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Adam Pennington, "Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles: The Rise and Fall of a Dynasty" (Pen and Sword History, 2024)
00:48:23
An interview with Adam Pennington
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Adam Pennington about his book titled Henry VIII and the Plantagenet the Rise and Fall of a Dynasty, published by Penn and Sword in 2024. This book goes to the world of Henry VIII, who obviously had a whole bunch of descent from various kings on his side that enabled him to have the crown. But there were other people running around at the same time that also had dissent from some of these people. Now, obviously somewhat less than his. Well, question mark. Hold that thought. We're going to come back to that. But people that had some amount of claim on the throne. Now, everything we know about Henry VIII suggests that that's not going to be a great place for those people to be in, given how he thought about the people around him and the extent to which he saw everyone, anyone, as threats. So this book examines one of these families, the Plantagenet Poles, and essentially what happened to them living in this very tense context. Adam, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
- [02:17]
C
Oh, thank you very much for the invitation. It's a pleasure.
- [02:20]
B
Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to Write this book?
- [02:27]
C
Sure. So my name is Adam Pennington, I'm a full time historian and author and I decided to write this book because it occurred to me that there is this window of Henry VIII's reign. Henry VIII is probably the most famous king in British history. This is the man infamous for beheading two of his wives for turning on the Roman, the Roman Catholic faith, splitting England from the papacy. All of that stuff is really well known. What's not so well known is that there was a window in which he didn't turn on wives, he didn't turn on ministers or the Church, he turned on his own extended family. And that is a window of Henry VII reign that just isn't particularly well known. And it ultimately is about something called the Exeter Conspiracy, which was a series of events that led to the destruction of the remaining White Rose families. And when I say the White Rose families, I'm talking about the families who had strong, if not stronger, royal blood and the Tudors. And that's why I decided to write the book, to explore this window in this family. And the Pole family are, in my opinion, the most senior in the line of succession. And that's why I decided to write this book, to just explore this period of a reign that we think we know everything about. But actually there's a whole window that's wild and not particularly well covered.
- [03:59]
B
It's definitely wild. I think that's a very good description to start us off with. But the other key piece of information we need in order to get into what's so wild about this is, of course, the royal descent issue. So we're talking about Margaret Pole and her family. How was she a Plantagenet?
- [04:17]
C
So she was a very senior member of the nobility and she traced her descent from both parents. So her father was George, Duke of Clarence, who was the middle brother between kings Edward IV and British iii, probably the most infamous king beside Henry viii. So as such, she is a niece of two of England's kings, and moreover, she's a niece in the male line, which we have to consider at the time is viewed as more important. And because of that, she can then trace her lineage back directly to six earlier kings, the first one being King Henry II, all the way back in the 12th century. During her childhood, Margaret was recognized as a member of the royal family, given that her father was essentially the second man in the kingdom after Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth Woodville's children. It was George and then his children, Margaret and her brother Edward, Earl of Warwick, who were the next in line to the throne. So I suppose comparably by today's standards, we're looking at the Prince Andrew, you know, forget about him. But you know, Beatrice and Eugenie, for example. Margaret's mother was also extremely noble. Her mother was Isabel Neville, who was the elder of the two daughters born to Richard Earl of Warwick, who is known to history as the Kingmaker, as he was the man that ultimately helped put Edward IV on the throne and depose Henry vi. He had no sons, he just had these two daughters, Isabel and then her younger sister Anne, who had gone to marry Richard iii. So what we've got here is a woman who is born to the second man in the kingdom and the elder daughter of the country's premier premier nobleman. And therefore she was at the very zenith of the Plantagenet society at that point that she was born to.
- [06:19]
B
Okay, this is very helpful to understand, especially the kind of, on both sides of things that she's tracing her descent from. But if we think of her being the niece of two of the kings, we also have to remember the whole her dad dies part of this. There's a lot of death going on with these senior royal family members. So how was she impacted when she became an orphan and a niece of one uncle and then a niece of the other royal uncle? What, what was that time period like?
