One of Henry VIII's "Loose-Ends": Blessed Margaret Pole

Last summer, I participated in a blog-tour for Susan Higginbotham's Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower. I finally received my hard-cover review copy this week!

Higginbotham's popular biography fortunately eschews some the pitfalls of imagining what Pole thought, how she felt, etc. The author tells the story briskly, explaining family relationships, changing fortunes of power and influence--the whole up and down on Fortune's Wheel that noble families experienced toward the end of the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor Dynasty. Margaret Pole, since she was a Plantagenet of the House of York, was in the midst of these changes from her childhood, not as an active participant, but at the beginning, almost as a pawn. Higginbotham notes that young Margaret and her brother had no powerful men to protect them or to support their legitimate claim to the throne, even during Richard III's reign. She survives her family's fall and even her brother's imprisonment in the Tower by Henry VII because of that vulnerability. Henry VII marries her off to a trusted courtier, Richard Pole, and she and he settle down to serve the king and have babies.

I wish the book would have included family trees for the major players. It is well illustrated.

When Henry VIII comes to the throne, he restores the widowed Margaret to her family holdings and gives her the title Countess of Salisbury. Higginbotham describes the households and the personnel of Margaret's estates. I wish she could have reconstructed what a day at one of Margaret's estates was like--what did she do everyday to manage her household, etc.

Her story is interwoven with Katherine of Aragon's and Mary Tudor's and thus with the whole King's Great Matter. Higginbotham's retelling of this sad story is aided by her restraint, but sometimes by necessity, Margaret Pole fades to the background. The family connections become the focus, as again, Margaret did not actively oppose Henry VIII's destruction of his marriage and family, his campaign of terror against any who did oppose him: the Carthusians, Thomas More, John Fisher, and a few other brave souls, or even his religious changes. Her sons participated in some of the trials. I do appreciate Higginbotham's comment that Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's grandmother, would have been shocked and dismayed to see John Fisher, the holy and scholarly Bishop of Rochester, so horribly treated and executed.

On her own estates, Margaret maintained the status quo of Catholic life, holding off any "Protestant" ideas in the person of an Evangelical cleric, but she did not participate in any resistance against Henry VIII's changes to religious practice.

Higginbotham believes that Pole's sons were involved in the Exeter Conspiracy and did make statements about the king soon dying of his leg wound or the need to have a new monarch. Reginald Pole did place his mother and family in an incredibly dangerous position with his attack on Henry's Supremacy, citing him as another Nero and warning him about suffering Richard III's fate. But Margaret, in all her statements, knowing Henry VIII's power to make and unmake, was clear that she would not participate in any rebellion against the monarch who had restored her lands and title. She would not be a traitor. Those who questioned her recognized that she was formidable in her own defense. Higginbotham includes the chilling detail that Henry VIII, wanting to leave London with his fifth queen, Catherine Howard, on a progress to the North needed to take care of any loose-ends, and thus Margaret was beheaded by an incompetent headsman, suffering great violence and pain. Well, when you know that Henry will find out more about his fifth wife soon after that progress, you know that more loose-ends will have to be dealt with.

One issue I have with the book: I think that Higginbotham should have recognized the importance of Hazel Pierce's scholarly biography, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership. She cites Pierce often enough and should have explained what makes her book distinctive to that earlier work. When I first saw this book announced by Amberley, the subtitle indicated a correction to a recent historical novel by Philippa Gregory, The King's Curse, and the cover did not cut off the top of the figure representing Margaret. Perhaps when the book had that purpose its relevance and impact was greater. It is well-written and achieves the purpose of telling the story of Margaret Pole, offering another perspective on the multiple horrors of Henry VIII's reign, but it lacks a certain significance.

