Ursula Pole, a lesser-known figure of the Tudor era, whose resilience and adaptability saw her navigate some of the most tumultuous events of the 16th century. From the intricate dance of courtly politics to the brutal fallout of the Exeter Conspiracy, Ursula’s story offers a unique perspective on the challenges faced by the nobility during the reigns of the Tudor monarchs.
In the grand Tudor history world, there are certain names like Henry, Elizabeth, Anne that loom large casting shadows that often obscure the lives of other equally intriguing figures. In the past year, we’ve been delving into some of those people like the Poles and the Stafford families. They were pivotal in the political and dynastic dramas of the Tudor court. Strutling the worlds of both of these influential families was a figure whose story offers a unique insight into the perilous journey of survival, allegiance, and ambition during this turbulent period and that is Ursula Pole.
Ursula’s life embodied the transition from the Plantagenets to the Tudors. She had Plantagenet blood yet she was deeply entwined in the dramas of the Tudor court and Ursula’s life spans the reigns of several Tudor monarchs and it’s a testament to the delicate balancing act she had to do, of managing loyalties, navigating politics. So Ursula Pole was born in a world of transition.
She is the daughter of Margaret Pole. So when she was born, the shadows of the Wars of the Roses were still hovering over England. The fledgling Tudor dynasty represented by Henry VII was still making efforts to establish its legitimacy and suppress remnants of the old Plantagenet rivalries.
Early Life
Ursula was born about 1504. She was the daughter of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret Plantagenet. Margaret Plantagenet was the daughter of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV and Richard III. It’s worth remembering that Ursula’s grandfather was the one who rebelled against Edward IV. He was in league with Warwick the Kingmaker and as punishment, he was supposedly drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine.
She was also a cousin of Henry VIII. Her grandmother Edith St John was half-sister to his grandmother Margaret Beaufort. So she had a lineage that was both her privilege and her potential peril. She had three older brothers, we’ve talked about some of them like Cardinal Reginald Pole. And of course, the Tudor dynasty began in blood was filled with suspicion and every Plantagenet no matter how distant their claim to the throne, was tainted with that suspicion.
Ursula’s early years would have been tinged with the awareness of the suspicion on their family. Margaret Pole herself exhibited a particular brand of resilience, reinstated to her brother Edward’s lands and titles after he was executed, which made her one of the wealthiest and most influential purists of her time.
Growing up with her family, Ursula would have heard stories of her family’s past. She would have been educated about their noble responsibilities, and taught to respect their lineage while also understanding the need to be loyal to the Tudors. Margaret Pole was also the governess to Princess Mary, the daughter of Katherine of Aragon which provided the Poles proximity to power but also of course would ensnare them in the everchanging loyalties and allegiances at court. They would remain Catholic which was their biggest problem and would stay loyal to Katherine of Aragon.
Because she was a member of the royal family, her marriage was debated a lot. Of course, people talked about maybe the Duke of Milan as a possible match, but then Cardinal Wolsey himself actually suggested Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham.
Henry Stafford was a descendant of the House of Lancaster. He also had the taint of the Wars of the Roses still on him. His grandfather the 2ns Duke of Buckingham had rebelled against Richard III and was then executed. But by Ursula’s time, the Staffords had managed to regain some semblance of favor in the eyes of the Tudors.
They were married in 1519 and Ursula was about 15 years old. The Poles and the Staffords were able to combine their wealth and their estates and also their shared experiences as families striving to navigate and thrive under this nascent Tudor dynasty. They set up a house in her father-in-law’s household and remained at the center of court life.
When she was four months pregnant, Ursula actually even went to the Field of Cloth of Gold and was part of Henry VIII’s entourage. At that meeting with King Francis, indications suggest that the relationship was marked by mutual respect and shared responsibilities. They actually had 14 children all told and these children would later play various roles in the political and courtly dramas of the mid to late Tudor period, again further entwining the destinies of the Poles and the Staffords.
Ursula’s dowry was 3,000 marks and it would be increased by a thousand marks if the Countess of Salisbury was able to get back certain lands from the King which she then did. She got lands in Somerset and Devon worth 700 marks which she then passed on to the couple and their children.
In return, the Duke of Buckingham was required to set aside lands worth £500 for Ursula’s jointure, which was the part that went in to take care of the wife in case the husband died. He also paid for the expenses of the wedding. In November of 1520, Ursula had her first child. She would have seven sons and seven daughters which is evidence that the couple had a certain amount of domestic happiness.
