Mass in Honour of Blessed Margaret Pole

I have no attribution for this. It was posted on FishEaters Forum as you see it, with no link.

Catholic Online has this to say about Blessed Margaret,

Martyr of England. She was born Margaret Plantagenet, the niece of Edward IV and Rich­ard III. She married Sir Reginald Pole about 1491 and bore five sons, including Reginald Cardinal Pole. Margaret was widowed, named countess of Salisbury, and appointed governess to Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon, Spain. She opposed Henry's mar­riage to Anne Boleyn, and the king exiled her from court, although he called her "the holiest woman in England." When her son, Cardinal Pole, denied Henry's Act of Supremacy, the king imprisoned Margaret in the Tower of London for two years and then beheaded her on May 28. In 1538, her other two sons were executed. She was never given a legal trial. She was seventy when she was martyred. Margaret was beatified in 1886.

And here is the post from FishEaters.

Church of St Mary Star of the Sea, West Melbourne
Saturday July 29th 2017

Homily
Most Rev. Peter J. Elliott, STD
Auxiliary Bishop, Melbourne

Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of George Plantagenet, first Duke of Clarence was born in 1472, on the eve of the Assumption of Our Lady. Birth into the old royal family meant that from its beginning her life was inevitably entangled in the greatest and most complex family feud in English history, the Wars of the Roses.

Born into the House of York, hers was a life of prestige, power and privilege, that is, had it not been for the dynastic struggles, which brought her both fortune and misfortune, wealth lost, wealth regained, royal favour bestowed, royal disfavour imposed. But worst of all, death stalked the Plantagenets. The old royal line was not so welcome after 1485 when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field and took the crown as Henry VII. The Plantagenets could also lay claim to that crown.

In light of that threat, Richard III had executed Margaret’s father, the Duke of Clarence, and under his successor the Tudor king Henry VII her brother Edward was soon seen as a threat. Yet the Plantagenets might still be useful as a royal bloodline. 

So Henry VII gave Margaret in marriage to his relative Sir Richard Pole, to whom she bore five children. But after his death in 1504, she was left destitute and she had to find a home with the Brigettine Nuns at Syon Abbey. By this stage she had seen her brother Edward sent to his death. Would that fate also come to threaten her?

The much welcomed ascent to the throne of the young King Henry VIII in 1509 found Margaret once again back in royal favour, and her fortunes improved to the point where, by 1538, she was one of the richest women in England. An intelligent woman of culture, she promoted the new learning of what is called the Renaissance. But as events unfolded she was involved with the “wrong people”, being allied to Queen Catherine of Aragon, for a time even acting as governess to her little child the Princess Mary. Then the rise of Anne Boleyn and the “great matter” of the King’s divorce from Queen Catherine brought royal disfavour and now Margaret found herself in real danger.

She was opposed to the royal divorce and she did not welcome the new Queen and especially Henry’s tragic break with Rome. She had already given her son Reginald to the service of the Church and he was making an ecclesiastical career for himself in Europe. The fall and execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536 brought her back to court, briefly. But her son Reginald, who had at first had worked in the King’s marriage interest, turned against the schismatic monarch. Reginald Pole was created a Cardinal in 1537 by Pope Paul III, and Henry VIII’s agents even tried to murder him. Plots and counterplots were bringing death closer to Margaret and her other children. Her consistent enemy was the King’s loyal henchman, Thomas Cromwell, and he was spying on her family.

The tipping point came with the arrest of her son Geoffrey who, perhaps to save his own skin, implicated Margaret and his brother Henry, Baron Montagu, and a cousin, Lord Exeter, in a conspiracy against the King. Margaret was innocent but she was sent to the Tower with them and her son and the cousin were executed for treason. 

The religious storm which had already devoured St John Fisher and St Thomas More was now bearing in upon her. She could not avoid it. She spent several years, her last years, in the Tower. In 1541 her enemy, Henry’s henchman Thomas Cromwell, fell from power and favour and was himself executed. But this did not help Margaret.

She was already on the death list as a Catholic of royal blood, hence a supposed threat to the ruthless King and his new form of religion.

On May 27th 1541 Margaret was told she had but one hour to live. Her surprise execution had been well-planned. But in her innocence she was confused. She could not work out why she was being executed for she was certainly not a traitor. But she went to the block bravely and calmly. Her beheading, in two accounts, was bungled, a brutal butchery. An old lady of sixty-seven years, an advanced age in those times, was legally murdered by the tyrant king. But was her death contrived for political reasons? 

Or was it because the blood lines that passed through her seemed to threaten the House of Tudor?

Her grief stricken son, Cardinal Reginald Pole, living in exile in Europe, recognized the real motive for his mother’s sudden execution. She suffered the penalty because of her open fidelity to the Catholic Faith and her loyalty to the Pope. Her death was also
a calculated act of cruelty against the cardinal. But his day would eventually come. 

After the destructive imposition of Protestantism during reign of the boy King Edward I, in 1553 Cardinal Pole would return to England as Papal Legate and Archbishop of Canterbury, serving wisely and well in the brief restoration of unity with Rome, the
restoration of the Faith, the Mass and the sacraments under Queen Mary I, that little princess to whom Margaret had been governess so many years before. Margaret would not see these events unfold in this world, but she helped pave the way for this brief restoration of Catholicism.

Margaret died for the Faith. She was a martyr who died courageously because she was the target of “odium fidei”, hatred of the faith, and that was the judgement of Pope Leo XIII in 1886 when he beatified Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury. 

Inspired by her Australian descendant, the Earl of Loudoun who is with us today, we pray in this Mass that she will be raised to the altars of Holy Church as Saint Margaret Pole. May she pray for us as we gather to promote her just cause.