Henry VIII and the Plantagenet Poles by Adam Pennington

Author:Adam Pennington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Tudor & Elizabethan Era (1485-1603)
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2024-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

De Unitate

‘Not like a human being, but a wild beast’

Reginald Pole

The Pilgrimage of Grace was the most significant and troubling period of civil unrest that Henry VIII had known during his reign. Large swathes of the north of England and pockets within the Midlands would come out in revolt against the king’s actions, although openly would profess their issue was not the king himself, but his councillors, with Thomas Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer as their prime targets. This points to the key grievance of those rising up, for at its core, the pilgrimage looked to address the break with the Catholic Church. It also provided what could have been the one true opportunity the Poles and the other White Rose houses, such as the Courtenays, had at overthrowing Henry VIII, and yet no such action took place. Baron Montagu could have raised the county of Hampshire, and the Marquis of Exeter the west of England. The combined forces would have plunged the south into chaos, opening the capital to the northern rebels with ease. Instead, the Poles, the Courtenays and the rest of their kin remained outwardly loyal. Based on Margaret Pole’s adherence to the memory of Queen Katherine, and the interests of Lady Mary, it is probable that she and her family secretly sympathised with the pilgrims’ plight, but as ever, fidelity to the king would come before family honour. Both Henry, Baron Montagu and Geoffrey Pole were required to provide men who would fight against those raising arms; Montagu providing 200, to Geoffrey’s feebler 20.1 The Marquess of Exeter would also be a key figure alongside other senior noblemen in bringing the rebels to heel. Although the downfall of Anne Boleyn gave the Pole family much to rejoice in, the fallout from her short lived reign had far reaching consequences to the detriment of Margaret and her kin. The speed at which the fallen queen had gone from being the most powerful woman in England to a convicted traitor was staggeringly swift. Just seventeen days divided Anne’s arrest from her execution. It highlighted how readily the king could turn on those he held dearest. The men who had been executed alongside Anne Boleyn included some of the king’s oldest friends, most notably Henry Norris, his long term groom of the stool. This callous disregard for loyalty must have been disconcerting to witness, even for Anne’s many detractors, for it showed quite simply that nobody was safe. The king of old, the buoyant, young and easy going ‘man of the people’ was now a distant memory. Anne Boleyn’s death would not bring about an immediate return to Papal authority, nor would it see Lady Mary restored as princess. Everything that the Pole family had been pinning their hopes on would become ultimately fruitless. The idea that all would be ‘as it was’ could not have been further from the truth, a fact which highlighted with spectacular fashion that Anne may have been the instigator for change, but that this change had not died with her.

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