Blessed Margaret Pole - May 28
smsknights Blessed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (14 August 1473 – 27 May 1541), was an English peeress. 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.[2] 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 29 December 1886.[3]
The following poem was found carved on the wall of her cell:
For traitors on the block should die;
I am no traitor, no, not I!
My faithfulness stands fast and so,
Towards the block I shall not go!
Nor make one step, as you shall see;
Christ in Thy Mercy, save Thou me![12][13]
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. Two written reports survive of her execution: by Marillac, the French ambassador; and by Chapuys, ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor. Their accounts differ, with Marillac's report, dispatched 2 days afterwards, recording that the execution took place in a corner of the Tower with so few people present that in the evening news of her execution was doubted. Chapuys wrote 2 weeks after the execution that 150 witnesses had been present including the Lord Mayor of London. He wrote 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." An apocryphal account, described in Burke's Peerage as an invention to explain the appalling circumstances of her death, states that Margaret refused to lay her head on the block, declaiming, "So should traitors do, and I am none;" according to the account, she turned her head "every which way," instructing the executioner that, if he wanted her head, he should take it as he could.[14][15][16][17][18] Margaret was buried in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower of London.[19]