- [06:47]
C
Yeah, so I think to, to ensure that people know how and why she became an orphan and her brother became an orphan. So Margaret's mother Isabel died aged just 25 after giving birth for the third time to a short lived brother Richard, who died basically within days of being born. George, Duke of Clarence and Margaret's father went berserk and blamed it on midwives. And he also began to of how his older brother Edward IV's children were illegitimate. He was listening to prophecies and George was always, he was never content. He was a troubled man. Where Richard iii, contrary to his perception these days, Richard III was actually very, very loyal to his brother Edward iv, at least whilst Edward IV was alive. Whereas George was always a thorn in his brother's side. And the main issue was the fact that George really struggled to maintain a good relationship with Edward IV's queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Sir George's sister in law. The Woodvilles were not especially senior members of the nobility, but they were extremely ambitious and at times quite grasping. George rebelled against his brother, the King and was eventually executed for it, supposedly by being drowned in a barrel of Malmsy wine. And that's, that is how Margaret and Her brother became orphans. They were royal orphans, but orphans nonetheless, aside of now being without parents. They were also therefore pretty cash strapped because any of the wealth that her parents had then reverted to the crown because her father died as a traitor. From the sources, however, from, from my reading of it, the shadow cast by their father did not extend to Margaret and her brother, you know, Edward. And Margaret and Edward might have been the child of an attitude traitor, but they were still the niece and nephew of the King and not by marriage, by blood, making them arguably just as royal as his own children. The paths that were, you know, being laid ahead for Margaret and Edward could and should have seen them being as core members of the royal family. And I don't really think that Edward IV would have wanted to rock that boat. And the same can be said of the reign of their other uncles, Richard iii. Richard III is notorious for being the man that might have been behind the murder of the princes in the Tower. But what's interesting is that he behaves very differently towards Margaret and her brother. He actually shows them off. He openly takes Edward, Margaret's brother, on a progress with him across the north of England and really shows him off. And so it's quite odds in a way to the theory that he killed the princes in the Tower. But then this third nephew, who arguably in the line of succession was ahead of him, he celebrates. So it's a bit of a funny one. But they, as I say, they didn't actually struggle because they were still seen as the nieces and nephews of the King.
- [09:53]
B
So that's all very nice for them when either of the uncles is king. But obviously Henry Tudor puts a stop to that. And at this point, it's might. You're definitely going to be recognized as a niece to the King, but the former king, that doesn't sound like a great thing to be recognized as what happens to Margaret at this point.
- [10:11]
C
Yes. So when the Tudors overthrew the House of Plantagenet, everything, everything changes. The thing that a lot of people don't fully comprehend is just how tenuous the Tudor's right to the throne was. It was barely there. And a lot of people don't because they're so famous. They're massively more famous than the Plantagenets, despite the fact that the Plantagenets are our longest reigning dynasty. They reigned for 330 years, but the Tudors had a very little claim to the throne. And there were many other families with far superior claims to that throne, not least Margaret and her younger brother. When Henry Tudor took over the remaining plantation and became known as the White Rose Network because these were the, the Yorkist families and they went from being the royal and extended royal family into a ready made affront to the new house of Tudor. Henry VII basically managed this by marrying off the female Yorks, neutralizing them essentially. He married Elizabeth of York, the most senior of the York princesses, whilst Margaret was given in marriage to a man called Sir Richard Pole. Now, Richard Pole had a very small link to any form of grandeur. He was the grandson of, so his grandfather was a half brother of Margaret Beaufort who was the mother of Henry vii. So it was just a, a very tenuous link. And lots of people in the Whiterose network commented at the time that it was a shockingly poor marriage for a girl born all but a princess. And to put into perspective just how different what Margaret had been born to to what she ended up marrying is when we look at the income of Sir Richard Pole, he had an income of £50 a year and two properties. Margaret's father's income had been £6,000 a year with huge amounts of land and her mother had lands from Cornwall right up to the Scottish border. Now, he may have been very inferior to Margaret in status, but Richard Pole did at least provide safety, security and he gave her Margaret, five children. They had four sons, Henry, Arthur, Reginald and Geoffrey, and a daughter, Ursula. Now, unfortunately, Rachel Paul died quite unexpectedly when Margaret was very heavily pregnant with Jeffrey. And when he died, the small amount of money that he was bringing in then went back to the Crown. And Margaret's finances were in such a bad way that she firstly had to borrow money from the King to bury Richard. Then it got so bad that she had to actually hand over her third son Reginald over to the Church as a means of alleviating some of the financial strain. Things. Now this isn't great obviously, but things were very, very different. Sadly for Margaret's brother, her poor younger brother Edward, he was the last legitimate male Plantagenet and thus to anyone who opposed the Tudors, he was the rightful king. He was the rightful heir. And so despite being just 10 years old at the time that Henry VII ascended the throne, he had Edmund imprisoned at the Tower. He was just 10 years old when he had Edward imprisoned and sadly he would never leave its walls and was eventually beheaded 14 years later.