From "Margaret Pole": Thomas More's Trial and Execution

Amberley Publishing provides these bullet points to demonstrate what makes this book special:

• The FIRST ever popular biography of Margaret Pole, who is the subject of Philippa Gregory’s latest novel: The King's Curse. [note that this distinguishes this book from Hazel Pierce’s biography Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership (University of Wales Press, 2003)]
•  Endorsement from LEANDA DE LISLE, author of Tudor: The Family Story, will appear on the cover: “At last, a biography of one of the most powerful and fascinating women of the Tudor period: the tragic and dramatic story of Margaret Pole, the last Plantagenet, has too long been overlooked.' 
• Tudors have never been so popular. The BBC TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy Wolf Hall has been a massive hit, helping to maintain high level of interest in all things Tudor. 
• Margaret Pole had connections to all manner of visitor attractions, including Farleigh Hungerford Castle, Somerset, where she was born,and the Tower of London.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 7, "Unheard-Of Cruelty", describing the trial and execution of Sir Thomas More.

More's trial took place on 1 July. Among the judges were Thomas, Duke of Norfolk (uncle to Anne Boleyn), Charles, Duke of Suffolk (married to the king's sister Mary), Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire (the queen's father), George Boleyn, Lord Rochford (the queen's brother), Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor, and Thomas Cromwell. Henry Pole, Lord Montague, was also appointed to the commission of oyer and terminer to try More, but Duncan Derrett notes that he did not take his place there. This may have been due to indisposition (as we shall see shortly, he was reported dangerously ill a few days later), but it may have also been that he found an excuse to avoid sitting in judgment of a man with whom his family had been on excellent terms. Years before, the apparently ailing More had written to John Clement and Reginald Pole, then at Oxford, to thank them for their solicitude for their health, and had added, 'I thank you, my dear Pole, doubly for deigning to procure for me the advice of so skillful a physician, and no less for obtaining from your mother--noblest and best of women, and fully worthy of such a son, the remedy prescribed and for getting it made up'. More had also proudly informed his scholarly daughter, Margaret Roper, that 'a young man of the noblest rank and of the widest attainments in literature . . . as conspicuous for his piety as he is for his learning' had been dumbfounded to realize that his daughter was the author of a letter More had shown him; the man whose opinion pleased More so much was likely Reginald Pole.

The star witness was Solicitor General Richard Rich, who had turned up at More's prison cell in June to seize his books and writing materials and, it appears, to entrap him into treason. Rich claimed that as his companions busied themselves with removing More's cherished books, he entered into a discussion with More, who stated that Parliament had no authority to make the king the supreme head of the church. Too weak to stand for his trial, More nonetheless mounted a vigorous defense, accusing Rich of perjury and attacking his character. Telling Rich that he was 'sorrier for your perjury than for my own peril', he reminded his accuser that they lived in the same parish, where 'you were esteemed to be very light of tongue, a great dicer, and of no commendable fame. And so in your house at the Temple, where has been your chief bringing up, were you likewise accounted'. Turning to his judges, More asked, 'Can it therefore seem likely to your honourable lordships that I would, in so weighty a cause, so unadvisedly overshoot myself as to trust Master Rich, a man by me always reputed for one of very little truth . . . that I would utter to him the secrets of my conscience touching the king's supremacy?' More's defense rattled Rich sufficiently for him to call his companions at the interview, Sir Richard Southwell and Master Thomas Palmer, to corroborate his story, but to no avail. Both men claimed, rather improbably, to have been so absorbed in seizing the bibliophilic More's library that they had paid no heed to the conversation between him and Rich.

Despite this poor evidentiary showing, More was promptly found guilty. But More was not yet done. As Audley, the chancellor, prepared to pass the grim sentence upon him, the prisoner, himself a lawyer and former chancellor, interrupted to remind him that it was the custom for ask the prisoner why judgment should not be given against him then to protest against his indictment as 'grounded upon an Act of Parliament directly repugnant to the laws of God and His Holy Church'. Continuing in this vein, More managed to thoroughly discomfit his judges, but the victory was fleeting, ending as soon as Audley resumed his task of pronouncing the sentence. More's execution was scheduled for 6 July, the same day the court was departing on a progress.

