.412, Supplement p.99-104)

Catherine had indeed shown her cleverness as she was able to decipher many of the ciphers Ferdinand had sent without any aid or cipher key, but was at that time, still not confident on writing her own. Her first cipher she'd sent to Ferdinand was so confusing that she wrote it again in plain text so that it could be understood. Of course, as time went on, she became much more confident with her ciphers and the use of a cipher key.

Much later, in 1514 there is evidence that ciphers are very much still in use. Bergenroth references a ciphered letter from John Stile to Henry VIII, dated 21 March 1514. He comments on the cipher used therein: 'The cipher in which this despatch is written is of the rudest and simplest kind imaginable. Every letter has one and not more than one sign, and the words are even separated from each other. Any person, not entirely unaccustomed to reading and writing in cipher, could find out at the first glance such words as "that", "the", "and," &c., and by means of them form in a very short time the whole key of the cipher.'

Stile's grumbling letter is a godsend for researchers, he makes such a detailed complaint about the 'rudest and simplest kind' but in so describing it in his letter to Henry, he has given us a glimpse into the wonderful and complicated world of ciphered diplomatic letters of the time.

References

Bergenroth, G.A. (ed.) (1862), Calendar of State Papers, Spain; Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Supplement; British History Online

J.S. Brewer (ed.) (1920), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 1 (2nd ed.); Internet Archive, British History Online, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Diplomatic, Henry VIII, Volume I

Fox, Julia (2011), The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile; Ballantine Books, New York

Galt, John (1812), The Life and Administration of Cardinal Wolsey

Wood, Mary Anne Everett (ed.) (1846), Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain; Internet Archive: Vol. I

Pollard, A.F. (ed.) (1913), The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources; Internet Archive Vol. I, II, III

Tremlett, Giles (2010), Catherine of Aragon – Henry's Spanish Queen; Faber and Faber, London

Author unknown, Earliest English Diplomatic Ciphers; http://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/henryvii.htm

Archaeologia, Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity (1838); Society of Antiquaries of London
https://archive.org/stream/archaeologiaorm01londgoog#page/n323/mode/2up

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Lizzy Drake has been studying Medieval and Tudor England for over 15 years and has an MA in Medieval Archaeology from the University of York, England. She has been writing for much longer but the Elspet Stafford Mysteries began her writing career in the genre. The first Elspet Stafford mystery, A Corpse in Cipher - A Tudor Murder Mystery, is available now.

When not writing or researching, Lizzy can be found reading or gardening. She balances time between her two homes in Essex, UK and California.

You can follow her on Twitter (Lizzy Drake @wyvernwings)


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A Great Matter.

by Danielle Marchant

Tourmens de Mariage is Part 2 of The Lady Rochford Saga, focussing on the life of Jane Boleyn. One of the relationships that is focussed upon in Part 2 is that between Jane and her Queen, Catherine of Aragon.

Catherine of Aragon

As I wrote Part 2, it began to gradually occur to me how unique and testing this relationship was. Catherine was the first Queen that Jane had served, and I do believe that she felt some loyalty to both her and her daughter Mary. This loyalty even appeared to continue up to 1535, long after Henry VIII had divorced her, when apparently Jane was seen protesting for Mary in London. However, whether Jane had been present there or not is still an area of debate.

However, even if she felt loyalty to Catherine and Mary, Jane was still a “Boleyn”; George married Jane around 1524/5 after all, and she had to appear loyal to their cause. In spite of this though, I don’t believe this would have prevented Jane from feeling some empathy towards Catherine. Like Catherine, Jane also appeared to have problems with conceiving an heir. There are no records of still births, or miscarriages as of yet, but we do know that Jane and George did not have children. Having a child to carry on the family line would have been part of Jane’s duty, and like her Queen who failed to have a son, Jane too probably felt that she had failed in her role, and Jane’s experience of this is explored in Part 2.

Like many women in England, I believe that Jane would have feared for her own marriage. If the King could put aside Catherine due to lack of male heirs, Jane probably feared if George could do the same to her. So, she would have sympathised with Catherine and even possibly resented Anne Boleyn for what she was doing.