- [13:42]
B
That is a very tricky context in which to be trying to have babies and raise a family and continue your life, especially starting off as shown off niece's niece of a king. How did Margaret kind of navigate all of this. Was it better once Henry VIII became king as compared to Henry vii, or was the idea sort of marry a nobody and therefore stay out of the way? I mean, how was she trying to get through all this?
- [14:12]
C
Things change beyond all recognition when Henry VIII comes to the throne. Her situation improves immeasurably, at least in the early years of Henry VIII's reign. And there's a few reasons for that, but the first and the most significant is, to my belief, is that Henry VIII is himself half York, because his mother is Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward iv. And in fact, Henry VIII was said to greatly resemble his maternal grandfather. And Henry really celebrated the White Rose families. Henry was. He was half York, half Tudor, but it was the Yorkist side that was more evident. Where his father was slight and known for being very miserly, Henry VIII was tall and strapping and very gregarious. He was very much his grandfather reborn. And he also adored his mother. He was heartbroken when Elizabeth of York died, so he naturally was much more comfortable with the White Rose families because they were his family, but they weren't the family of Henry vii. What also had a massive bearing on Margaret's situation improving was her relationship with Catherine of aragon, so Henry VIII's first wife. And actually, this was a relationship that could have started out in a really difficult spot, because what actually convinced Henry VII to proceed with ordering Margaret's brother's execution was intense pressure from Catherine's parents, because Catherine had been contracted to marry Prince Arthur, Henry VIII's older brother, so the elder son and heir of Henry Tudor. So Catherine's parents would not allow her to leave Spain until the most senior claimants to the throne had been dealt with. And Edward, Earl of Warwick, Margaret's brother, was number one on that list. And so Catherine's marriage is kind of the final nail in the coffin for Edward. And yet, despite that, Catherine of Aragon and Margaret were able to build a really good relationship. And they did that because Sir Richard Pole had been named Prince Arthur's guardian. When Prince Arthur went to the Welsh Marches to rule as Prince of Wales, and Margaret, as his wife, went with him. So she therefore built up a relationship with Catherine of Aragon. They became really close. Now, by the time Henry VIII is on the throne, obviously he. One of the first things he does is to marry his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon. And although we can't say it for certain, it seems very likely that it was Catherine who encouraged Margaret to approach Henry VIII about restoring all of her lands. And titles that had been taken away following her brother's execution. Because when her brother was executed, all of the lands and the titles and everything, it was tied into Margaret's father and her grandfather reverted back to the crown. Henry VIII willingly gave it all back. He gave Margaret everything she asked for and that made her and her family incredibly wealthy. But he did something else as well, something very unusual. Margaret had hoped to win back the Earldom of Salisbury for her eldest son and heir, another Henry. But the King decided that Margaret would inherit the title in her own right. And so she became the Countess of Salisbury. She became what is known as a fem sole. So a woman acting independently. And this was incredibly unusual. And it basically meant that Margaret was on a level with all of the other nobles of the time, all of whom were male. She was basically a bit of a one off. And when we look at the records of her finances, she was actually the fifth richest peer in England. And again, she is the only female on that list. So things were much better under the early years, at least, of Henry VIII's reign. Trip planner by Expedia. You were made to outdo your holiday, your hammocking and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedient media, made to travel.
- [18:29]
B
Yeah. Let's talk about what happens when those early years change, because you mentioned that connection to Catherine of Aragon. Obviously, Margaret becomes the governess to Princess Mary, her daughter. Great, that all sounds good. When everyone's happy with each other, obviously that changes. Princess Mary becomes declared illegitimate once Catherine of Aragon is out of the picture and now we've got Queen Anne Boleyn, what happens to Margaret? Does she stay the governess? What's it like being the governess of a now illegitimate princess? How does that work?
