Margaret Pole and Montague

Margaret Pole and Montague are mother and son bound by family loyalty, political danger, and, finally, Margaret’s grief at having failed to express the depth of her love while he was alive. Their relationship changes under pressure: Montague tries to manage the threat to his family through careful openness, while Margaret later remembers his honesty, steadiness, humor, and counsel with a regret sharpened by the knowledge that he may have felt less loved than Geoffrey Pole.

Family and Political Circumstances

Montague is one of Margaret’s sons and a central figure in the family’s response to the Tudor government’s scrutiny. By the summer of 1538, Geoffrey has been taken to the Tower of London, and the family fears that interrogation may turn him against his relatives. Margaret believes that her sons’ loyalty and the family’s conduct should protect them; Montague sees that their safety depends as much on how they appear to the authorities as on what they have actually done.

Their predicament is inseparable from the danger facing the wider family. Geoffrey is suspected of carrying family news to Reginald Pole, and Margaret and Montague understand that even an innocent warning to a brother might be recast as evidence of disloyalty. Montague nevertheless frames their action as no more than warning a brother that he is in danger. His confidence in the innocence of that act offers Margaret some reassurance, but it does not remove the risk created by surveillance and questioning.

Montague as Protector and Adviser

When Geoffrey anxiously asks whether Montague will go with him to speak to Thomas Cromwell, Montague refuses to accompany him. He advises that one brother should go alone and present the family as open and loyal. The account should explain that the supposed disagreement is mere gossip, affirm that the king restored Bisham Priory, and point to the English Bible in its church and the licensed books used to teach the New Learning at its school. In Montague’s strategy, visible cooperation is a defense: if Cromwell already knows the family’s affairs, withholding information would only make them appear more suspicious.

Montague’s advice is neither a claim that the family is truly safe nor a denial that Cromwell has power over them. He tells Geoffrey to go promptly and disclose everything, while insisting that there is nothing at the castle or manor to interest the authorities. His approach tries to contain danger through candor carefully presented as loyalty. The contrast with Geoffrey’s anxiety establishes Montague as the steadier brother at this point, willing to manage the encounter while encouraging his younger brother to face it alone.

After Geoffrey is imprisoned, Montague continues to act for his mother and the family. At L’Erber in London, he tells Margaret privately that Geoffrey is in the Tower, first allowing their visit to proceed as an ordinary family occasion. He takes her hand as he gives the news and urges her to remain calm, explaining that Geoffrey has not been accused and that Cromwell’s method is to frighten people into rash speech. When Margaret wants to rush to the Tower, Montague explains that they are not permitted to visit; only Geoffrey’s wife may see him. He has sent for Constance to make that visit and plans to return to Cromwell afterward, perhaps even to speak to Henry VIII if the opportunity arises. The sequence presents his care as practical and intimate: he steadies his mother, identifies what the family can do, and takes responsibility for acting on it.

Arrest, Trial, and Rupture

The pressure on the family becomes more direct when Montague’s servant fails to return home. Montague suspects that Geoffrey has identified the man as a messenger who carried letters for him, and that the servant has been arrested. The fear proves part of a wider campaign: after Terce, the Yeomen of the Guard enter L’Erber to arrest Montague. He asks whether he should come immediately or finish breakfast first, treating the arrest with composure even as the household is disrupted. His measured response echoes the caution he had urged on Geoffrey, but now that caution cannot keep him from being taken.

At trial, Montague is accused of speaking against the king, approving Reginald’s actions, and dreaming that the king was dead. The last accusation arises from a report by his confessor: Montague had described a dream in which his brother returned home happy. The authorities scrutinize the dream as though it were incriminating speech. Montague pleads innocence but is not allowed to defend himself, and no one is permitted to speak for him. The contrast with his earlier insistence on openness is stark: the process he had hoped to navigate through candor leaves him without a meaningful voice.

Geoffrey gives evidence against Montague, their cousins, and the rest of the family. Margaret recalls Geoffrey saying that he had first considered killing himself rather than testify against his brother, but that he had decided he must risk their deaths rather than endanger his country, sovereign, and soul. He argues before his friends and kinsmen that they should die rather than bring ruin upon the country. Margaret cannot imagine what Montague thinks as his brother argues for his death. She withdraws into prayer at Cowdray House, while Katherine and Winifred pray behind her for their father. The brothers’ relationship is thus caught in the machinery of testimony: Geoffrey’s stated loyalty to king and country becomes the means by which Montague and their relatives are condemned.

Grief and Retrospective Recognition

Margaret mourns Montague through the cold weather, remembering his honesty, steadfast honor, and companionship. Her grief turns inward as well as outward: she blames herself for not having valued him enough and for allowing him to think that she loved Geoffrey more than her other sons. She wishes she had told Montague how dear he was, how much she depended on him, and how proud she was of the man he had become. She remembers his humor as a source of warmth and his caution as a form of counsel. These are not merely public virtues; they are the qualities through which Margaret understands, too late, what his presence had meant in her daily life.

The aftermath extends to Montague’s widow and daughters. Margaret writes to Jane Pole, who does not answer, but leaves her daughters in Margaret’s keeping. At Cowdray House, Margaret insists that her granddaughters walk with her by the cold river each day and ride out twice a week, though they are watched for attempts to send or receive letters and grow pale and quiet under habitual caution. Their constrained lives carry the consequences of Montague’s fall into the next generation, while Margaret’s care for them becomes a continuing tie to her son.

Montague’s loss also returns Margaret to the earlier death of his brother Arthur Pole. She is glad that Arthur did not live to see the family’s tragedy or the change in the king who had once been his friend. Her recollection sets the brothers’ deaths against two different seasons of family life: Arthur died when the future seemed open, while Montague’s loss belongs to what Margaret describes as the cold heart of a long winter. Through that contrast, the relationship is both intimate and political. Montague is remembered not only as a victim of the family’s persecution but as a beloved son whose unspoken need for his mother’s affection becomes one of her most lasting regrets.