Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower by Susan Higginbotham
| Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower by Susan Higginbotham | |
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| Category: Biography | |
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Reviewer: John Van der Kiste
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| Summary: As a close relation of the Yorkists and the Tudors at a time of upheaval, the life of Margaret Pole, 'the last Plantagenet', was a sorry one, overshadowed by the executions of several of her family – and ultimately leading to her own. As a work of history, this is a sound read, although as a biography it is handicapped by the lack of hard fact and inclined to wander off-topic in places, with the central character submerged beneath a narrative of national affairs. Nevertheless the author has told the sad story as best she can. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 240 | Date: August 2016 |
| Publisher: Amberley Publishing | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1445635941 | |
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The fate of Margaret Pole, who as the cover says has a good claim to the title of 'the last Plantagenet', was a sorry one. As a close relation of the Yorkists and the Tudors at a time of upheaval, her life was overshadowed by the executions of several of her family – and ultimately leading to her own, largely it seems, for the 'crime' of being who she was.
Susan Higginbotham is faced with the same disadvantage as many other biographers covering this period. Almost every royal personality from the 15th and 16th centuries, barring crowned heads and perhaps their consorts, is going to be a shadowy one. Fragmentary details are known, particularly those surrounding her birth, early family life, and little glimpses of her long life as an adult – but not much more. Even a fairly short book such as this is bound to be somewhat off-topic in places, in which the central character is submerged beneath a narrative of national affairs, notably Henry VIII's remarriages. As the author admits here and there, 'little is known of…', and it could hardly be otherwise.
Margaret of Clarence, to give her her childhood name, was left an orphan at the age of four, with the death of her mother in childbirth and the execution of her father. Her brother Edward, Earl of Warwick, spent most of his short life in prison, seemingly for no greater crime than being a threat to Henry VII's crown because in the eyes of some he had a far better claim. Exceptionally naïve and unworldly after being brought up in captivity, he was executed at the age of twenty-four. Margaret was therefore the only survivor of an exceptionally ill-starred family. Her marriage to Sir Richard Pole – we know not where, let alone what year, the marriage took place – produced five children before she was left a young widow.
Very few things are known for certain about her later life, other than that she could be said to have been one of the many close relations of Henry VIII who also became one of his victims. She was a friend of Katherine of Aragon and governess to the future Queen Mary, and she might have lived to a peaceful old age but for the upheavals that followed the King's first divorce and the break with Rome. Her sons were accused of treason for speaking out against their sovereign, and as far as can be gathered from the few certain facts, she was tainted by association. Like her tragic brother, she was guilty of little more than simply existing. One of her sons was executed, she was attainted of treason, a mechanism which avoided having to put her on trial, and sent to the Tower of London, from which she probably never came out alive. Our emphasis is on the word 'probably', for it is recorded that she met her end on the scaffold in agony thanks to a young, inexperienced and particularly clumsy axeman. However, one contemporary chronicler reported that she was put to death in the presence of so few people that at first there was some doubt as to whether she had been executed or not. Although it was an exceptionally brutal age, some at the time found it hard to believe that an elderly and comparatively guiltless woman had been killed in this way.
As a work of history, this is a sound read on part of the Tudor age. As a biography, it is disadvantaged by the gaps in the existing knowledge, and because of this it is hard to imagine that any other scholar would have been able to improve on it. The author has told the sad story as best she can, and opened another very readable window on the time.
For further reading on the subject, especially the event which helped to precipitate the beginning of the end for her, The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story by Catherine Fletcher is recommended, as is a family biography of an earlier generation of the family on her father's side, The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses by David Baldwin, and a life of one of her contemporaries, The Lost Tudor Princess: A Life of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox by Alison Weir.
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