- [18:59]
C
Yeah, I mean, there was a lot going on at this time because in addition to the downfall of Catherine of Aragon and her marriage to Henry VIII and then Anne Boleyn coming on the scene, it was also around this time that Margaret's children were marrying as well, and they were marrying into other extended white roses families. So it was stitching together Margaret further with other families. And it was at this time that they have their first difficulty under Henry viii, because Margaret's daughter Ursula marries the son and heir of the Duke of Buckingham and the Duke of Buckingham is executed. And so that then, by just by sheer association, puts a bit of a spotlight back on the Pole family for. For negative reasons. So you've got that going on. Then you got Anne Boleyn on the scene and with that, the breakdown of the royal marriage. Margaret was utterly devoted to Princess Mary, and from everything we can tell, she was actually asked personally by both King and Queen to serve as her governess. Obviously, once Anne Boleyn was on the scene, it totally changed the landscape of the court. And once Princess Elizabeth was born, Mary's household was broken down and she was transferred over to the household of her infant sister. And with that, Margaret was basically out of a job. She. She didn't have a role anymore, so she returned to Warblington Castle, which was the castle that was her. Her favorite home, really, and got down to the job of. Of running her vast estates. They were. They were in a tough position, though, because the other thing about Amberlynn being on the scene is that it has this huge, much wider impact on the landscape of England and the way that the. The. The destruction of the monasteries, separating from the church in Rome. Margaret and her family were religiously conservative. They were not open to the idea of religious reform. And Anne Boleyn was at the very heart of all of this. You know, this was a family of traditional Catholics. They believed very much in the Pope, in monasteries. And so the prospect of England being cut off from Rome was horrifying to the Pole family. You know, as I said, Margaret's children are grown up. They're marrying to other big plantation families. So there's just a lot going on at this time, basically.
- [21:30]
B
Yeah, there is definitely a lot going on at this time. And with Margaret's kind of more immediate family as well. Can we talk about Reginald Pole and how he became an enemy of Henry viii?
- [21:44]
C
Yeah, so Reginald is a fascinating one because initially he was greatly favoured by Henry viii. He was sponsored by the king, his education, that is sponsored by Henry viii, enabling Reginald to study abroad in Padua. And Romeo, this was, you know, he was the king's cousin. And Henry saw him, as he saw in Reginald, the ability to have a great English scholar in some of Europe's most illustrious courts. Now, during the king's attempts to marry Anne Boleyn, he would lean on senior men of the court to try and convince the Pope and other major people across Europe to allow the marriage to be broken down with Catherine of Aragon so that he could then marry Anne Boleyn. And Reginald gave every sign that he would agree and would provide Henry VIII with support. Because he's in Italy, he's got the ear of the Pope. This is a real, you know, he had the real capacity to hopefully do good work for the King. In fact, he. He didn't respond to Henry in the end. And when he eventually did, it was two months after Amberlynn had been executed. So he really did drag it out. And what he. When he sent his response, it was not what the King wanted to hear. It's called a letter, but it's more accurate to call it a book that he sent. It's called the Unitate. And Unitate was a blistering attack on the King. He compared him to Roman dictators like Nero and Caligula. He accused him of destroying the best men in the kingdom. So that was people like Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. And he said all of this safely ensconced in Italy while his family were back at home having to pick up the pieces, Margaret and her eldest son, Henry. Henry was essentially the Pole family's representative at court. They immediately pulled rank and assured the King that they were loyal to him and that as far as they were concerned, Reginald was no longer a member of the family. It's my belief, however, this was pure lip service and they were basically saying what they knew the King wanted to hear. Now things start to go wrong for the remaining, the members of the whole family in England when Thomas Cromwell, so the King's chief minister, planted a spy of his, a man called Gervase Tyndall, in a hospital that was within Margaret's lands, because Cromwell was the man responsible really for the English Reformation, for bringing down the monasteries. And he wanted to know what these conservative courtiers with royal blood, what were they doing, you know, who were they talking to? And he discovered, via this man, Gervaise Tyndall, that Geoffrey Pole, St. Margaret's youngest son, who I should also add, was massively burgeoned by debt, was trying to escape England and join his brother Reginald in. In Rome. And he had sent letters to Reginald using a go between called Hugh Holland. Hugh Holland, on arriving back in England, is arrested and then Geoffrey is arrested himself. Shortly after, and under intense pressure, he begins to speak. And some of the things he said were