About
Countess of Salisbury who was a prominent English noblewoman and one of the only members of the House of Plantagenet to have lived through the Wars of the Roses. She was a devoted Catholic and served as governess to Princess Mary before being executed by the order of Henry VIII amid political tensions. She later went on to become beatified as a martyr by the Catholic Church in 1886.
Before Fame
As a child, she learned to play the virginals. She was married to Sir Richard Pole, who was eleven years her senior, when she was just fourteen years old. Together, they had five children.
Trivia
She and Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, were the only two women in all of 16th-century England to maintain the title of peeress in their own right (suo jure) without a husband in the House of Lords.
Family Life
She and her husband were the parents of five children - Henry, Arthur, Ursula, Reginald, and Geoffrey. Her son Reginald became the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury.
Associated With
She has been depicted in modern culture by actresses including Rebecca Benson, Laura Carmichael, and Harriet Walter.
