November 17, 1558: Death of Mary I, Queen of England and Ireland. Part II.

Tags

Bill of Attainder, Countess of Salisbury, Duke Philipp of Bavaria, Duke Wilhelm I of Cleves, Margaret Pole, Mary I of England and Scotland, Mary Tudor, Reginald Pole, Thomas Cromwell

Mary was courted by Philipp, Duke of Bavaria, from late 1539, but he was Lutheran and his suit for her hand was unsuccessful. Over 1539, the king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, negotiated a potential alliance with the Duchy of Cleves.

Suggestions that Mary marry Wilhelm I, Duke of Cleves, who was the same age, came to nothing, but a match between King Henry VIII and the Duke’s sister Anne was agreed. When the king saw Anne for the first time in late December 1539, a week before the scheduled wedding, he found her unattractive but was unable, for diplomatic reasons and without a suitable pretext, to cancel the marriage.

Cromwell fell from favour and was arrested for treason in June 1540; one of the unlikely charges against him was that he had plotted to marry Mary himself. Anne consented to the annulment of the marriage, which had not been consummated, and Cromwell was beheaded.

There was much court intrigue involving Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and Mary’s old governess and godmother, and her son Reginald Pole. Margaret Pole was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, a brother of Kings Edward IV and Richard III (all sons of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York), by his wife Isabel Neville.

The entirety of the story is not the subject of this blog entry but I will mention it’s connected to Reginald’s objection to Henry VIII’s relationship with Anne Boleyn.

Margaret’s downfall was also connected to Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell produced a tunic bearing the Five Wounds of Christ, symbolising Margaret’s support for the Church of Rome and the rule of her son Reginald and the king’s Roman Catholic daughter Mary. The supposed discovery, six months after her house and effects were searched at her arrest, is likely to have been a fabrication. She was sentenced to death, and could be executed at the king’s will.

On the morning of May 27, 1541, Margaret was told she was to die within the hour. She answered that no crime had been imputed to her. Nevertheless, she was taken from her cell to the place within the precincts of the Tower of London where a low wooden block had been prepared instead of the customary scaffold.

Henry VIII had her executed on the pretext of a Catholic plot uncovered by Cromwell in which her son Reginald Pole was implicated. Her executioner was “a wretched and blundering youth” who “literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces”.

In 1542, following the execution of Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, the unmarried Henry invited Mary to attend the royal Christmas festivities. At court, while her father was between marriages and thus without a consort, Mary acted as hostess. In 1543, Henry married his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, who was able to bring the family closer together. Henry returned Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession through the Act of Succession 1543/1544 (also known as the Third Succession Act), placing them after Edward – though both remained legally illegitimate.

Henry VIII died in 1547, and Edward succeeded him as King Edward VI of England and Ireland. Mary inherited estates in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and was granted Hunsdon and Beaulieu as her own. Since Edward was still a child, rule passed to a regency council dominated by Protestants, who attempted to establish their faith throughout the country.

For example, the Act of Uniformity 1549 prescribed Protestant rites for church services, such as the use of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. Mary remained faithful to Roman Catholicism and defiantly celebrated traditional Mass in her own chapel. She appealed to her cousin Emperor Charles V to apply diplomatic pressure demanding that she be allowed to practise her religion.

For most of Edward’s reign, Mary remained on her own estates and rarely attended court. A plan between May and July 1550 to smuggle her out of England to the safety of the European mainland came to nothing.

Religious differences between Mary and Edward VI continued. Mary attended a reunion with Edward and Elizabeth for Christmas 1550, where the 13-year-old Edward VI embarrassed Mary, then 34, and reduced both her and himself to tears in front of the court, by publicly reproving her for ignoring his laws regarding worship. Mary repeatedly refused Edward’s demands that she abandon Catholicism, and Edward persistently refused to drop his demands.

August 14, 1473: Birth of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury.

Tags

Countess of Salisbury, Duke of Clarence, George Plantagenet, Henry VII of England, King Edward IV of England, King Henry VIII of England, Margaret Pole, Richard III of England, Richard Pole

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (August 14, 1473 – May 27 1541), was an English peeress and member of the English Royal Family and one of the last of the Plantagenets.

