House of Lords

The House of Lords appears in Margaret Pole’s account at two moments when parliamentary authority is enlisted in the Crown’s struggle over religious allegiance and dynastic security. Its members are summoned to an oath concerning the succession and later sit in a Parliament that brands the Plantagenets traitors; in the latter episode, the Lords’ near-silence helps expose how little resistance the procedure offers to royal power.

Members and Political Setting

The narrative presents the Lords through the peers and nobles who are called into royal business, rather than describing the institution’s procedures in detail. In spring 1534, Margaret Pole is summoned with the other peers to the Privy Council at Westminster Palace, where Thomas Cromwell is to administer the succession oath to the nobility. The scene places aristocratic assent within an executive setting: the peers stand before the newly powerful chancellor, while the Crown determines the terms on which their loyalty is to be expressed.

The distinction between the council gathering and Parliament matters. The oath is administered to the nobility assembled at the Palace of Westminster; the later attainder is presented to Parliament, whose two houses include the Lords. Together, these scenes show the nobles being addressed both as individuals required to swear and as members of a legislative body asked to act on the Crown’s behalf.

The Succession Oath and Competing Authorities

The oath arrives amid a conflict over whether Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon is valid and who may determine the consequences for the succession. Margaret knows that the Pope has publicly ruled the marriage valid and instructed the king to remain with his wife. Yet the Pope has not excommunicated Henry, leaving the peers, in Margaret’s account, without a clear authorization to defy him. Each must decide what to do.

The political pressure rests on incompatible claims of authority. The Pope’s judgment supports Katherine’s marriage, while Henry claims that the Pope has no authority in England and asserts the power to declare his marriage ended, Anne Boleyn queen, and Anne’s child a princess. Margaret describes the king’s declaration as making his own account of reality prevail. The oath therefore asks for more than a formal acknowledgment of succession: it tests whether a peer will accept the Crown’s settlement over the competing judgment of the Church.

Thomas More’s refusal sharpens the personal stakes of that test. Margaret recalls that More would have signed a rewritten version of the oath, since he disagreed with little of it, but could not sign it as it stood for the sake of his soul. The king had promised More that he would never put him to this test, yet broke that promise. The account does not describe the Lords as a body deciding More’s case; instead, it sets his conscientious refusal against the oath demanded of the realm’s nobles and the king’s willingness to override a personal pledge.

The Attainder and the Lords’ Silence

Later, Parliament considers an Act of Attainder against the Plantagenets. The measure declares them traitors without trial or evidence, forfeits their goods to the Crown, and disinherits their children. Margaret and Gertrude Courtenay are included by name among dead men, making the proceeding reach beyond individual defendants to their families and inheritance.

The Crown’s physical exhibit is a white silk badge embroidered with the Five Wounds of Christ and a white rose, which Thomas Cromwell produces from a satchel. Margaret explains that owning such a badge in a household chest is not itself a crime, and Cromwell accuses her of no specific offense. Nevertheless, he offers it as conclusive proof of guilt. The Lords and the House of Commons barely respond. Their silence leaves the attainder’s sweeping claims effectively unanswered in the scene, even though the object presented as evidence does not establish a crime.

The consequences are immediate for Margaret and her family: she is to be kept in the Tower at the king’s wish, while her grandson Harry and Gertrude and her young son must remain there too. The Lords’ response is thus registered less through debate than through the absence of protest as confiscation, disinheritance, and imprisonment are set in motion.

Institutional Significance

Across these episodes, the House of Lords is shown within a wider contest over who can define lawful marriage, succession, religious allegiance, and treason. The oath turns a disputed royal claim into a demand for public assent; the attainder turns a family’s name and a devotional emblem into grounds for punishment without trial or evidence. Margaret’s account offers little procedural detail about the Lords, but its paired scenes give the institution a stark political role: its members are among those asked to ratify the Crown’s position, and their muted response accompanies the destruction of the Plantagenets’ legal and material security.