Likely Jane Boleyn

Another common ground that Jane and Catherine shared was their religion. Both were Catholics, whereas Anne and George Boleyn were Evangelical. One thing I have explored in Part 2 is the possibility that even though Jane was close to both George and Anne, she probably was also uncomfortable with their beliefs. We take for granted that up to this point, England was Catholic and prayers were said in Latin, while in the background in Europe there were a growing number of people wanting to translate the Bible into their own language. To people like Jane in this time, this change in thought and attitude may have seemed frightening. Therefore, as Catherine was very much committed to the Catholic faith, Jane probably felt more comfortable with having Catherine as a Queen as opposed to Anne.

As Henry VIII’s love for Anne Boleyn grew, I believe that Jane is torn between loyalties – to her Queen and to her husband’s family. There is a point in Part 2, where she is confronted on this by Anne openly – it’s either Catherine or them. Jane, however, is a woman in the 16th century; her choices have been dictated by her parents and her husband’s family. She doesn’t have a say in the matter. Therefore, I do think that Catherine would have known this all too well, sympathised with Jane and would not have held it against her if she did choose to stay loyal to the Boleyns. For Jane, this was the inevitable. So, indeed being torn between loyalty to the Queen and loyalty to the Boleyns was Jane’s “Great Matter”.

Sources and suggested reading:

Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford – Julia Fox, Phoenix, 2007.

Catherine of Aragon – Henry’s Spanish Queen – Giles Tremlett, Faber and Faber Ltd, 2011.

Images – Catherine of Aragon, by Lucas Horenbout and “The Lady Parker” by Hans Holbein, a sketch believed to be that of Jane Boleyn.

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By Danielle Marchant

I am an Independent Author from London, UK. I published my first historical novella The Lady Rochford Saga Part 1: Into the Ranks of the Deceived in October 2013. The Lady Rochford Saga Part 2: Tourmens de Mariage will be released on the 19th May 2015 and is now available to pre-order: Amazon
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The Death of the Bishop's Poisoner

By Nancy Bilyeau

On April 5, 1531, hardened spectators of public punishment gathered at Smithfield, joined, perhaps, by others who were too ghoulish or genuinely curious to stay away. For an execution had been announced of a type that none had witnessed in their lifetimes, nor ever heard of.

The condemned man, Richard Roose, was not of the magnitude of criminal expected to meet his end at Smithfield. This was the ground where the English executed the fearless Scottish rebel William Wallace: hanged, drawn and quartered in 1305. Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasant's Revolt, was run through with a sword at Smithfield in 1381, in the presence of young Richard II.

Death of Wat Tyler, at left, in a 14th century depiction of Smithfield

Roose, the victim of 1531, had not sought to harm King Henry VIII nor Queen Catherine nor any royal councilor. He had not tried to overthrow the nation's government nor change its religious policies. Roose, a cook in the service of Bishop John Fisher, was accused of murder by poison, his victims an obscure gentleman in the bishop's household and a destitute widow. He is believed to have admitted to the poisoning but claimed it has a joke gone wrong, an accident.  There is no testimony to examine because Roose had no common-law trial, by command of the king.

John Fisher, sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger

Moreover, Roose was boiled alive at Smithfield without benefit of clergy. In the words of the Greyfriars Chronicle of London, a contemporary document:

This year was a cook boiled in a cauldron in Smithfield for he would have poisoned the bishop of Rochester Fisher with divers of his servants and he was locked in a chain and pulled up and down with a gibbet at divers times until he was dead."

Roose's crime, the legal method of his condemnation and finally the form of punishment create a bizarre chain of events that, in a more modern age, might well have raised questions of motive in several parties, including Henry VIII. Although there is no question of who did the killing, this is still a Tudor murder mystery.

Roose's death by boiling preceded the period of brutality Henry VIII is well known for. In 1531, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were still alive, as were Sir Thomas More and Lord Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell. The most noteworthy execution up to that time in the reign was of Henry Stafford, third duke of Buckingham, beheaded at the Tower following a trial in which he was found guilty of conspiring against the king.

So why did Henry VIII demand this punishment of a lowly cook? Why was Roose executed as a traitor when his crime was murder? The answer lies in the King's complex feelings for Bishop Fisher, whom many assume was the target of the poisoning attempt. Fisher did not eat the soup--sometimes described as porridge--that Roose prepared and so was unharmed.