Not wanting his hair shirt exposed to public view as he was stripped to his undergarments during his execution, More sent it, along with an affectionate letter, to his daughter on 5 July. The next morning, Sir Thomas Pope came from the king and his council to announce, as More had already surmised, that he would die that day. Pope brought the order that More refrain from 'using many words' on the scaffold, but also assured him that the king would allow his family to attend his burial. With Pope's departure, More dressed in his best clothing for his execution, only to be dissuaded by the Lieutenant of the Tower, William Kingston (who in less than a year would be presiding over an even more high-profile execution) that the executioner, who would be getting More's clothing as a perquisite of the job, was 'worthless fellow' who would make ill use of it. More settled for sending the executioner a gold coin known as an angel and changing into a less costly garment. Then, in William Roper's words:

And so was he brought by Mr. Lieutenant out of the Tower, and from thence led towards the place of execution, where going up the scaffold, which was so weak that it was ready to fall, he said to Mr. Lieutenant, "I pray you, I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." Then desired he all the people thereabouts to pray for him, and to bear witness with him, that he should then suffer death in and for the faith of the holy Catholic Church, which done he kneeled down, and after his prayers said, he turned to the executioner, and with a cheerful countenance spake unto him. "Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office, my neck is very short. Take heed therefore thou shoot not awry for saving thine honesty." So passed Sir Thomas More out of this world to God.

Reginald Pole would later write to the king, of the deaths of More and the rest, 'From the time that I heard of the slaughter of those men, I do not deny that I lay senseless and unable to speak for almost a month, so stunned was I by the novelty and wonder of such unheard-of cruelty'.

The entire chapter recounts the executions or martyrdoms of those who had opposed Henry VIII's religious supremacy: the six Carthusians, Father Richard Reynolds of Syon Abbey, Father John Haile, and Bishop John Fisher. As Higginbotham narrates those stories, she interweaves the fate of Katherine of Aragon and her daughter Mary, especially after Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn wed and Elizabeth is born, and of course, Margaret Pole, dismissed from Mary's household--and Reginald Pole, who leaves England, not to return for more than 20 years, during the reign of Mary I.

What I'm Reading Now: Margaret Pole

On Tuesday, August 23, I'll be one of the stops on the Amberley Publishing blog-tour for Susan Higginbotham's Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower. I'm reading it now and looking forward to following the tour. From Amberley, the blurb:

Of the many executions ordered by Henry VIII, surely the most horrifying was that of sixty-seven-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, hacked to pieces on the scaffold by a blundering headsman. From the start, Margaret’s life had been marred by tragedy and violence: her father, George, Duke of Clarence, had been executed at the order of his own brother, Edward IV, and her naïve young brother, Edward, Earl of Warwick, had spent most of his life in the Tower before being executed on the orders of Henry VII. Yet Margaret, friend to Catherine of Aragon and the beloved governess of her daughter Mary, had seemed destined for a happier fate, until religious upheaval and rebellion caused Margaret and her family to fall from grace. From Margaret’s birth as the daughter of a royal duke to her beatification centuries after her death, 'Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower' tells the story of one of the fortress’s most unlikely prisoners. 

More information about the blog tour and the book to come!

Some Books Linger With Me: "Hanging Mary"

You might remember the quotation from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey: “It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” Susan Higginbotham's Hanging Mary reminded me of that quotation, and even after I reviewed the novel in April, I couldn't get it off my mind, so I wrote about it some more, submitting a different commentary to The Christian Review, "Part of the Story: Justice, Love, and Loyalty in Hanging Mary":

Susan Higginbotham’s historical novel Hanging Mary is set in Washington, DC during the waning months of the Civil War. Two narrators, Mary Surratt, proprietor of a boarding house and Honora (Nora) Fitzpatrick, one of her boarders, tell the story of John Wilkes Booth’s conspiracy either to kidnap or murder Abraham Lincoln for the sake of the Confederacy—at least as much as they each know from interacting with Booth, Surratt’s son John, and other conspirators who visit the boarding house from the Autumn of 1864 to the Holy Week of 1865 (Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, Good Friday). . . .

Hanging Mary brings up several moral issues. One issue is whether it is just for U.S. civilians to be tried in a military tribunal without recourse to the protections of civilian courts—a question resolved in 1866 by the U.S. Supreme Court: no, it is not ( Ex parte Milligan ).