She was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of kings Edward IV and Richard III. Margaret was one of two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right with no titled husband. One of the few surviving members of the Plantagenet dynasty after the Wars of the Roses, she was executed in 1541 at the command of Henry VIII, who was the son of her first cousin Elizabeth of York. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Catholic Church on December 29, 1886.

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

Margaret was born at Farleigh Hungerford Castle in Somerset, the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, and his wife Isabel Neville, who was the elder daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and his wife Anne de Beauchamp, 16th Countess of Warwick. Her maternal grandfather was killed fighting against her uncle, Edward IV, at the Battle of Barnet.

Her father, already Duke of Clarence, was then created Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick. Edward IV declared that Margaret’s younger brother Edward should be known as Earl of Warwick as a courtesy title, but no peerage was ever created for him. Margaret would have had a claim to the Earldom of Warwick, but the earldom was forfeited on the attainder of her brother Edward.

Margaret’s mother died when she was three, and her father had two servants killed whom he thought had poisoned her. George plotted against Edward IV, and was attainted and executed for treason; his lands and titles were forfeited. Edward IV died when Margaret was ten, and her uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, declared that Edward’s marriage was invalid, his children illegitimate, and that Margaret and her brother Edward were debarred from the throne by their father’s attainder. Married to Anne Neville, younger sister to Margaret’s mother Isabel, Richard assumed the throne himself as Richard III.

Richard III sent the children to Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire. He was defeated and killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth by Henry Tudor, who succeeded him as Henry VII. The new king married Margaret’s cousin Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s daughter, and Margaret and her brother were taken into their care.

In November 1487, Henry VII gave Margaret in marriage to his cousin, Sir Richard Pole, whose mother was half-sister of the king’s mother, Margaret Beaufort. Richard Pole held a variety of offices in Henry VII’s government, the highest being Chamberlain for Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry’s elder son. When Arthur married Catherine of Aragon, Margaret became one of her ladies-in-waiting, but her entourage was dissolved when the teenaged Arthur died in 1502.

When her husband died in 1505, Margaret was a widow with five children, a limited amount of land inherited from her husband, no other income and no prospects. Henry VII paid for Richard’s funeral. To ease the situation, Margaret devoted her third son Reginald Pole to the Church, where he was to have an eventful career as a papal Legate and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Nonetheless, he was to resent her abandonment of him bitterly in later life.

When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, he married Catherine of Aragon himself. Margaret was again appointed one of her ladies-in-waiting. In 1512, an Act of Parliament restored to her some of her brother’s lands of the earldom of Salisbury (only), for which she paid 5000 marks (£2666.13s.4d). The same Act also restored to Margaret the Earldom of Salisbury.

Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland

Margaret’s own favour at Court varied. She had a dispute over land with Henry VIII in 1518; he awarded the contested lands to the Dukedom of Somerset, which had been held by his Beaufort great-grandfather—and were now in the possession of the Crown. In 1520, Margaret was appointed governess to Henry’s daughter Princess Mary; the next year, when her sons were mixed up with Buckingham, she was removed, but she was restored by 1525.

When Princess Mary was declared a bastard in 1533, Margaret refused to give Mary’s gold plate and jewels back to Henry. Mary’s household was broken up at the end of the year, and Margaret asked to serve Mary at her own cost, but was not permitted. The Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys suggested two years later that Mary be handed over to Margaret, but Henry refused, calling her “a fool, of no experience”. When Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, was arrested, and eventually executed, in 1536, Margaret was permitted to return to Court, albeit briefly.

In 1531, her son, Reginald Pole, warned of the dangers of the Boleyn marriage. He returned to Padua in 1532, and received a last English benefice in December of that year. Chapuys suggested to Emperor Charles V that Reginald marry Princess Mary and combine their dynastic claims.

Reginald also urged the princes of Europe to depose Henry immediately. Henry wrote to Margaret, who in turn wrote to her son a letter reproving him for his “folly”. In May 1536, Reginald finally and definitively broke with the king.
In 1537, Reginald (still not ordained) was created a Cardinal.

