Act of Attainder against the Plantagenets

The Act of Attainder against the Plantagenets is presented in the novel as a sweeping parliamentary measure that declares the Plantagenet family traitors without trial or evidence. It makes family identity itself grounds for punishment: property is forfeit to the Crown, children are disinherited, and members of the family are confined in the Tower of London. Its force lies not in a demonstrated crime but in the Crown’s ability to give legal form to suspicion.

Political and legal background

The act follows a wider struggle over who has authority to define lawful marriage, religious allegiance, and succession. When the Church submits to Henry VIII, the king claims control over the Church in England and rejects the Pope’s authority there. Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor. Later, the Pope publicly rules that the marriage of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon is valid, while the king asserts the contrary and requires the nobility to swear to a new succession settlement.

The oath exposes the risks of competing claims to authority. Thomas More refuses to sign it as written, despite Henry VIII’s earlier promise not to put him to that test. The narrator understands that people must decide what to do for themselves, caught between a papal ruling, the king’s demand, and their own consciences. This is the political climate in which the attainder becomes possible: royal power does not merely punish alleged disloyalty; it asserts the power to define the terms by which loyalty and guilt are judged.

A family network recast as a threat

The Plantagenets’ dense network of kinship had long served as a source of mutual support and political standing. The narrator describes cousins and kinsmen bound together by marriage and blood across England. The same pattern appears within her immediate family: her daughter Ursula is married to a duke’s son, her sons were raised in the household of George Neville, and her son Montague has married Neville’s daughter. Such connections concentrate land and influence within the family, but, viewed with suspicion, they can be recast as evidence of faction or conspiracy.

That danger is visible before the attainder. As Henry VIII moves against the Church and threatens the position of the queen and Princess Mary, Montague proposes that the family act together. His plan involves taking Geoffrey Pole to Calais, where he could carry news to Reginald Pole, a message to the Pope, and a letter for the queen’s nephew, the King of Spain. Montague presents collective action as a defense of the queen and princess and as an attempt to bring the king back to what he considers his proper course. The family’s political cohesion, however, is precisely what can be made to look incriminating under a government suspicious of Plantagenet influence.

Parliamentary presentation and the objects called evidence

In the summer of 1539, Thomas Cromwell brings the attainder before Parliament. It declares the Plantagenets traitors without trial or evidence, forfeits their goods to the Crown, and disinherits their children. The narrator and Gertrude Courtenay are included among the names of dead men, a formulation that places them under condemnation even though they are alive.

The proceedings then display letters associated with Gertrude and a letter the narrator had written to Reginald Pole to assure him of her love. That letter was never delivered. Thomas Cromwell also produces the Badge of the Five Wounds and White Rose, a white silk badge embroidered with the five wounds of Christ and a white rose above them, which Thomas Darcy had given the narrator. The badge is treated as conclusive evidence of guilt, although the narrative stresses that possessing an embroidered badge kept in an old box is not itself a crime. It is the most concrete object produced against her, and its religious and dynastic associations allow an emblem to stand in for proof of an offence.

The response in the houses of the Commons and Lords is muted. The badge does not provoke the uproar Thomas Cromwell may have anticipated; the members barely react. The scene leaves open whether they are weary of attainders and executions or recognize the weakness of the display. Either way, the measure proceeds without a persuasive account of a specific crime.

Consequences and significance

At Henry VIII’s wish, the narrator is kept in the Tower with her grandson Harry, Gertrude, and Gertrude’s young son. The attainder’s stated consequences reach beyond the accused adults: their goods are taken and their children’s inheritance is denied. In prison, the family’s status and property no longer protect them from the Crown’s control.

The narrator’s winter in the Tower gives this legal change a lived aftermath. Harry is allowed to attend Edward’s lessons and dine in the Courtenay rooms, while the narrator and Gertrude exchange goodwill without putting anything in writing. Their silence stands alongside the accusation built from letters. The narrator also learns that her cousin William de la Pole has died in the cold cell where he had been imprisoned for thirty-seven years, a reminder that confinement has long been part of the family’s vulnerability, though his death is not presented as a consequence of this act.

The attainder’s central reversal is that inherited connections and familiar objects can be recoded as crimes without an ordinary trial establishing guilt. By condemning a whole family, stripping it of property, and making its descendants legally vulnerable, the measure turns political suspicion into an instrument of rule.