quite explosive. And actually he was so wrecked with guilt that despite the severity of what this meant at the time, Geoffrey Pole actually attempts suicide twice whilst he's in the Tower of London. Despite this being a time when that is the gravest of sins for people who are very religious. Geoffrey Pole said that his eldest brother Henry had said that the King's sore leg would ensure his death, that none ruled about the King but knaves and flatterers. He then also suggested that Henry Courtenay, the Marquess of Exeter, he implicated him in Certain things. Basically the Exeter and Henry Pole were great friends. They were related because the Marquess of Exeter was a grandson of Edward iv. And Geoffrey claimed that Henry Pole knew secrets that were only discussed in Privy Council meetings of which Henry Courtenay was a councillor, but Henry Powell wasn't. But he only knew things from meetings that Courtenay had sat on. And so the inference there was that Courtenay was telling Henri Pole things that he shouldn't have. Now, if that was the case, then those secrets got back to Jeffrey and then potentially onto Reginald. So it's a really dangerous position to have been in with that said, in all reality, it was probably just discussions between disgruntled courtiers. You know, there was, they didn't. Who felt that the court they represented and what they were had changed beyond all recognition. I don't believe that there was a genuine attempt between these families to try and overthrow Henry viii. I think it was just them moaning basically that they didn't want recognize the court. They didn't recognize what they'd helped build even. So this spills out into something known as the Exeter Conspiracy because. And it's called that because the most senior person involved is the Marquess of Exeter. And based on Geoffrey's comments and Hugh Holland's his go between, there are a total of 13 arrests. In the end, eight executions, including Henry Pole and the Marx of Exeter, who are beheaded alongside Sir Edward Neville in December 1538. Just a few weeks later, very surprisingly for Henry VIII, Geoffrey Pole gets a pardon based on, I suspect, the fact that he provided so much information which implicated his family.
- [27:42]
B
So how do we understand this then? Are was the fall of the polls about religion? Was it about the fact that they were moaning and Henry VIII just couldn't deal with anyone moaning? Was it because they were Plantagenets? Was it all of the above? I mean, how do we understand this?
- [27:59]
C
It's all of the above. I suppose in a way. I believe that the biggest problem for the Polk family was their blood. However, this shouldn't be taken as the sole reason for their downfall. It's my belief that the responsibility for their fall can most convincingly land at Reginald and Jeffrey's feet. I believe firmly that had Reginald not said what he said or had the King got hold of him, then none of this would have happened. Well, Reginald would have been in trouble, but I think everybody else, it just wouldn't have come to light. But it's the Pole family's blood and their actions. Their blood is what makes their actions more problematic. It exacerbates their faults, it made them more open to suspicion. Now, as we've discussed them, having royal blood was by no means unique to the Pole family. You had the other White Rose network families, the Staffords, the Exeter, the de La Poles, the Nevilles, the Lyles, and some of those families fell with them at its crux. I believe that the Exeter conspiracy is less a conspiracy and more a series of events with two distinct stories to tell. On the one side, you've got the familial unity, which brought together the remaining Plantagenets of the Yorkist side. They comprised a wide network of people who by dint of their birth were either royal or highly noble, effectively a giant spider's wet of cousins and siblings and extended kin. They were to their supporters the best of England. But to their detractors, they were already made affront, as I said earlier, to the fledgling Tudor dynasty. Now, conversely, there was the ever present uncertainty, which must have been acute, I think, particularly for Henry VII and Henry vii, about the fact that the Tudors had very little claim to the throne of England. When we understand that, it really helps us understand why Henry VII kept the White Rose families so downtrodden, why Henry VIII was so obsessed with getting a male heir. The Plantagenets were a constant reminder of what came before and moreover, they were a reminder of a legitimate, unquestionably royal family, and moreover, one that was known for its fecundity. The Plantagenets knocked children's out, knocked babies out like rabbits. I mean, they really did. But the Tudors really struggled. You know, you could count the number of Tudors on one hand. The Plantagenets were arguably endless. So religion plays a part here, blood pays a part here, and just the irregularity of Henry VII's reign plays a massive part. It's all of the above in one melting pot, basically.
- [30:54]
B
How does this all come together then, in Margaret's house arrest? Because on the one hand she is arrested, which seems like quite an extreme thing, given what you were saying earlier about fifth richest noble, only woman. So she is arrested, but it's house arrest because she's still like a close member of the family and a princess, and you have to treat her well. Like, how does that all work?
