Women's duty of obedience in marriage

Women's duty of obedience in marriage is a governing rule in Margaret Pole's instruction of Princess Mary Tudor, but the story also exposes how that rule becomes entangled with royal power. Margaret presents a wife's submission and a marriage's permanence as God's will; the surrounding conflicts show husbands invoking that doctrine to silence women, while disputes over marriage reveal that obedience alone cannot settle who has authority to define a union.

Doctrine and Its Limits

Margaret teaches Mary that a husband is appointed by God to rule over his wife. A good wife may warn him if his conduct endangers his soul, she says, but she must not take command; she must live as he wishes. When Mary objects that a wife might resent such a life, Margaret concedes that she might. The concession is small but important: the doctrine recognizes a woman's feeling without allowing that feeling to change her duty or her husband's authority.

Margaret makes the limits especially concrete. A husband cannot leave his wife's side, deny the marriage, forsake her bed, or strip her of her title as queen. His courtship of another woman, poetry, gifts of honor, or affection for a son born outside the marriage does not, in Margaret's account, alter the status of the wife or the legitimate child. Marriage lasts until death, and a princess is born to her coronet. These claims defend wives and legitimate heirs against the consequences of a husband's infidelity, yet they do so by insisting on a fixed hierarchy in which the husband rules and the wife endures.

A Governess Teaches a Princess

The doctrine is tested in a conversation about Margaret Tudor, the Dowager Queen of Scotland. Mary observes that her aunt has turned her castle's cannons on her husband and is seeking a divorce from the Pope. Margaret calls this wrong and says that a woman must obey her husband and that only death can end a marriage. She adds that Mary's father has said the same to his sister. Mary then asks whether marriage for love might be better, pointing out that her father married her mother for love. The exchange places the ideal of obedience beside the lived possibility of marital conflict, and beside the example of a royal woman who is actively seeking to escape her marriage.

Margaret's teaching is also an act of care shaped by the pressures of the court. When Mary asks about the honors and prospects of other women, Margaret avoids telling her outright that even a princess is subject first to her father and then to her husband. Yet she does tell her that a husband is entitled to rule. The gap between what Margaret believes she must teach and what she is reluctant to say plainly makes her role as governess uneasy: she prepares Mary for constraint while trying to soften its meaning. Later, as rumors reach the household of the king's son Henry Carey and a new royal flirtation, Margaret orders that the stories not be repeated where Mary can hear them. Her protection of the princess cannot change the rule she has taught, but it can shield Mary, for a time, from its personal implications.

Queen Katherine and the Disputed Marriage

The conflict surrounding Katherine of Aragon turns marital obedience into a question of evidence and law. An unnamed senior woman accuses Margaret of supporting Katherine's claim that her marriage to Prince Arthur was never consummated. She demands to know whether Margaret can attest that Arthur and Katherine were lovers, pointing to the fact that Arthur was taken to Katherine's room each week. Margaret confirms the visits, but this does not establish what happened there. The confrontation makes the distinction between a wife's asserted account and other people's assumptions central to the dispute.

The same woman argues that if Katherine continues to say the marriage was not consummated, Henry VII could obtain a papal dispensation to marry his daughter-in-law. She calls Katherine's claim a lie that would plunge Margaret's son into sin and ruin the house, and demands that Margaret say Katherine was wedded and bedded. Margaret bows her head and says nothing. Her silence is not proof of what happened between Arthur and Katherine; it records her refusal to provide the testimony demanded of her. Here, the expectation that a woman submit to male authority collides with the question of whether a marriage is valid and who may speak authoritatively about it.

Royal Command and Competing Authorities

Henry VIII later presents his conflict with Katherine as a matter of divine purpose. In speaking to Mary, he says he is guided by God and wants Katherine to take up a holy life away from the burdens of the world. He portrays her appeals to the Pope and to her nephew, Charles V, as disloyal complaints against a husband trying to do God's will. He also tells Mary that Katherine cannot travel with him and blames her for separating father and daughter. When Mary begins to answer, Henry raises his hand to silence her. His account turns a dispute over marriage into a lesson in obedience: Katherine's resistance is cast as disloyalty, and Mary's opportunity to respond is curtailed in the same scene.

The story then places these claims within a wider struggle over religious jurisdiction. Lord Montague tells Mary that the Church has surrendered to the king, that Henry will rule it himself, and that the Pope is to be disregarded in England. Thomas More has resigned as Lord Chancellor. Mary recognizes the consequence: the king has made the Church his own, along with its wealth, laws, and courts. The marriage dispute is therefore not resolved by a single shared authority. The Pope's judgment, the king's commands, the Church's jurisdiction, and the consciences of those asked to comply pull in different directions.

Conscience, Law, and the Cost of Obedience

At the 1534 oath of succession administered by Thomas Cromwell at Westminster Palace, Margaret recalls that the Pope has publicly ruled Henry VIII's marriage to Katherine valid. Yet, as she understands the predicament, the Pope has not excommunicated the king, and the peers must decide what they themselves can do. Henry's position claims the power to determine that Katherine is not his wife, that another woman is queen, and that the latter's child is a princess. Margaret observes the danger in a king's declaration being treated as reality: the dispute is no longer only about what happened within a marriage, but about who can make a contested account binding.

Thomas More refuses to take the oath as it stands, although he would sign a revised version that he could accept. Margaret remembers that Henry had promised not to test his friend in this matter, but did so nonetheless. More's refusal offers a contrast to obedience as unthinking submission: his decision is presented as a matter of conscience, even as royal power demands assent. The story's treatment of marital duty thus opens onto a broader question. If a husband may command a wife in the name of God, and a king may claim authority over the Church and the definition of marriage, the individual conscience becomes one of the few remaining grounds on which a person can refuse.

Household Dependence and Women's Agency

Margaret's own circumstances sharpen the material stakes of gendered duty. While married to Richard Pole, she lives at Stourton Castle during his service in Wales, manages their lands and household, and cares for their children's education. Richard praises her work, but the household must guard a limited fortune and provide for four children, with another expected, including Ursula's dowry. After Richard's death, Margaret's sons are made royal wards because they are minors, and the income of their estate goes to the king until an heir comes of age. Margaret is left with a widow's third share of rents and profits, described as only 120 nobles for a year.

The shortage is not merely a question of status. Margaret dismisses servants without being able to pay them to leave, takes on dairy work and brewing, and fears that hunger, rather than grief, will deprive her of her wits. She later explains that her dower and the rents from her lands are insufficient to maintain her household. These episodes do not show a wife disobeying a husband; they show how a woman's responsibilities and practical freedom change with marriage, widowhood, inheritance, and royal control of property. Set against Margaret's instruction to Mary, her life reveals the distance between a doctrine that assigns women a subordinate place and the substantial labor they perform to sustain households and families. The rule of obedience is therefore both an ideal taught at court and part of a wider structure that shapes women's authority, security, and choices.