Broadhurst Manor is the West Sussex home of Arthur Pole and Jane Pole, and, in 1528, the setting of a family emergency that turns an estate into a scene of illness, abandonment, and urgent caretaking. Its importance lies in the contrast between the inheritance Margaret Pole sought to secure for her descendants and the sudden disorder that threatens to leave that inheritance uncared for. When Arthur dies of the sweating sickness, Margaret and Montague intervene at Broadhurst to manage the house and lands for Arthur’s son Henry.

Family Home and Estate

Broadhurst is associated with Arthur Pole and his wife, Jane Pole. By 1522 Arthur lives there with Jane, while Margaret lives at Bisham Manor; Arthur is nearby, and she and Montague visit him from time to time. The manor therefore belongs to a wider family landscape in which adult sons establish households of their own but remain connected to their mother and brothers through visits, correspondence, and the prospect of inheritance.

The estate is more than a residence. Its fields, harvest, hay, household staff, and village all depend on labor being carried out at the right time. That dependence becomes stark in 1528: the crops are ripening, but the hay remains uncut, and the people who should be protecting the fields from birds are sick or dead. The manor’s fortunes are tied to the surrounding community as well as to the family living in its great house.

Broadhurst also enters the family’s political and dynastic geography before the epidemic. In 1521 Margaret sends a warning to Arthur at Broadhurst, directing him, if danger reaches him, to go to Bisham and wait with Geoffrey Pole. The instruction makes the manor one address in a cautious plan for moving family members to safety. Its significance is not only domestic: it is part of a network of homes through which Margaret tries to protect her sons as suspicion falls on the family.

Household and Inheritance

Arthur’s position at Broadhurst is bound to the future of his children. During the epidemic, he sends his children Henry and Margaret, along with the infant Mary and a wet nurse, to Margaret’s care. His message reports that the sickness has reached Broadhurst and that he and Jane are both ill; he asks his mother to care for the children if they do not survive. The manor’s danger thus produces a separation between the sick parents and the children sent away from the household.

Arthur’s death makes the estate’s future an immediate concern. Margaret understands the lands as the inheritance of his son Henry, not simply as property whose administration can wait until the family recovers. When she and Montague ride to Broadhurst, she finds the house in confusion and the farming left unattended. Servants have been sleeping on unchanged straw and eating from the larder while the household has been ill. The fields are productive, but the work needed to turn that promise into a harvest is not being done.

Margaret’s intervention is therefore both practical and dynastic. She gives orders to the servants and takes responsibility for the estate’s management, insisting that Arthur’s lands must not be allowed to go to waste. Her concern is that without a fortune for his children, Arthur’s effort to establish their future would leave no lasting legacy. Broadhurst becomes the material test of that claim: preserving the inheritance requires attention to its house, labor, and crops in the present.

The Sweating Sickness at Broadhurst

The epidemic reaches the manor amid widespread fear. News from London tells Margaret that people are dying in the streets and collapsing in gutters on their way home. At Broadhurst, Arthur and Jane fall ill, and the sickness disrupts not only family life but the systems that keep the estate functioning. The household steward abandons his duties and barricades himself in his own rooms. With no one organizing the house, it falls into disorder.

The crisis extends beyond the manor’s doors. Margaret and Montague find a silent village with shuttered windows and bundles of hay at many doors, signs of illness affecting the surrounding community. The boys who should be driving birds away from ripening crops are sick or dead; the great house is nearly deserted, and no one is managing either the household or the lands. The description connects the private emergency at Broadhurst to the wider breakdown of rural work caused by the epidemic.

Jane is also close to death, but she has not been told that Arthur has died. Only one woman is attending her in her private rooms. In the absence of the steward and effective household order, Montague arranges for Arthur’s body to be removed from the house and taken to the chapel at Bisham Priory. The move carries the family’s loss away from Broadhurst while Jane remains ill there, unaware of her husband’s death.

Rescue and Narrative Significance

After Arthur’s death, Margaret and Montague return to Broadhurst and confront the neglected estate directly. Margaret begins issuing instructions in the hall despite Montague’s concern that she need not take on the task herself. Her response shows how the manor’s meaning changes: it is first a home from which children must be sent to safety, then a disordered household, and finally an inheritance that its family must actively salvage.

Broadhurst concentrates the novel’s connection between land, kinship, and vulnerability. Its harvest and household cannot be secured by title or family ambition alone; they depend on workers who may be struck down and on relatives willing to assume abandoned responsibilities. For Margaret, the urgent work of restoring order is an act of care for Arthur’s children and a defense of the future he hoped to leave them. The manor’s crisis gives that defense a concrete form in uncared-for fields, a failing household, and a great house whose ordinary routines have been broken by sickness.