- [31:14]
C
Well, she's put under house arrest because the sense was, well, if her sons are involved in this, then she must be involved in some capacity. So that's why she is initially put under house arrest. Whilst they try and find evidence that could potentially implicate Margaret, she's put under house arrest at Warblington Castle, so her favored residence. However, she is eventually transferred over to Cowdray House, which was the household of the Earl of Southampton, who was the man responsible for questioning her, alongside Thomas Goodrich, the Bishop of Ely. And over an extended period of time, literally several months, they have several meetings with Margaret where they cannot find anything to really pin against her. She is as sharp as a whip, you know, she answers everything back very astutely, I think, very honestly, and they just can't pin anything against her. And actually, Thomas Goodrich. Sorry, no. The. The Earl of Southampton sends a letter to Cromwell saying she's either a perfect saint or the most arrant traitorous that ever lived, because they just can't find anything. Now, as I say, she's transferred over to Caudrey House, and then a tunic is discovered. And this tunic supposedly shows the Tudor rose intertwining with the pansy, which was the family sigil, the flower sigil of the Pole family. And this was taken as evidence that Margaret and her family planned to overthrow Henry VIII and. And restore Mary and make her queen and marry her to the only Pole that she could marry, because he wasn't married, Reginald. Now, it's my belief, however, that either this was just a tunic which showed the fact that the Pole family and the. And the Tudors were related, or that it was a forgery. And that latter conclusion is probably the one that I'm more convinced by, because we know that Thomas Cromwell was not above faking evidence. You know, when we look at the charges against Amberlynn, 80% of them we can prove are impossible because she wasn't where she was accused of being with her lovers and all that kind of stuff. It is made up. So we know Cromwell is not above faking evidence when he feels it prudent. It's just a bit too neat and tidy that, you know, they can't find anything against Margaret. Then this tunic appears, and after this, she is transferred over to the Tower of London for what you could argue.
- [33:53]
B
Is true imprisonment and then sentenced to death. Now, Henry VIII does behead women, we know that at this point, but this is a family member, a pretty close family member. Was this seen as unusual even for him, even at this point, or. Or by the time we get to this stage, is it just sort of like, okay, well, he's unpredictable. Who knows?
- [34:17]
C
It was unusual and people were shocked by it, not least because Margaret was elderly by the standards of the time. You know, when she's eventually executed, she's 67. By Tudor standards, that's probably mid-80s to early 90s by modern standards. But what's more unusual, actually, rather than her execution, or at least the sentencing of, is how long she's imprisoned. She's in the Tower for nearly three years, and that is very unusual. Most prisoners who are sentenced to death are killed within days. We only have to look at, for example, George Boleyn, so Anne Boleyn's brother. He's beheaded just two days after he's tried. But Margaret was imprisoned for three years. She's found guilty under an attainder. She never actually stood trial. Instead, a commission of oyer and termini passed an attainder against her, which basically enabled her to. Enabled the King. Sorry, to sentence her to death. And the closest analogy to modern day that I can say is it's a bit like being on death row. She was living in the Tower of London knowing that she'd been sentenced to death, but just wasn't told when it would happen. And it eventually stretches to two and a half years. Sadly for Margaret, there must have been a moment when she really hoped for life a couple of times. Firstly, it got back to Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth queen, that Margaret was in increasingly her conditions, the conditions in which she were in were getting worse. And so Catherine convinced the King to allow her to send Catherine to send Margaret some new furs and some new shoes and everything to improve Margaret's position. So that might have immediately given Margaret hope that maybe things were improving and that she would eventually get out, but also Margaret's. So Gertrude Courtenay, who was the wife of Henry Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, she is imprisoned as well, his wife is imprisoned, but she is eventually released, as is her young son. But what we have to consider here is that Gertrude married a plantation, that Margaret was one. So although they have much in common, Margaret was in a different position. She had royal blood, and so therefore they were just in a different position. As I say, I think that the King would have eventually pardoned Margaret and set her free had it not been. Had he been able to get hold of Reginald. I think his inability to get Reginald is kind of the thing that drove Henry into finally agreeing to her death. I think it was out of sheer spite, essentially. Margaret's execution has become infamous because it was badly botched. So she's awoken on the 27th of May, 1541 and told stays the day out of nowhere. I mean, literally in the next hour, you're going to be dead. And such was the speed of all of this. They hadn't even prepared a Scaffold. She literally had to. They. Then they didn't even have a proper block. They found, basically, a big log and she had to lie completely down on the ground. And the. The regular Tower headsman was with the King in the north. So a youth was brought forward, handed the axe and told off you go kind of thing. And it was very badly botched. There is a legend about Margaret running around, being hacked apart. That is a legend. But nonetheless, it was not a clean execution. It's possible that the executioner may have taken as many as seven or eight strikes before she was dead.