Pope Paul III put him in charge of organising assistance for the Pilgrimage of Grace (and related movements), an effort to organise a march on London to install a conservative Catholic government instead of Henry’s increasingly Protestant-leaning one. Neither François I of France nor the Emperor supported this effort, and the English government tried to have him assassinated.

The Exeter Conspiracy of 1538 was a supposed attempt to overthrow Henry VIII, who had taken control of the Church of England away from the Pope, and replace him with Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter, who was a first cousin of the King.

As part of the investigations into the so-called Exeter Conspiracy, Geoffrey Pole was arrested in August 1538; he had been corresponding with Reginald, and the investigation of Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter (Henry VIII’s first cousin and Geoffrey’s second cousin) had turned up his name. Geoffrey had appealed to Thomas Cromwell, who had him arrested and interrogated. Under interrogation, Geoffrey said that his eldest brother, Lord Montagu, and the Marquess had been parties to his correspondence with Reginald. Montagu, Exeter, and Margaret were arrested in November 1538.

In January 1539, Geoffrey was pardoned, but Margaret’s son Henry, Baron Montagu (and cousin Exeter) were later executed for treason after trial. In May 1539, Henry, Margaret, Exeter and others were attainted, as Margaret’s father had been. This conviction meant they lost their titles and their lands—mostly in the South of England, conveniently located to assist any invasion.

Margaret Pole, as she now was styled, was held in the Tower of London for two and a half years. She, her grandson Henry (son of her own son Henry), and Exeter’s son were held together and supported by the king. She was attended by servants and received an extensive grant of clothing in March 1541. In 1540, Cromwell himself fell from favour and was attainted and executed.

On the morning of 27 May 1541, Margaret was told she was to die within the hour. She answered that no crime had been imputed to her. Nevertheless, she was taken from her cell to the place within the precincts of the Tower of London where a low wooden block had been prepared instead of the customary scaffold. As she was of noble birth, she was not executed before the populace.

Eye witness accounts state that, “at first, when the sentence of death was made known to her, she found the thing very strange, not knowing of what crime she was accused, nor how she had been sentenced” and that, because the main executioner had been sent north to deal with rebels, the execution was performed by “a wretched and blundering youth who literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces in the most pitiful manner”.

Her son, Reginald Pole, said that he would “never fear to call himself the son of a martyr”. She was later regarded by Catholics as such and was beatified on 29 December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII.

On these dates in History: May 27.

Tags

Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Countess of Salisbury, Duchess of Montpensier, Elizabeth-Charlotte, Emperor Alexander III of Russia, Emperor of Russia, Emperor Peter the Great, King Edward IV of England, King Louis XIV of France and Navarre, Madame de Montespan, Margaret Pole, Princess Palatine, Tsar Simeon I the Great

* 1153 – Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland.

Malcolm IV (between April 23 and May 24, 1141 – December 9, 1165) was King of Scotland from 1153 until his death. He was the eldest son of Henry, Earl of Huntingdon and Northumbria (died 1152) and Ada de Warenne. He succeeded his grandfather David I, and shared David’s Anglo-Norman tastes.

* 1199 – John is crowned King of England.

John (December 24, 1166 – October 19, 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philippe II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John’s reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document sometimes considered an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom. John was the youngest of the four surviving sons of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine.

* 1257 – Richard of Cornwall, and his wife, Sanchia of Provence, are crowned King and Queen of the Germans at Aachen Cathedral.

Richard (January 5, 1209 – April 2, 1272), second son of John, King of England, was the nominal Count of Poitou (1225–43), Earl of Cornwall (from 1225) and King of Germany (from 1257). He was one of the wealthiest men in Europe and joined the Barons’ Crusade, where he achieved success as a negotiator for the release of prisoners and assisted with the building of the citadel in Ascalon.

* 1703 – Emperor Peter I the Great of Russia founds the city of Saint Petersburg.

The city was founded by Emperor Peter I the Great on May 27, 1703, on the site of a captured Swedish fortress. It served as a capital of the Russian Tsardom and the subsequent Russian Empire from 1713 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow.

Emperor Peter I the Great of Russia

* 1883 – Alexander III is crowned Emperor of Russia.

