Margaret Pole, A Plantagenet Survivor--For a While

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (born 14 August 1473)

Margaret Plantagenet was the daughter of George, duke of Clarence, and Isabelle Neville, the elder sister of Anne Neville, whom we've met before. Margaret's father was Shakespeare's "false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence," the middle brother who did not become king despite his own desperate, if inept, plotting and maneuvering with his father-in-law, Warwick "the kingmaker." 

A portrait that has been identified
as Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury--
and that has been "reidentified"
as "unknown woman formerly known as
Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury"

Margaret survived the internecine conflict of the Wars of the Roses: her father was executed for treason, after plotting against his elder brother, King Edward IV, and all of Clarence’s lands and titles were forfeit.

When Richard III, her father's younger brother, usurped the throne and became king in 1483 (Richard’s wife, Anne Neville, was Margaret's aunt), the ten-year-old Margaret was declared illegitimate, and any claim she may have had to the throne was denied to her because of her father's treason. But Margaret survived the defeat of her uncle, Richard III, at the battle of Bosworth in 1485.

As soon as he became king, Henry Tudor married Margaret's cousin, Elizabeth of York (Edward IV's daughter). Because of the dynastic significance of Clarence's children, Henry VII kept Margaret's ten-year-old brother, Edward, in the Tower, and he arranged for Margaret's marriage in 1487 to his cousin and supporter, Richard Pole, thus ensuring that she would not become the focus of any further rebellions.

While her brother was executed for treason in 1499 after the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy (Edward had remained in the Tower, but he "admitted" he had been part of the conspiracy), Margaret became a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon in 1501 when the Spanish princess married Henry VII's heir, Arthur. 

Catherine's court was dissolved in 1502, after Arthur's death, and by 1504, just thirty-one years old, Margaret herself was widowed. She had five children and a difficult financial situation, but after Henry VIII became king in 1509 and married Catherine of Aragon, Margaret Pole's personal and financial situation improved. She again became lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, but this time to Queen Catherine.

Some of the Warwick lands were restored to Margaret in 1512, and she became countess of Salisbury, a peer of the realm, in her own name. Although she had dedicated her son Reginald to the church during her period of straitened finances, her improved circumstances meant she could now arrange reasonably satisfactory marriages for her four remaining children, Henry, Geoffrey, Arthur, and Ursula. She eventually became governess to the Princess Mary after the infant’s birth in 1520.

As the marriage between Queen Catherine and King Henry failed, Margaret Pole remained loyal to the queen and the princess and suffered the consequences--though after Anne Boleyn's execution in 1536, she returned briefly to favor and the court. 

But a series of rebellions in the north of England in 1538 posed yet another threat to Henry VIII--and among those involved in them were Margaret Pole's sons, Henry Pole, lord Montagu, and Sir Geoffrey Pole. On the continent, Cardinal Reginald Pole had declared his opposition to the royal supremacy and continued his resistance to the king. 

Under suspicion of treason, Margaret Pole and her two sons were arrested and sent to the Tower in November 1538. In January 1539, Sir Geoffrey received a pardon, but Henry Pole was convicted of treason and executed. Margaret Pole was thoroughly investigated and repeatedly questioned about her own activities, and although she survived the round of executions in 1539, she was attainted for treason the following May and stripped of all titles.

She remained in the Tower until 1541, when yet one more conspiracy resulted in her horrific execution. Sixty-eight years old, she was hacked to death on Tower Green on 27 May 1541.

Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, was beatified on 29 December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. 

There is a good biographical essay from the Dictionary of National Biography at Luminarium, which you can access by clicking here. You may also be interested in Hazel Pierce's excellent full-length biography, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership.

Margaret of Anjou: A "Tiger's Heart Wrapped in a Woman's Hide"?

Margaret of Anjou (born 23 March 1430)

Margaret of Anjou has been endlessly vilified, most famously by Shakespeare in his memorable descriptions of her as the "she-wolf of France" and, as quoted in the headline to this post, a "tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide."* But, despite that vilification, Margaret of Anjou has been an inspirational figure for many women--and I include myself among them.