The web of conspiracy at the Surratt household brings up other tests of love and loyalty. The genre of historical fiction and the narrative structure of this novel foster meditation on the virtues of justice, love, and loyalty. The reader becomes the judge, weighing the evidence: whose love and loyalty are well-placed and whose are not?

Read the rest there.

Book Review: "Hanging Mary"

I spent several hours Saturday and Sunday reading this book, enjoying it, and then thinking about it and discussing it with my husband. Hanging Mary: A Novel is by Susan Higginbotham, the author of several novels set in the Plantagenet (especially Wars of the Roses) and Tudor eras. This novel, however, is set in Washington, DC during 1864 and 1865 as a group of conspirators plan to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln to force an end to the Civil War that favors the losing Confederacy. The conspirators keep dropping by Mary Surratt's boarding house, especially John Wilkes Booth, because Mary's son John, Jr. is involved in the plot. Mary is a widow whose husband left her with great debts but two properties, so as the story begins, she decides to lease the tavern in Surrattville and move to the house in Washington with her daughter Anna and son John (son Isaac is fighting for the Confederacy), take in boarders, and make money to pay off those debts. One of her boarders is a young woman, Nora Fitzpatrick: she and Mary are the narrators of this story, alternating chapters with their different viewpoints.

If you know American history, you know what is going to happen; nevertheless, partly because of the narrative structure, Higginbotham keeps the reader in suspense. The plot is forming before Mary's and Nora's eyes, and each of them sees strands of the web that Booth is weaving, but neither knows the whole story.

The dilemma raised is common to all plots and conspiracies, during the American Civil War or in Tudor England: when do observers on the fringes of a conspiracy become part of the conspiracy? and when do they have an obligation to report the conspiracy?

For example, yesterday I posted on the execution of Thomas Wyatt the Younger. One of keys to the failure of the Wyatt Rebellion was that Edward Courtenay warned his erstwhile fellow prisoner in the Tower of London, Bishop Stephen Gardiner, now Mary I's Chancellor, that there was a plot against the Queen. He did not have all the details, but he could at least provide the information he had.

Mary Surratt resolves that dilemma for herself, believing that Booth--without her son whom she believes is in Canada (and he is)--is going to kidnap the President. She chooses personal loyalty over national considerations. As Nora later notes, she thus removes the one person who might have offered her clemency: Abraham Lincoln. It's also important to note that the star witness for the prosecution of Mary and the other conspirators, Louis Weichmann, a classmate of John Surratt, saw many of the same things and had some concerns, but even though he was a government employee, he never reported them to the appropriate authorities.

As absorbing as this plot and these questions are, the most touching sub-plot to me was Nora Fitzpatrick's budding romance with one of the soldiers she visits at the hospital, Private Flanagan. He has "lost his right arm", although he jokes that he knows "perfectly well where he had last had it"! and has been ill while in hospital. Private Flanagan loves Nora and wants to prepare himself to wed her, that's clear. Nora may not be in love with him, but he is her favorite patient; she helps him learn how to read and write; she encourages him to hope that he might make himself worthy (be able to support her), while she also knows he will always need her help if they marry. When Nora receives bad news about Private Flanagan, Mary Surratt's motherly care of Nora does much to increase Nora's affection and loyalty to her landlady. This sub-plot, per an interview with Higginbotham included in the Kindle edition I read, is fictional, but does much to demonstrate the characteristic compassion and loyalty of the two narrators.

Another aspect of the novel piqued my interest: the Catholicism of the Surratts, Fitzpatricks, the Holohans, and of Louis Weichmann, who is discerning a vocation to the priesthood. Although Protestant Christians in 19th century America did not practice orthodox Lutheranism or Calvinism (neither Martin nor John would recognize their theology, per Mark A. Noll), they did practice orthodox anti-Catholicism. That aspect of their religion never seems to come up in Hanging Mary, but Catholic priests, services, and prayers are often mentioned. While it's part of the record, I was surprised to see mention of Good Friday evening services; I thought that from the Middle Ages and until 1955, when Pope Pius XII reformed the Holy Week liturgy, all the services were held in the morning? Perhaps the service mentioned was Stations of the Cross? One other little liturgical question: why did Mary Surratt touch the "wafer" (I think she, as a Catholic, would have referred to what she receive in Holy Communion as the "Host") while receiving the Eucharist in prison? From the Middle Ages until the late twentieth century, nearly all Catholics received Holy Communion on the tongue, not in the hand (please see chapter 47). But those are little things--but little things a Catholic like me would notice!