John Fisher, a devoted patron of Cambridge, served the King's family in three generations: He was the chaplain of the King's pious grandmother, Margaret Beaufort. He was made bishop of Rochester by Henry VII in 1504. Fisher gave the funeral services for mother and son when they died, within months of each other, in 1509. In the first 20 years of the reign of Henry VIII, Fisher was considered "the greatest Catholic theologian in Europe, without any rival," writes Eamon Duffy. The English king was proud of his Bishop's fame, and once asked a young Reginald Pole whether "in all the cities and places where learned and good men might be best known, I had found such as learned man as the bishop of Rochester."

Statue of Fisher at St John's College, Cambridge

But in 1531 King Henry was no longer proud of Bishop Fisher, then 62 years of age. It would be safe to say he considered him an enemy. And it would have made the King's life much easier if Fisher were to lose his--if he had consumed the soup.

Henry VIII

Once Henry VIII decided to pursue an annulment from Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, Fisher became one of his most serious obstacles. The question of the royal marriage was a theological one, and if Europe's most respected theologian had agreed in the rightness of King Henry's cause, it would have done much to bring about the annulment. But Fisher took the side of Catherine of Aragon, vigorously and openly. The marriage was legal and could not be dissolved. The king and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey put increasing pressure on him to cease his opposition--to no avail. He refused to sign a statement of support from the clergy that Archbishop of Canterbury Warham submitted to the king, and when Warham said the statement had unanimous support, Fisher said loudly, to the King's face, that that was a lie.

To understand how strained affairs must have been between king and bishop, consider the chronology:

In 1529, Bishop Fisher said loudly at the legatine trial of the marriage that it would impossible to die more gloriously than in the cause of marriage, as John the Baptist did.

In that same year, when a proposal came to Parliament to dissolve the smaller abbeys--the beginning of Henry VIII's destruction of the Catholic monasteries as part of his break from Rome--Fisher "openly resisted it with all the force he could."

In 1530 he devoted himself to writing books defending the cause of the King's first wife--he would publish seven in all.

In December 1530, Fisher was summoned to the house of Archbishop Warham and there, with a compliant bishop and two of the King's legal advisers, ordered to retract his writings and take the King's side. He did not.

In January 1531, Henry VIII received letters from the Pope telling him that he must order Anne Boleyn from the court and that if he were to marry her before a divorce from Catherine of Aragon was decided, he would face excommunication.

The quest for a divorce was not going well.

Enter one Richard Roose. One of Fisher's earliest biographers, Richard Hall, wrote in 1655 the most complete account of the poisoning. He is the only source to say that Roose was not the chief cook in Fisher's household:

"After this the Bishop escaped a very great danger. For one Richard Rose came into they Bishop's kitchen (being acquainted with the cook) at his house in Lambeth-marsh, and having provided a quantity of deadly poison, while the cook went into the buttery to fetch him some drink, he took his opportunity to throw that poison into a mess of gruel, which was prepared for the Bishop's dinner. And after he had waited there a while, he went on his way.

But so it happened that when the Bishop was called into his dinner, he had no appetite for any meat but wished his servants to fall to and be of good cheer, and that he would not eat till toward night. And they that did eat of the poisoned dish were miserably infected. And whereof one gentleman, named Mr. Bennet Curwen and an old widow, died suddenly, and the rest never recovered their health till their dying day."

Roose was soon apprehended, and admitted to adding what he believed were laxatives to the soup as a "jest." No one believed him.

Ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote a slightly different version to his master, Charles V, the nephew of Catherine of Aragon:

They say that the cook, having been immediately arrested... confessed at once that he had actually put into the broth some powders, which he had been given to understand would only make his fellow servants very sick without endangering their lives or doing them any harm. I have not yet been able to understand who it was who gave the cook such advice, nor for what purpose."

Sir Thomas More, the chancellor, informed Henry VIII that there were rumors that Anne Boleyn and her father and brother, Thomas and George Boleyn, were involved in the poisoning attempt. The king reacted angrily, saying Anne Boleyn was unfairly blamed for everything, including the weather.

Anne Boleyn

The murder motive and the question of a larger plot were soon obscured by Henry VIII's drastic actions. He decided that Roose should be condemned by attainder without a trial--a measure usually used for criminals who were at large. Roose was in prison. Parliament passed "An Acte for Poysoning," making willful murder by means of poison high treason even if the victim was not head of the government of the land. And boiling to death became a form of legal capital punishment. This crime was especially heinous, the king's representatives said, and thus called for such measures.

