Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury (14 August 1473 – 27 May 1541), also called Margaret Pole as a result of her marriage to Sir Richard 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. Margaret was one of just two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right (suo jure) without a husband in the House of Lords. As one of the few members of the House of Plantagenet to have survived the Wars of the Roses, she was executed in 1541 at the command of King Henry VIII, the second monarch of the House of Tudor, who was the son of her first cousin, Elizabeth of York. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Roman Catholic Church on 29 December 1886.
Early life
Margaret was born at Farleigh Castle in Somerset, the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, and his wife Isabel Neville, who was the elder daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and his wife Anne 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; her father had two servants killed when he thought they had poisoned her. The Duke of Clarence plotted against Edward IV and in February 1478 was attainted and executed for treason. His lands and titles were thereby forfeited. Edward IV died in 1483 when Margaret was ten. The following year, the late king's marriage was declared invalid by the statute Titulus Regius of 1484, making his children illegitimate. As Margaret and her brother, Edward, were debarred from the throne by their father's attainder, their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was offered the crown and became king as Richard III. He had married Anne Neville, Margaret’s maternal aunt.
Richard III sent the children to Sheriff Hutton Castle in Yorkshire. In 1485, he was defeated and killed 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. As young Edward was a potential York claimant to the throne, he was soon moved to the Tower of London. Edward was briefly displayed in public at St Paul's Cathedral in 1487 in response to the presentation of the impostor Lambert Simnel as the "Earl of Warwick" to the Irish lords.
Shortly after that (probably in November 1487) Henry VII gave Margaret in marriage to his cousin, Sir Richard Pole, whose mother was a half-sister of the king's mother, Margaret Beaufort. When Perkin Warbeck impersonated Edward IV's presumed-dead son, Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, in 1499, Margaret's brother Edward was attainted and executed for involvement in the plot.
Richard Pole held various 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 Arthur died in 1502 aged fifteen.
When her husband died in 1505, Margaret became a widow with five children. She had a small estate of land inherited from her husband but no other income or prospects. Henry VII paid for Richard's funeral. To ease the situation, Margaret devoted her third son, Reginald Pole, to the Church; he was to have an eventful career as a papal Legate and later as Archbishop of Canterbury. Later in life, he bitterly resented her abandonment of him. After her husband's death, Margaret had such inadequate means to support herself and her children that she was forced to live at Syon Abbey as the guest of the Bridgettine nuns. She remained there until she returned to favour when Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509.