On May 27, 1541, Margaret Pole, the sixty-seven-year-old Countess of Salisbury, was told she had less than an hour to live. Waiting in the Tower of London after more than two years of imprisonment, she was led out to meet her end. But Margaret refused to go quietly. When she was brought before the block, she would not place her head on it, declaring that only traitors put their heads there and she was not a traitor.
She taunted the young man who had been given the executioner’s task, telling him he would have to take her head however he could. The chief executioner was away dealing with rebels in the north, so an inexperienced substitute had been handed the job. The combination of Margaret’s resistance and the man’s lack of skill proved disastrous. The first swing of the axe struck her shoulder instead of her neck.
It took eleven swings before her head was finally separated from her body. The path to that horrifying end had been long and twisted, stretching back nearly seven decades to the moment of her birth. Margaret was born on August 14, 1473, at Farley Castle in Somerset, the daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel Neville. Her lineage placed her dangerously close to the English throne.
Her uncle, Edward IV, was king at the time of her birth, and her other uncle, Richard, would eventually succeed him. Being so close to royalty in fifteenth-century England was as much a curse as a privilege. When Margaret was young, her family began to unravel. Her mother died suddenly in 1476, just two and a half months after giving birth to her second son, Richard.
Her father, George, suspected that his wife’s lady-in-waiting, Ankarette Twynyho, had poisoned her with a drink. He brought Twynyho to trial, and given his connection to the royal court, there was no chance of a fair hearing. She was executed in April 1477. Soon after, Margaret’s youngest brother, Richard, died at only two months old.
George’s grief curdled into something dangerous. He began plotting against his own brother, King Edward IV. When the king learned of the conspiracy, he had his own brother executed for treason. In the span of a year and a half, Margaret had lost her mother, her youngest brother, and her father.
She and her surviving brother, Edward, were now orphans in a royal family where blood ties meant nothing. When Margaret turned ten, her uncle Edward died and Richard III took the throne. Instead of finding security with another uncle as king, Margaret and her brother were removed from the royal line of succession. They were placed in the care of an aunt and seemed destined for quiet, unremarkable lives.
Then, in 1485, everything changed again. Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, taking both his life and the crown. The new king, Henry VII, had little reason to trust the surviving children of a man who had plotted against the crown. Margaret and her brother were now even more vulnerable.
Margaret’s fortunes shifted slightly when Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, Margaret’s first cousin. The two children were taken in as wards of the crown under the king’s mother. But Henry VII had not forgotten their dangerous lineage. He worried more about Margaret’s brother, Edward, who as a boy still had a direct claim to the throne.
To keep an eye on the ten-year-old, the king had him moved to the Tower of London. While her brother languished in the Tower, Margaret’s future was being decided for her. The king chose her husband: his cousin, Richard Pole, one of his most loyal servants. Margaret went off to her husband’s manor and began her married life.
She bore him two sons in quick succession, Henry in 1492 and Arthur two years later. Then came terrible news. Her brother Edward, now a young adult, had become mixed up in a failed escape attempt from the Tower. He was brought before the Earl of Oxford and beheaded on Tower Hill.
Margaret was now the last surviving member of her immediate family. Margaret barely had time to grieve. She continued to bear children, adding three more to her family, a daughter and two more sons. Despite her growing household, the king appointed her to serve as a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, who had just married Arthur, Prince of Wales.
To Margaret’s surprise, she and Catherine became close friends. She had finally found some stability in her life. It would not last. Prince Arthur died a year after his marriage, and Margaret lost her position.
Then her husband, Richard, died of an unnamed illness in 1505, leaving her a widow with five children to support. She was so financially strained that she had to borrow money from the king just to bury her husband, money she was forced to repay. She sent her two older sons to live in other noble households. For her son Reginald, she turned to the church, handing him over along with all financial responsibility.
It was a decision that would come back to haunt her. In 1509, Catherine of Aragon remarried, this time to her late husband’s brother, Henry VIII, who had just become king. Margaret was brought back to court as Catherine’s lady-in-waiting. She was given a generous allowance and successfully petitioned the king to return the property that had been taken from her family when her brother was imprisoned.
By 1517, Margaret was wealthy enough to build Wobling Castle in Hampshire, and she received the title Countess of Salisbury. By 1538, she ranked fifth among the wealthiest peers in England. Trouble began when Henry VIII grew unhappy with his marriage to Catherine. She had not produced the sons he desperately wanted, and he had set his sights on Anne Boleyn.
When the Pope refused to annul the marriage, Henry broke with Rome and established the Church of England, placing himself at its head. Margaret, a loyal Catholic, was once again out of a job. She spent months in bed, recovering from the shock of losing her position and her friend. Margaret’s son Reginald made matters far worse.
He not only opposed the king’s annulment but went further, calling Henry a robber, a murderer, and an enemy of Christianity. Henry demanded that Margaret deal with her son. She wrote to Reginald, begging him to stop and telling him she could not bear the king’s wrath. But Reginald had never forgiven his mother for giving him to the church as a boy, and he ignored her pleas.
The king’s attention turned elsewhere for a time. He had Anne Boleyn executed after three years of marriage and replaced her with Jane Seymour. Margaret was allowed back into court to serve the new queen. But her position was never secure.
In 1537, the Pope made Reginald a cardinal, and Reginald became involved in organizing the Pilgrimage of Grace, a revolt directly against Henry VIII. Then her other son, Jeffrey, became entangled as well. Reginald had been writing letters to Jeffrey about the revolt. When Jeffrey was taken in for questioning, he could not withstand the interrogation.
He implicated Henry Courtenay, a man who had been friends with the king since childhood and who headed the Church of England. Jeffrey claimed Courtenay also disagreed with the king’s policies. Henry’s response was swift and brutal. He beheaded Courtenay, then executed Margaret’s oldest son, Henry.
For Margaret herself, the punishment was imprisonment. She was sent to Cowre House, the home of William Fitz William, where she was interrogated over three days by Fitz William and the Bishop of Ely. They found her earnest, vehement, and precise, and noted that her inner strength seemed more like a man’s than a woman’s. Fitz William’s wife was so disturbed by Margaret that she left her own home.
Fitz William himself wanted her gone, saying she troubled his mind. Jeffrey, the son who had started the chain of betrayals, received a pardon. Margaret lost everything again, her lands and her title given away to the king’s personal secretary. The king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, presented what he claimed was evidence against her: a tunic embroidered with the five wounds of Christ, suggesting she remained loyal to the Catholic Church.
Some believed Cromwell had planted it to incriminate her. Either way, the evidence sealed her fate. Margaret was sentenced to execution and sent to the Tower of London to await her death. The Tower held a small mercy: her grandson Henry was there with her, and Henry VIII paid for her to be kept comfortable, with servants, money, warm gowns, and shoes.
She even outlived her enemy. Thomas Cromwell fell out of favor with the king and was executed in 1540 while Margaret was still in the Tower. But her own end came soon after. Two and a half years after entering the Tower, Margaret received the message that she had less than an hour to live.
In 1886, Pope Leo XIII declared her blessed, recognizing her as a martyr for the Catholic Church who had suffered for her faith against the king and his new church. The horror of her final moments, eleven swings of the axe, became the brutal conclusion to a life that had never known safety.