I highly recommend this novel: it provides true literary enjoyment, and tension; is thought-provoking, moving, and in every way, excellent! The author encourages purchase from an independent bookseller but Hanging Mary is readily available in several formats from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble too.

Note: I purchased my copy of this book. I look forward to participating in a blog tour for Susan Higginbotham's next book, Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower, coming out this August from Amberley Press.

The Last Plantagenet Princess: Blessed Margaret Pole

Matt Swaim and I will talk about Blessed Margaret Pole this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show in my usual time slot, after the 6:45 a.m. Central time (7:45 a.m. Eastern) news brief. Please listen live here.

EWTN posts this biography from Father Alban Butler:

The life of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was tragic from her cradle to her grave.l Nay, even before she was born, death in its most violent or dreaded forms had been long busy with her family—hastening to extinction a line that had swayed the destinies of England for nearly four centuries and a half. Her grandfather was that splendid Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the mighty King-maker, who as the "last of the Barons," so fittingly died on the stricken field of garnet, and whose soldier's passing gave to Shakespeare a theme worthy of some of his most affecting lines. Her father was the George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV, whose death in the Tower in January, 1478, has been attributed to so many causes. The murdered "Princes in the Tower," Edward V and his little brother, the Duke of York, were her first cousins, while her only brother, Edward, Earl of Warwick, was judicially murdered by Henry VII to ensure his own possession of the Crown. The list of tragedies in the family of the Blessed Margaret is still far from complete, but sufficient instances have been given to justify the description we have given of her whole career. . . .

The Countess of Salisbury was taken to East Smithfield early in the morning of 28th May, 1541, and there beheaded on a low block or log in the presence of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and a few other spectators. The regular headsman was away from London at the time, and his deputy, an unskilful lout, hacked at the blessed Martyr in such a way as to give some foundation to the story afterwards made current by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, that she had refused to lay her head on the block and was, therefore, struck repeatedly by the executioner till she fell dead. Before her death, she prayed for the King, Queen (Catherine Howard), Prince of Wales (later Edward VI), and the Princess Mary Her last words were: "Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice' sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."

The body of the Blessed Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was interred in the Tower, in that Chapel dedicated to St. Peter's Chains, whose illustrious dead and historic associations are enshrined in Macaulay's memorable lines. She was declared Blessed with many of the rest of the English Martyrs by Leo XIII, 29th December, 1886. Others than her co-religionists, no doubt, like to reflect that a life, so marked by piety, and so full of griefs ever heroically borne, has after the lapse of nearly four centuries been thus honoured, and that the last direct descendant of the Plantagenet line has her place in the Hagiography of the Church so long associated with their sway.

There is a new biography of Blessed Margaret Pole, written by Susan Higginbotham and published by Amberley (due out on August 15 this year):

Of the many executions ordered by Henry VIII, surely the most horrifying was that of sixty-seven-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, hacked to pieces on the scaffold by a blundering headsman. From the start, Margaret’s life had been marred by tragedy and violence: her father, George, Duke of Clarence, had been executed at the order of his own brother, Edward IV, and her naïve young brother, Edward, Earl of Warwick, had spent most of his life in the Tower before being executed on the orders of Henry VII. Yet Margaret, friend to Catherine of Aragon and the beloved governess of her daughter Mary, had seemed destined for a happier fate, until religious upheaval and rebellion caused Margaret and her family to fall from grace. From Margaret’s birth as the daughter of a royal duke to her beatification centuries after her death, Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower tells the story of one of the fortress’s most unlikely prisoners.