Margaret of Anjou,
from a manuscript image, c. 1445

Married to Henvy VI of England in 1445, when she was fifteen, Margaret initially failed in her most important duty as queen, the production of a male heir. To make matters worse, when the ineffectual king was incapacitated by some kind of mental breakdown in July of 1453, the void he had left was filled by his wife.

And so contemporary opinion justified the opposition of Richard of York, who was credited with having perceived that "the king was no ruler:" "the whole burden of the realm," according to York, had come "to rest in the direction of the queen."

When Margaret of Anjou finally did manage to produce a son and heir a few months later, in October 1453, her "success" became just one more failure; as one historian has recently commented, the birth of her son "served to . . . bring the queen into politics as a ruthless, even fanatical, supporter of Prince Edward of Lancaster's right to succeed his father."

In an effort to protect her son's rights during her husband's illness, Margaret attempted to secure the regency for herself, a newsletter circulated in January of 1454 reporting that she had "made a bill of five articles" which, if granted by Parliament, would have had the effect of giving her "the whole rule of this land."

Although Henry recovered in January of 1455, when he fell ill again in October, York was made protector, and the result was civil war. Margaret of Anjou's subsequent efforts to preserve the English crown for her son--her establishment of what amounted to her own court, her leadership of this court party, her negotiations with Scotland and France for support, her ultimate role on the battlefields of the War of the Roses--resulted in the deterioration of her own reputation. 

She became, in one contemporary judgment, "a great and strong labored woman" who "spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power." She was judged to be "inexorable" and arrogant: "All marveled at such boldness in a woman, at a man's courage in a woman's breast."

For Edward Hall, writing during Henry VIII's reign, Margaret was a "manly woman using to rule and not to be ruled"; deciding "to take upon her the rule and regiment," she fought not for her son but for herself, "desirous of glory and covetous of honor."

By the time the Elizabethan chronicler Ralph Holinshed described her, she had become the archetypal virago: 

a woman of great wit, and yet of no greater wit than of haute [high] stomach . . . desirous of glory and covetous of honor, and of reason, policy, counsel, and other gifts and talents of nature belonging to a man; full and flowing of wit and wiliness she lacked nothing, nor of diligence, study, and business she was not unexpert; but yet she had one point of a very woman, for oftentime, when she was vehement and fully bent in a matter, she was suddenly like a weathercock, mutable and turning.

She was widely reported to be sexually promiscuous, her enemies claiming that Edward was not Henry's son at all but the child of Margaret and one of her lovers, most likely Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Such hostile representations of Margaret of Anjou depict her as unnatural and her actions as a violation of woman's nature. 

And yet, in an interesting way, Margaret of Anjou's role in England was not only a response to the political crisis in that country; the role she assumed as queen and mother had been shaped by the political circumstances of her own childhood and by her own experience of women's abilities and capacities. As Margaret's biographer J. J. Bagley notes, "Politics, war, and administration seemed to be the natural vocations of women in her family."

A manuscript illustration of the marriage of
Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou,
from Vigiles of Charles VII, 1484

Margaret of Anjou was the daughter of Isabelle of Lorraine, who both fought for her husband René of Anjou in Sicily and served as his regent there.

While her mother was engaged in pursuing and defending René of Anjou's interests in Sicily, Margaret spent eight years with her grandmother, Yolande of Aragon, who was regent of Anjou for her oldest son, Louis III.

After Louis' death, Yolande remained active in politics and in her family's fortunes, marrying her daughter Marie to the French dauphin and encouraging him in his efforts to recover his throne.

Margaret of Anjou had been shaped by the example of these active and powerful foremothers.

England neither offered such powerful, independent exemplars for women, nor accepted them. Indeed, it was Margaret of Anjou herself who became a powerful exemplar for women--an example of the dangers of the determined woman who, ignoring "proper and permissible feminine activity," behaved, or tried to behave, like "ruling princes."

In the end, Margaret could not keep her husband on the throne or ensure her son's succession to that throne. Henry VI was deposed in 1461, briefly restored in 1470, then deposed again and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died on 21 May 1471. Margaret campaigned endlessly after Henry's initial deposition, and it was due to her tireless efforts that he was restored in 1470. She fought to defeat her Yorkist opponents, but she was defeated at the battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, her son Edward, fighting with her, killed on the field. (Margaret's son Edward was married to Anne Neville, whom we have already met.)

