The execution of Lord Darcy is the final reversal of a royal promise made in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Thomas Darcy, known to Margaret Pole as Tom Darcy, had carried the king’s pardon and was assured that a guilty verdict would not cost him his life. Instead, he was beheaded as a traitor on Tower Hill in June 1537. Margaret, who had understood the pardon as a sign that the northern rising was over and her sons could return, comes to see Darcy’s death as a betrayal of both the rebels and the faith for which he had hoped to die.

From Pardon to Arrest

The Pilgrimage of Grace had ended in apparent reconciliation. King Henry VIII’s pardon was carried north by Thomas Howard, while Robert Aske, the uprising’s leader, told the assembled pilgrims they had won a great victory and asked to be released from command. The pilgrims agreed; Aske removed the Badge of the Five Wounds and promised that they would wear no badge but the king’s. Margaret took the badge Thomas Darcy had given her, kissed it, and put it away in an old chest. She believed the pilgrimage was over and that her sons would come home.

The later arrest of Darcy makes that settlement look dangerously hollow. Margaret is away from London when he is brought to the Tower and questioned. Despite having the king’s pardon in his pocket, he faces Thomas Cromwell, whom Margaret describes as his judge and jury. Darcy speaks directly to Cromwell, accusing him of being the chief cause of the rebellion and mischief. When Cromwell reacts with surprise at such plain speech, Darcy predicts that if only one nobleman remains alive in England, that last lord will behead him. The defiance is not merely rhetorical: the pardon has not prevented his arrest, and the man who helped make the king’s settlement is now being interrogated as a traitor.

Trial and the Broken Promise

Darcy is questioned alongside John Hussey, the former chamberlain of Princess Mary. Margaret recalls Hussey’s patience and his wife’s loyalty to the princess, and hopes the princess will not hear that her old servant is under arrest. Cromwell’s lengthy and vindictive inquiry does not produce the testimony he seeks. Neither Darcy nor Hussey names another man or woman. Darcy refuses to identify who received the pilgrims’ badges, saying, “Old Tom has not one traitor’s tooth in his head.” He also denies Cromwell the account of his involvement that the interrogation appears to be seeking.

The danger becomes explicit in a letter from Henry Courtenay, who tells Margaret that he has been appointed Lord High Steward for the trial of Darcy and Hussey. Courtenay says Cromwell has promised that, if Darcy is found guilty, his sentence will be commuted to banishment and he may eventually return home. Margaret reads the letter beside a forge while waiting for her horse to be shod. Once she understands its meaning, she plunges it into the fire and asks the messenger whether he is returning to his master. She gives him a penny and tells him not to repeat what he has heard, insisting that the words were not hers. Her destruction of the letter leaves no written trace of the promise in her keeping, while its contents make clear what is at stake in the verdict.

Execution on Tower Hill

Montague later writes that Hussey is a dead man, while Darcy has been found guilty but will be pardoned and spared. Margaret recognizes the report as a lie. The lords, believing Cromwell’s assurance, have found Darcy guilty in expectation that the king will change the sentence from execution to banishment. Instead, Henry VIII fails him, and Darcy is sent to the block. The reversal is precise: a pardon in his pocket, a promise attached to his conviction, and then a royal decision that makes both protections worthless.

At Bisham Manor in the summer of 1537, Margaret hears that Darcy was beheaded as a traitor on Tower Hill in June. She remembers the swallows swooping between the river and the Tower as they build their summer nests. The calm seasonal image stands beside the violence of the execution, but Margaret’s conclusion is firm: Darcy had hoped to die on crusade, fighting for his faith, and she understands his death as fulfilling that hope. The official designation of traitor does not determine the meaning she gives his end.

Political and Narrative Significance

Darcy’s death belongs to a wider struggle over who may define the Church’s authority and the limits of royal power. Earlier, Margaret learned that the Church had surrendered to the king and that Henry VIII would rule it himself, disregarding the Pope in England. Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor rather than continue in office under the new order. At the 1534 oath of succession, the peers were summoned before Cromwell to accept the king’s settlement; More refused the oath as written, and Henry broke his promise not to test his friend on the matter. These events form the political background to a pardon that can be overridden and a trial whose expected safeguard proves false.

The contrast between the frozen Christmas celebrations after the uprising and Darcy’s execution sharpens the reversal. London had rung its bells in joy, and Margaret had put away Darcy’s badge because she believed the rebels had won and the country and Church had been saved. His death shows that the apparent settlement has not secured the lives of those who took part. Within Margaret’s account, the execution is therefore both the personal loss of a trusted old lord and a demonstration of how royal assurances can collapse when the Crown’s interests demand it.