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Historical person

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

1473–1541

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was one of the last prominent members of the Plantagenet dynasty. Born in 1473, she was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel Neville and therefore a niece of Edward IV and Richard III. After the Tudor victory her family’s position remained precarious, but Henry VIII restored her to the earldom of Salisbury in 1513. She became wealthy in her own right and served in the household of Princess Mary.

Margaret’s fortunes deteriorated as her son Reginald Pole became an outspoken critic of Henry VIII’s break with Rome. Although there was no convincing evidence that Margaret herself plotted against the king, several members of the wider Pole family were implicated in the Exeter Conspiracy. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London and held without ordinary trial. In May 1541, at about sixty-seven years old, she was executed under an attainder, an episode later remembered as one of the harshest acts of Henry’s reign.

Philippa Gregory’s The King’s Curse makes Margaret Pole the central witness to the transition from Plantagenet defeat to Tudor insecurity. Her friendship with Catherine of Aragon and return to royal favour place her close to Henry VIII, but the king’s break with Rome, suspicion of her sons and fear of her Yorkist blood turn family ancestry into a mortal danger that ends with Margaret’s execution.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1 series)

The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels in Order

by Philippa Gregory 16 books 4.4(140,052)

The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…

All books in this series