Alexander III (March 10, 1845 – November 1, 1894) was Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 13 March 13, 1881 until his death on November 1, 1894. He was highly reactionary and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II. Under the influence of Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827–1907) he opposed any reform that limited his autocratic rule. During his reign, Russia fought no major wars; he was therefore styled “The Peacemaker”

On March 13, 1881 Alexander’s father, Emperor Alexander II, was assassinated by members of the extremist organization Narodnaya Volya. As a result, he ascended to the Russian imperial throne in Nennal. Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark) were officially crowned and anointed at the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on May 27, 1883. Alexander’s ascension to the throne was followed by an outbreak of anti-Jewish riots.

Births

* 1537 – Ludwig IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Marburg (d. 1604)

Landgrave Ludwig IV of Hesse-Marburg (May 27, 1537 – October 9, 1604) was the son of Landgrave Philipp I of Hesse and his wife Christine of Saxony. After the death of his father in 1567, Hesse was divided among his sons and Louis received Hesse-Marburg (Upper Hesse) including Marburg and Giessen.

1626 – Willem II, Prince of Orange (d. 1650)

Willem II, Prince of Orange

Willem II (May 27, 1626 – November 6, 1650) was sovereign Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, Overijssel and Groningen in the United Provinces of the Netherlands from March 14, 1647 until his death three years later. His only child, William III, co-reigned as King of England, Ireland, and Scotland along with his wife Queen Mary II.

* 1627 – Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier (d. 1693)

Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, (May 27, 1627 – April 5, 1693) known as La Grande Mademoiselle, was the only daughter of Gaston d’Orléans with his first wife Marie de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier. Gaston d’Orléans the third son of King Henri IV of France and his wife Marie de’ Medici.

Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier

One of the greatest heiresses in history, she died unmarried and childless, leaving her vast fortune to her cousin, Philippe of France. After a string of proposals from various members of European ruling families, including Charles II of England, Afonso VI of Portugal, and Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy, she eventually fell in love with the courtier Antoine Nompar de Caumont and scandalised the court of France when she asked Louis XIV for permission to marry him, as such a union was viewed as a mésalliance. She is best remembered for her role in the Fronde, her role in bringing the famous composer Lully to the king’s court, and her Mémoires.

* 1652 – Elizabeth-Charlotte, Princess Palatine of Germany (d. 1722)

Princess Elisabeth-Charlotte (May 27, 1652 – December 8, 1722) was a German princess and, as Madame, the second wife of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, younger brother of Louis XIV of France, and mother of France’s ruler during the Regency. Louis invoked her hereditary claim to the Palatinate as pretext to launch the Nine Years’ War in 1688. Her vast, frank correspondence provides a detailed account of the personalities and activities at the court of her brother-in-law, Louis XIV, for half a century, from the date of her marriage in 1672.

Princess Elisabeth-Charlotte was born in Heidelberg Castle, to Charles I Ludwig, Elector Palatine of the Simmern branch of the House of Wittelsbach, and Landgravine Charlotte of Hesse-Cassel. Princess Elisabeth-Charlotte is directly related to several iconic European monarchs. Her grandmother Elizabeth Stuart was a Scottish and later English princess, daughter of James I-VI of England, Scotland and Ireland and granddaughter of Mary I, Queen of Scots. Her first cousin became George I, the first Hanover King of Great Britain.

* 1756 – Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria (d. 1825)

Maximilian I Joseph (May 27, 1756 – October 13, 1825) was Duke of Zweibrücken from 1795 to 1799, prince-elector of Bavaria (as Maximilian IV Joseph) from 1799 to 1806, then King of Bavaria (as Maximilian I Joseph) from 1806 to 1825. He was a member of the House of Palatinate-Birkenfeld-Zweibrücken, a branch of the House of Wittelsbach.

King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria

Maximilian-Joseph was the son of the Count Palatine Friedrich-Michael of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld and Maria-Francisca of Sulzbach, was at Schwetzingen, between Heidelberg and Mannheim.