After the battle, Margaret was taken captive and held prisoner, but she was ultimately ransomed by her cousin, Louis XI of France. She lived in poverty and obscurity until her death, in Anjou, in 1482. She was buried in Anjers Cathedral with her parents, but as a final insult, her remains were scattered and lost during the French Revolution.

Margaret of Anjou has been the subject of several recent historical novels, and a character in others, most notably Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series. But her life is too rich to need fictionalizing. She is included in Helen Castor's She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England before Elizabeth, its title a nod to Shakespeare's description of Margaret of Anjou, and in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Elizabeth of York. But I recommend Helen Maurer's excellent full-length biography, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England.

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Anne Neville, the Kingmaker's Daughter

Anne Neville, queen of England (died 16 March 1485)

Isabelle and Anne Neville were the sole heirs of their wealthy and powerful father Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick, a man whose role in the so-called War of the Roses earned him the title of "the Kingmaker." Anne's role during that tumultuous period illustrates the lives of so many women in the deadly political games that were always being played.

Richard III with Anne Neville as queen,
depicted at their coronation, 6 July 1483,
from the Salisbury Roll

Warwick was originally a supporter of King Henry VI of England, and with his enormous wealth and military success, Warwick fought on behalf of the Lancastrian king against the rebellious duke of York.

But as Warwick's interests and allegiances shifted, so did the political marriages he ultimately arranged for his two daughters.

By the time Anne was born in 1456, Warwick had switched sides, no longer supporting King Henry but fighting for the Yorkists at the battle of St. Albans.

He ultimately helped to bring down King Henry and to secure the throne for the Yorkist claimant, who became Edward IV in 1461.

Having helped Edward to the throne, Warwick's goal was to marry his own two daughters to the new king's brothers, George, duke of Clarence, and Richard, duke of Gloucester.

But Warwick's ambitions were thwarted, and he grew increasingly alienated from the king. Despite Edward's opposition, Isabelle and Clarence were secretly married in 1469--but by 1470, Warwick had once again changed political sides.

Warwick switched his allegiance back to the Lancastrians--and his "new" ties were confirmed by the betrothal on 25 July 1470 of his younger daughter, Anne, to Edward of Lancaster, the son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. The two were married in December, when Edward was seventeen and Anne fourteen. Within a year's time, however, Anne's father was dead, killed at the battle of Barnet, and her husband was defeated and killed at the battle of Tewkesbury. At fifteen, Anne was a widow, no longer princess of Wales.

Although neither Edward IV, newly restored to his throne, nor Clarence, hoping to secure the entire Warwick inheritance for himself, wanted Anne to remarry, she was eventually to become the wife of the man her father had first selected for her, Richard, duke of Gloucester. The two were married in 1473, but the legal wrangling about her inheritance dragged on for some time. Anne gave birth to a son, named Edward, in 1476.

Anne Neville, center, with her two husbands,
from The Beauchamp Pageants, c. 1485

The story of Richard, duke of Gloucester's usurpation of the throne in 1483, following the death of Edward IV, is well known. Less well known is Anne's story. Her only child, Edward, died in April of 1484. The emotional response of both the king and queen to this loss was widely reported; according to a contemporary chronicler, "you might have seen his [Edward's] father and mother in a state almost bordering on madness, by reason of their sudden grief." Anne died less than a year later, on 16 March 1485. 

Richard III would be defeated and killed at the battle of Bosworth a few months later, on 22 August 1485. 

There are several good online accounts of Anne Neville's life; I recommend the one posted by the Richard III Society.

For many readers, Philippa Gregory's historical fiction has inspired an interest in the women of this period. But there are many excellent historical sources for those interested in moving beyond fiction. While accounts of Anne Neville, queen of England, are included in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens, J. L. Laynesmith's The Last Medieval Queens, and Sarah Gristwood's Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses, there is one book-length biography of her, Michael Hicks's Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III--there is actually very little historical evidence about Anne's life, and this biography focuses heavily on the men of the period, but, still . . . 

And while you're at it, you may be interested in reading about Anne's aunts, the six sisters of Richard Neville--David Baldwin's The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses expands the story of the Wars of the Roses beyond the battlefield and into the lives of the women affected by this period of civil war.