Act of Attainder against the Plantagenet Family

The Act of Attainder against the Plantagenet Family is the instrument by which Henry VIII’s government declares Margaret Pole and her Plantagenet kin traitors without trial or evidence. It threatens their property and their children’s inheritance, and its presentation in Parliament converts family ties and an old religious emblem into purported proof of guilt. In the novel, the measure makes visible a shift from contested claims of authority to punishment imposed by royal power.

Political and Legal Setting

The Act arrives amid a struggle over who may define the lawful order. Henry VIII has asserted control over the Church in England, disregarding the Pope’s authority there; when Margaret’s son Montague reports that the Church has surrendered to the king, he also tells her that Thomas More has resigned as Lord Chancellor. The change is not merely institutional: it raises the question of who can judge the king’s marriage and the succession.

That conflict reaches the nobility in the spring of 1534, when Thomas Cromwell administers the oath of succession at Westminster Palace. Margaret knows that the Pope has ruled Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon valid, while the king claims that his own declarations settle the matter. She cannot swear that Princess Mary is not the princess everyone knows her to be. The later attainder belongs to this widening confrontation over royal authority, religious jurisdiction, and the Plantagenets’ place in the kingdom; the evidence does not present it as an ordinary adjudication of a specific crime.

The family’s closely interwoven relationships give the measure its political force. The Plantagenets are connected through blood and marriage, with estates and loyalties consolidated within the kinship network. Margaret recognizes that the same closeness that lets relatives act together can be recast, under suspicion, as evidence of a faction or conspiracy. Montague’s proposed effort to defend the queen and princess, involving Geoffrey Pole and a message to Reginald Pole abroad, makes that tension concrete: loyalty to family and to the queen can be interpreted as defiance of the king.

The Act and Its Allegations

In the summer of 1539, Parliament meets at the Tower of London and Cromwell puts forward the Act. It declares the Plantagenets traitors without trial or evidence, confiscates their goods for the Crown, and disinherits their children. Margaret and Gertrude Courtenay are named among dead men, a stark contradiction between the living women and the company in which the government lists them.

Cromwell also produces letters attributed to Gertrude and a letter Margaret wrote to Reginald Pole to assure him of her love. That letter was never delivered. The display then turns to an object: a white-silk badge, embroidered with the five wounds of Christ and topped by a white rose, which Tom Darcy had given Margaret. Cromwell presents it as conclusive evidence of guilt, although possessing the badge is not itself a crime. The contrast between the Act’s sweeping judgment and the modest, personal evidence put on display leaves the charge looking less like a demonstrated offence than a political conclusion in search of proof.

Parliamentary Reception and Consequences

The assembled houses do not erupt in the clamor Cromwell may have expected. Their response is muted. Margaret’s account leaves open why: members may be weary of attainders and death, or some may keep similar badges in their own country houses, relics of a time when they hoped better days might come and pilgrims marched for grace. Whatever the explanation, the badge fails to produce the public outcry that would make it persuasive as proof.

The Act’s practical consequences are severe despite that silence. At the king’s wish, Margaret is kept in the Tower along with her grandson Harry, Gertrude Courtenay, and Gertrude’s young son. The measure reaches beyond those named or accused, placing children under confinement and threatening their inheritance. During the following winter, Margaret’s life in the Tower narrows to reading when the light permits, sewing, prayer, and endurance. Her cousin William de la Pole, imprisoned for thirty-seven years, dies alone in his cell. The narrative places that death within the same prison landscape, though it does not identify it as a consequence of the Act itself.

Significance of the Object

The Act’s central operation is to make lineage function as accusation. The Plantagenets’ widely distributed kinship network had represented continuity, alliance, and a possible counterweight to Tudor authority; under the attainder, their shared name becomes a basis for collective condemnation. The family’s goods and descendants are drawn into the punishment, so the measure targets not only present political actors but also the transmission of property and status.

The badge crystallizes this reversal. Its white rose and the five wounds of Christ connect family identity with religious allegiance, but in Cromwell’s hands the emblem becomes an exhibit meant to settle a question the proceedings have not proved. The Act and the badge together show how legal and political power can recast inherited loyalty as treason: first by declaring the family guilty without trial or evidence, then by presenting a keepsake as confirmation. The muted response in Parliament leaves the coercive result intact, while exposing the gap between the force of the judgment and the evidence offered for it.