As historian K.J. Kesselring wrote in "The English Historical Review, "This may explain the severe, exemplary punishment of boiling, but not the need to label the offense treason."

Chapuys questioned the King's actions in his letter to Emperor Charles. Regardless of the "demonstrations of sorrow he makes he will not be able to divert suspicion." But no accusations were made, of course. And in April the crowds of Smithfield witnessed Roose's death, to their horror. According to an eyewitness:

"He roared mighty loud, and divers women who were big with child did feel sick at the sight of what they saw, and were carried away half dead; and other men and women did not seem frightened by the boiling alive, but would prefer to see the headsman at his work." 

There are several coda's to this story.

When, after the king married Anne Boleyn, Bishop Fisher refused to swear an oath of supremacy to the king, he was arrested. The pope made Fisher a cardinal but it only enraged the king more. After a difficult imprisonment, during which he was continually pressured to sign the oath and refused, Fisher was beheaded on June 22, 1535 on Tower Hill. The crowd gasped when they saw him on the scaffold for he was "nothing...but skin and bones...the flesh clean wasted away, and a very image of death." In his speech to the crowd, Fisher is said to have shown a calm dignity. As Eamon Duffy writes, "Maybe absolute integrity is destined always to fall afoul of absolute power."

A plaque on Tower Hill commemorating Fisher and others executed there in reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII

Fisher's head was stuck on a pole on London Bridge, as was the custom with traitors.

But then something very disturbing happened. According to Fisher's biographer:

"And here I cannot omit to declare to you the miraculous sight of his head, which after 14 days grew fresher and fresher, for that in his lifetime he never looked so well.... the face looked as if it beholdeth the people passing by and would have spoken to them. Which many took as a miracle."

Rumors swept through London of the miracle of Fisher's head, drawing thick crowds to look on it, until "an executioner was commanded to throw down the head in the night time into the Thames." All of these reports were said to have unnerved King Henry.

Condemning someone by attainder, without common-law trial, used for the first time in this way on Roose, was employed for a range of accused in the reign, from the mystic nun Elizabeth Barton to Thomas Cromwell to Queen Catherine Howard. None of them was allowed a proper defense in a trial.

Boiling to death was employed once again,  in 1542 for a woman, Margaret Davy, who had used poison to murder her employer.

Smithfield today

Then, in the reign of the King's son, Edward VI, in 1547, the 1531 act was quietly repealed. No one was ever lowered into a boiling cauldron again, for whatever reason, in Smithfield.


And John Fisher was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

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Nancy Bilyeau is the author of an award-winning trilogy of historical mysteries set in the reign of King Henry VIII, published in nine countries: The Crown, The Chalice and The Tapestry. The Crown opens at Smithfield. To learn more, go to www.nancybilyeau.com

Margaret Pole: Murder Most Horrid

by Judith Arnopp

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

It is May 27^th 1541 and an old woman wakes in her prison at the Tower of London. She stretches her limbs and blinks at the early morning light filtering through the high window, and groans as she remembers that today is the day she is to die.

Reluctant to shed the warmth of the furred nightgown sent to her by Queen Katherine just a few weeks ago, she shivers while her woman rolls up her hose, ties her fur lined petticoat and secures her new worsted kirtle.  She prays for a while, the familiar rhythm of the words whispering from chapped lips until a footstep sounds. The rattle of a chain, bolts shooting back, the creak of the door.

‘It is time, Madam.’

Outside, the world is calm. The sky is white. Fresh green leaves bright against the sombre walls. A flurry of ravens fly up as the small party passes beneath their roost. There is no scaffold for Margaret, just a block and a terrified executioner about to take his first victim.

‘I will not weep,’ Margaret tells herself. ‘I will not even tremble.’

She takes one last look at the world, her fingers straying to caress the small gold wine casket that she wears on her wrist in memory of her father. It has been a harsh life, and although she knows herself innocent of any crime, Margaret has little care to stay.

As instructed, she pays and forgives the man who is about to snuff out her life, then she kneels in the straw, damp cutting through her skirts as she lays her head on rough hewn wood.