Deaths

* 866 – Ordoño I of Asturias (b. 831)

Ordoño I (c. 821 – May 27, 866) was King of Asturias from 850 until his death. He was probably raised in Lugo, capital of the province of Galicia, of which his father, Ramiro, had been named governor. There he was educated, including in the military arts.

On January 1, 850, Ordoño succeeded his father as king. As he was his father’s heir, he was the first king of Asturias to ascend the throne without election. Ordoño married Muniadona. He had six children, including his successor, Alfonso III.

Ordoño died in Oviedo and was succeeded by his eldest son.

* 927 – Simeon I of Bulgaria first Bulgarian Emperor (b. 864)

Tsar Simeon I the Great ruled over Bulgaria from 893 to 927, during the First Bulgarian Empire. Simeon’s successful campaigns against the Byzantines, Magyars and Serbs led Bulgaria to its greatest territorial expansion ever, making it the most powerful state in contemporary Eastern and Southeast Europe. His reign was also a period of unmatched cultural prosperity and enlightenment later deemed the Golden Age of Bulgarian culture.

* 1039 – Dirk III, Count of Holland (b. 981)

Dirk III (also called Dirik or Theodoric) was Count of Holland from 993 to 27 May 1039, until 1005 under regency of his mother. It is thought that Dirk III went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land around 1030, hence his nickname of Hierosolymita (‘the Jerusalemite’ in Latin).

The area over which Dirk ruled was called Holland for the first time only in 1101 and was known as West Friesland at this time. The actual title of Count Dirk III was ‘Count in Friesland’. Western Frisia was very different from the area (North and South Holland) of today. Most of the territory was boggy and subject to constant flooding and hence very sparsely populated. The main areas of habitation were in the dunes at the coast and on heightened areas near the rivers.

* 1508 – Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan (b. 1452)

Ludovico Maria Sforza (July 27, 1452 – May 27, 1508), was an Italian Renaissance prince who ruled as Duke of Milan from 1494, following the death of his nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza, until 1499. A member of the Sforza family, he was the fourth son of Francesco I Sforza. He was famed as a patron of Leonardo da Vinci and other artists, and presided over the final and most productive stage of the Milanese Renaissance. He is probably best known as the man who commissioned The Last Supper.

* 1541 – Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (b. 1473)

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (August 14, 1473 – May 27, 1541), was an English peeress. She was the daughter of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, the brother of kings Edward IV and Richard III of England. Margaret was one of two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right with no titled husband. One of the few surviving members of the Plantagenet dynasty after the Wars of the Roses, she was executed in 1541 at the command of Henry VIII, who was the son of her first cousin Elizabeth of York. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Catholic Church on December 29, 1886.

* 1707 – Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan, French mistress of Louis XIV of France (b. 1640)

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise of Montespan (October 5, 1640 – May 27, 1707), better known as Madame de Montespan was the most celebrated maîtresse-en-titre of King Louis XIV of France and Navarre, by whom she had seven children.

Born into one of the oldest noble families of France, the House of Rochechouart, Madame de Montespan was called by some the “true Queen of France”‘ during her romantic relationship with Louis XIV due to the pervasiveness of her influence at court during that time.

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise of Montespan

Her so-called “reign” lasted from around 1667, when she first danced with Louis XIV at a ball hosted by the king’s younger brother, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, at the Louvre Palace, until her alleged involvement in the notorious Affaire des Poisons in the late 1670s to 1680s. Her immediate contemporary was Barbara Villiers, mistress of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland.

In 1673, the couple’s three living illegitimate children were legitimated by Louis XIV and given the royal surname of de Bourbon. Their mother’s name, however, was not mentioned in the legitimization documents, as Madame de Montespan was still married to her husband. If their maternal parentage had been revealed, the marquis could have legally claimed Madame de Montespan’s illegitimate children with the king as his own.

The last years of Madame de Montespan’s life were given up to a very severe penance. Real sorrow over her death was felt by her three youngest children. She died on May 27, 1707 at the age of almost sixty-seven while taking the waters at Bourbon-l’Archambault in order to try to heal an illness. The king forbade her children to wear mourning for her.

She is an ancestress of several royal houses in Europe, including those of Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, Portugal, Belgium and Luxembourg.