- [37:57]
B
That is pretty gruesome and also not the sort of thing that, in this context, would have been able to stay secret. And given the whole. This is unusual. Anyway, people are going, wait a second, she's really old. What are you doing? The whole drama of what was happening with her sons and the long arrest she was under, what happened to the family after her execution.
- [38:20]
C
So I think the saddest character, in a way, is a little boy that we don't know. We don't know what happened to. And that is Henry Pole the younger. So Margaret's grandson, so Henry Pole, her son, Henry Pole, Baron Montague, his son and heir, also called Henry. And when everyone was arrested, Margaret was arrested, Henry Pole was arrested and his son, despite being nine or 10 at the time, is also arrested. And he vanished. He vanishes. He vanishes inside the Tower. We don't know what happened to this boy. And I describe in the book, because he had royal blood, I refer to him as the. The third missing prince in the Tower. Basically, Geoffrey Pole was a broken man. He had. As I said, he attempted suicide twice whilst he was in the Tower. First time he tried to stab himself and it didn't work. Second time he tried to smother himself and again, it didn't work. He eventually did make it to Italy to stay with his brother Reginald. He was massively burdened by debt, so he just wanted out of England and he got to Reginald. When Queen Mary I ascended the throne in 1553, Reginald returned to England and he arrived into London a bit like a returning hero at the head of 2,000 men. He's named Archbishop of Canterbury and formed an incredibly close relationship with Mary. In fact, I would say that he was probably. I would argue he's the man that never let Mary down. And touchingly, they died on the very same day, just eight hours apart. And I think for Mary personally, you know, this was the son of her governess who she adored, so it was natural that her and Reginald would be close. Ursula Pole, so Margaret's daughter, easily the quietest figure of the family in a way, and it's a lovely nice twist of irony is that it's her daughter who. So Ursula Pole marries the Duke of Buckingham's son. Things go wrong when he's executed, and her glittering prospect of being the future Duchess of Buckingham is brought down. But her marriage is very, very successful. She has 14 children, seven boys, seven girls, and her eldest daughter was a lady called Dorothy Stafford, who, in a twist of fate, married the widower of Mary Boleyn. So Margaret Pole's granddaughter marries the man that was once married to a Boleyn, which Margaret must have been spinning in her grave. But Dorothy, Margaret's daughter, Dorothy, Ursula's daughter, has an incredible relationship with Elizabeth I. She is one of Elizabeth's chief gentlewomen. And when Dorothy eventually dies, her son installs a plaque in Westminster Abbey where he is able to commend his mother's ancestry. And it says on the plaque, you know, the granddaughter of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, great granddaughter of George, Duke of Clarence. And so it's kind of ironic, really, that the daughter of Margaret's least consequential maybe child is the only one that had the scope and the capacity to actually leave a stamp saying who they descended from and what position Margaret and Margaret's father had. You know, Margaret's sons and all of her grandsons weren't able to do that. It's in Margaret's daughter that is the per. Is the granddaughter that's then buried that's able to honor the family. And that's a nice twist of irony, I think.
- [42:06]
B
Wow. Yeah, that is quite a story, and I think a good place to end as well, given that final marker in a lot of ways. Before I let you go, though, what are you working on next? Do you have any upcoming or current projects you want to give us a brief sneak preview of?
- [42:22]
C
Yes. So I'm working on my next book, and I can't provide you with loads of information about it at the moment, but what I can tell you is that the book is going to be about the history of the Royal consort. And I'm looking at the. Basically the. I'm looking from Matilda of Flanders, who was the wife of William the Conqueror, right through to Camilla and what is involved in the office of Consort and how it changes over time and what doesn't change over time. So that's taking up a lot of my time. And then I'm also, as part of my work, As a historian, I am the co director of a historic tour company called simply Tudor Tours. We basically create week long, highly curated in person tours, usually around a theme, be it the Rise and Fall of Amberlynn or something like that. And we go from place to place. And yeah, that those are attended by fans of history from around the world. So that also takes up a lot of my time.
- [43:23]
B
Yeah, those are both pretty big projects, so thank you for telling us about them. And obviously, best of luck pursuing them. And while you do that, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Henry VIII and the Plantagenet the Rise and Fall of a Dynasty, published by Pen and sword in 2024. Adam, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [43:42]
C
You're very welcome. Thank you again for the INV.