When the inexperienced headsman misjudges and the blade sinks into her shoulder her screams ring out, a flock of birds rising in an inky cloud, adding their protests to hers. The axe falls again, this time lodging in her skull, the sobbing boy struggling to free the blade for another attempt. Margaret cannot move. Paralysed and bleeding, she can only wait for the next blow, and the next … until oblivion takes her.

Detail showing barrel trinket on her right wrist.

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Margaret Pole was the daughter of George of Clarence and Isabel Neville. The first tragedy of her life was the death of her mother in childbirth when Margaret was just three years old. Her second was the execution of her father, the king’s brother, for treason. Her portrait shows on her right wrist the tiny gold trinket of a wine barrel that commemorates her father, the Duke of Clarence’s drowning in a butt of malmsey wine.  

During her infancy England suffered great unrest and in the first twelve years of her life King Edward IV died, her uncle Richard III ascended to the throne, her cousins, Edward and Richard, vanished from the Tower and Henry VII won at Bosworth, severing Plantagenet rule forever.

Under the Tudor regime the remaining members of the House of York were systematically dispatched. Some were married to the followers of Tudor, some imprisoned and some executed. Margaret’s brother Edward, the male Yorkist claimant to the throne, spent the remainder of his days in the Tower of London until executed in 1499 for his alleged part in the Perkin Warbeck affair.

 Margaret got off lightly. She was married to Sir Richard Pole, a cousin to Henry VII

Henry VIII

 on his mother’s side. She bore him several children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Widowed in 1504, Margaret’s financial situation plummeted until Henry VIII came to the throne and she entered the household of Catherine of Aragon. Her eldest son, Reginald, entered the church, eventually becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, and a Cardinal.

In 1512, when her ties to the Tudors were strong, the family title of Salisbury was restored to Margaret, making her Countess of Salisbury in her own right and providing income from the Salisbury estates.  Margaret was now one of the wealthiest peers in England.

But, when Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn things took a turn for the worse, and Margaret’s support for Catherine and Mary, and her outspoken dislike of Anne put her position in jeopardy again. When Reginald, from the safety of Rome, spoke out against the king’s new marriage, he was accused of treason and since he was safely out of reach, his family took the brunt of the king’s anger.

Anne Boleyn

Margaret’s other son, Geoffrey Pole was arrested and Margaret was interrogated and kept in custody. In 1539, an act of attainder was passed against her for conspiring with her sons, Henry and Reginald, and having ‘committed and perpetrated diverse and sundry other detestable and abominable treasons’.

 During her time in the tower Margaret was fairly well-appointed and in March 1541, Queen Katherine (Howard) taking pity on her, instructed her tailor to provide the prisoner with new warm clothes. But, at seven o’clock on the morning of May 27th 1541, Margaret was taken from her prison and executed.

There are varying accounts of her death, one of which has become legend. A stalwart old lady (almost ninety in some accounts) refusing to bow her head to Tudor oppression as she is hacked to death. The macabre picture of her being chased around the scaffold by the headsman has entered British consciousness to become legend. 

However, a more likely account is that the inexperienced headsman misjudged the strike and took several blows to finish her. Whichever way it really happened it was an unpleasant and undeserved end.

Margaret left three surviving children and in the reign of Queen Mary Reginald

Reginald Pole: Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal

 returned from exile to become the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.

Her daughter, Lady Ursula Stafford, survived into old age, her daughter Dorothy becoming a close friend to Queen Elizabeth. In recognition of her bravery Margaret was beatified by the Catholic church in 1886 and became known as 'Blessed' Margaret Pole. 

Considering the traumatic nature of her life Margaret has been largely ignored by novelists. In fact, I could find only one non-fiction book dedicated to her life, Margaret Pole, 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership by Hazel Pierce. But Margaret, a prominent figure in an unstable world, did well to survive for sixty eight years under the Tudors, when so many others of Plantagenet blood perished sooner. When one considers the losses she sustained due to politics; the deaths her father, brother, uncle, cousins, sons …she is a heroine worthy of gracing the cover of any novel.

Further reading:

Pierce, Hazel, Margaret Pole, 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership (University of Wales Press: 2009)

Judith Arnopp writes historical fiction. Her novels include:

The Kiss of the Concubine: A story of Anne Boleyn

The Winchester Goose: at the court of Henry VIII 

The Song of Heledd

The Forest Dwellers

Peaceweaver

For more information visit her webpage 

or see her Amazon page.

Photos from Wikimedia commons.