Arthur Pole’s death during the sweating-sickness outbreak of summer 1528 turns a feared epidemic into a private family catastrophe. His illness is accompanied by the collapse of order at his household, and his death prompts his brother Montague to bring him to Bisham Priory for burial among the Plantagenets.

Outbreak and family circumstances

The narrative places Arthur’s death amid recurring fear of the Sweat, a disease the household associates with the Tudor army’s arrival in England. Margaret recalls that it had nearly emptied London during the king’s assembly there, and fears its capacity to kill rapidly. By the summer of 1528, the threat is not an abstraction: Arthur is ill, and his wife, Jane, is also close to death.

The sickness makes ordinary household responsibilities precarious. At Arthur’s house at Broadhurst Manor in West Sussex, the steward has barricaded himself in his rooms, abandoning his duties out of fear. With the household unmanaged, only one woman remains to care for Jane. The surrounding estate is also disrupted: workers are sick or dead, the fields’ crops are ripening, but the hay remains uncut and the village is quiet, with shuttered windows. The scene presents the epidemic not only as danger to individuals but as a force that interrupts care, farming, and the routines that sustain a household.

Death and removal from Broadhurst

Margaret learns of Arthur’s death from Geoffrey, who tells her that his brother is dead. Jane has not been told; she is being tended in her private rooms while already gravely sick. The household steward’s absence leaves no one to arrange matters as they ordinarily would be arranged. In response, Montague takes command and orders that Arthur’s body be removed from the house and brought to the family priory.

This decision carries Arthur away from a home made chaotic by sickness and toward the family’s place of burial. The narrative does not describe a medical treatment or a confirmed explanation for the disease. Instead, it shows the family confronting illness through urgent practical choices: caring for the surviving sick, taking responsibility for the dead, and finding a place for burial when the household can no longer manage its usual duties.

Burial and aftermath

Arthur is laid to rest at Bisham Priory, where other Plantagenet kings are buried. After the church has been swept, cleaned, and censed, Margaret returns with Geoffrey and Constance to begin prayers for his soul, while the monks take up the chant. The funeral joins the family’s immediate grief to its dynastic memory: Arthur is mourned as a son and brother, and buried among the Plantagenet dead.

On the walk back, Margaret sees the great house she has renewed, with the family crest above its door. The restored house and its visible emblem testify to wealth and standing she recovered for herself and her children, but they could not save Arthur. His death thus reverses the promise of material restoration: family lands and a renewed home offer no protection against the sickness.

Significance

Arthur’s death gives personal force to the wider epidemic that Margaret fears and associates with the Tudor king’s advance. Earlier, she understands responsibility for sickness on her lands to include sending food to affected cottages, arranging visits from the priest, and ensuring that the dead can be buried. At Broadhurst, that burden appears in sharper form as illness disables a household and brings loss into her own family.

The burial at Bisham also makes the event part of a larger pattern of vulnerability in the narrative. The Plantagenet name, the family crest, and the priory’s royal dead preserve a sense of inherited identity, but none can keep Arthur alive. The final contrast is between what Margaret has managed to rebuild and what remains beyond her power: the house stands renewed, while her beloved son is gone.