Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/34

 her he had three sons—John, Edmund, and Richard—all separately noticed.

[Doyle's Official Baronage, iii. 438; Burke's Extinct and Dormant Peerage; Ramsay's Lancaster and York, ii. 245; Rot. Parl. v. 470 n., vi. 75 n.; Paston Letters, vols. ii. and iii. passim; Materials for the Hist. of Henry VII, ed. Campbell (Rolls Ser.), i. 26, ii. 325, &c.; Grants of Edward V (Camd. Soc.), xxi.; Warkworth's Chron. (Camd. Soc.), p. 11; Gairdner's Richard III; Cal. Pat. Rolls Ed. V and Ric. III (Rep. Dep.-Keeper of Public Records).] 

POLE, MARGARET, (1473–1541), was daughter of George Plantagenet, duke of Clarence [q. v.], by his wife Isabel, daughter of Warwick the Kingmaker. She was born at Castle Farley, near Bath, in August 1473 (Rows Roll, 33, 61), and was married by Henry VII to Sir Richard Pole, son of Sir Geoffrey Pole, whose wife, Edith St. John, was half-sister of the king's mother, Margaret Beaufort (see Notes and Queries, 1st ser. v. 163–4). Sir Richard was a landed gentleman of Buckinghamshire, whom Henry made a squire of his bodyguard and knight of the Garter. He also gave him various offices in Wales, such as the constableship of Harlech and Montgomery castles and the sheriffwick of the county of Merioneth; he held, too, the controllership of the port of Bristol (, Materials and MS. Calendar of Patent Rolls). His marriage to Margaret probably took place about 1491, certainly not later than 1494, in which year the king made a payment of 20l. ‘to my lady Pole in crowns’ (Excerpta Historica, p. 99). Next year Pole seems to have raised men against Perkin Warbeck. In 1497 he was retained to serve against Scotland with five demi-lances and 200 archers, and shortly afterwards with 600 men-at-arms, 60 demi-lances, and 540 bows and bills. Two or three years later he was appointed chief gentleman of the bedchamber to Prince Arthur, whom he attended into Wales after his marriage, and the chief government of the marches was committed to his charge. He died in 1505 (Henry VII's Privy Purse Expenses, p. 132), leaving his widow with five children: viz. Henry [q. v.] (Lord Montague), Arthur, Reginald [q. v.] the cardinal, and Geoffrey [q. v.], with Ursula, wife of Henry, lord Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham.

Margaret's brother Edward, earl of Warwick [q. v.], was judicially murdered by Henry VII in 1499. Henry VIII, who described Margaret as the most saintly woman in England, was anxious, after his accession, to atone to her for this injustice. He therefore granted her an annuity of 100l. on 4 Aug. 1509 (Cal. State Papers, Venetian, v. 247), and on 14 Oct. 1513 he created her Countess of Salisbury, and gave her the family lands of the earldom of Salisbury in fee. Her brother's attainder was reversed, and in the parliament of 1513–14 full restitution was made to her of the rights of her family. She thus became possessed of a very magnificent property, lying chiefly in Hampshire, Wiltshire, the western counties, and Essex. But there is no doubt that it was heavily burdened by redemption-money claimed by the king. On 25 May 1512 she had delivered to Wolsey 1,000l. as a first payment of a benevolence of five thousand marks for the king's wars, and in 1528 she was sued for a further instalment of 2,333l. 6s. 8d. Of her restored lands the manor of Canford and some others were soon reclaimed by the crown as part of the earldom of Somerset. In 1532 she purchased the manor of Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire from Sir John Gage.

Meanwhile she was made governess to the Princess Mary. But in 1521, at the time of the Duke of Buckingham's attainder, she and her sons seem to have been under a momentary cloud. She herself was allowed, however, to remain at court—‘propter nobilitatem et bonitatem illius’ (Cal. Henry VIII, iii. Nos. 1204, 1268). In 1525 she went with Princess Mary to Wales. In the summer of 1526, during her absence, the king visited her house at Warblington in Hampshire (ib. iv. Nos. 2343, 2407).

In 1533, when the king married Anne Boleyn, her loyalty was severely tried. She refused to give up Mary's jewels to a lady sent from court, and was discharged of her position as governess. She declared that she would still follow and serve the princess at her own expense (ib. iv. Nos. 849, 1009, 1041, 1528). Her self-sacrificing fidelity to the princess was fully recognised by Catherine of Arragon (ib. No. 1126). The king, however, took good care to separate his daughter from one whom she regarded as a second mother (ib. viii. 101).

After Anne Boleyn's fall in 1536 (ib. x. No. 1212) the countess returned to court. But at that very time her son Reginald sent to the king his book, ‘De Unitate Ecclesiastica,’ which gave deep offence, and she trembled for the result. Both she and her eldest son, Lord Montague, wrote to Reginald in strong language of reproof (ib. vol. xiii. pt. ii. p. 328). She denounced him as a traitor to her own servants, and expressed her grief that she had given birth to him (ib. xi. Nos. 93, 157). The letters,