The Downfall
But Ursula and Henry had only been married for about two years when the first signs of Henry VIII’s potential vindictiveness and mistrust of these families would come to a head and that started with Henry Stafford’s father the 3rd Duke of Buckingham being charged with treason and executed on Tower Hill in 1521.
Supposedly, he was accused of wanting to kill the King but his real crime was probably the fact that he was descended from Katherine Woodville, sister of Elizabeth Woodville who of course was Henry VIII’s grandmother. So it was as close ties with Henry VIII that were actually probably the thing that made him the most suspicious. Edward was posthumously attainted by an Act of Parliament and his titles and estates including the Duke’s castle at Thornbury were seized by the crown.
Of course, this would have been really hard for Ursula. She’s seeing her father-in-law beheaded and suddenly her family is tainted with treason so they would have spent the 1520s probably moving from house to house. They were losing lands trying to regain what they had lost, probably relying on Margaret Pole quite a bit for help and support and probably just trying to figure out how to manage.
But then things really heated up for them in the 1530s because of course, this is when Henry VIII is leaving his wife Katherine of Aragon, we’ve talked about all of this in the episodes on Margaret Pole. Margaret Pole was caught in this alliance to Katherine, having taken care of Mary and been her nurse and her guardian. Things were clearly changing. A societal revolution was happening and Ursula was caught right in the middle of all of that.
From the safety of the continent, her brother Reginald became one of the most vocal critics of Henry’s annulment from Katherine of Aragon. He was writing these treatises against Henry VIII while he was safely on the continent and it was his family who was having to deal with the ramifications of that back in England.
Reginald Pole’s defiance would have been insulting no matter who it was but the fact that it came from within Henry’s own family, with someone who actually had a claim to the throne must have made it even more precarious, made it even more difficult for Henry to overlook.
Of course, the Poles were painted with a broad brush of suspicion and Ursula was having an even more difficult time. Here she was married to a family that was seen as suspicious. She had a brother who was now seen as suspicious, it was going to really challenge her mettle in the years that lay ahead,
By 1538, the noose was tightening around the Pole family, and with the Exeter Conspiracy, Geoffrey Pole was arrested. Initially, arrested and interrogated, he did not directly implicate Ursula but it did bring the entire Pole family under even more suspicion. Then Margaret Pole was arrested subjected to a mockery of a trial and of course, tragically executed, was one of the most controversial executions of Henry’s entire reign.
Ursula herself was not spared. She also faced the terrifying prospect of imprisonment, interrogation, and even execution. While detailed records of her incarceration are scant, it’s believed that she was able to carefully distance herself from any overt acts of descent and that combined with her demonstrated loyalty to the crown facilitated her release.
Henry Stafford
Somehow both she and her husband were able to escape from this mess and were released. Henry Stafford, her husband was actually a Justice of the Peace for both Staffordshire and Shropshire in 1536. So during this period, he was actually working for the King so he must have had a test of loyalty going on as well.
One thing that’s interesting about their household is that Henry Stafford, her husband had one of the largest libraries in England. He had about 300 books in his library mostly in Latin and in 1548 he published an English translation of a 1534 tract by Edward Foxe called “The True Dyfferens Between the Royall Power and the Ecclesiasticall Power”. Of course, then under Mary, Henry converted back to Catholicism and translated two texts by Erasmus against Luther neither of which survives.
So Ursula Pole and Henry Stafford were clearly very good at doing mental gymnastics to justify certain beliefs and loyalties and to navigate all of this stuff. They both managed to survive, they both managed to live until ripe old age and die in their beds. In 1547, Henry actually petitioned Parliament for the restoration of his father’s lands. In 1548, he was summoned to Parliament by Edward VI and was thus created the 1st Baron Stafford. That is how Ursula is remembered as Baroness Stafford as well.
Ursula seems to have had this ability to stay friends with everyone and to keep relationships close even when there was arguing going on. For example, she stayed very close to her sister-in-law even after her husband had fought with his sister and that was Elizabeth Stafford, Duchess of Norfolk.
We know that they had a close relationship even though Henry had fought with his sister, because after she died the Duchess of Norfolk bequeathed to Ursula whom she affectionately described as her “suster Stafford”, all of her apparel and her jewelry as well as a French hood and velvet-covered saddle which she would not have done if they didn’t get along.
Thomas Stafford
As Ursula grew older, her children then took up the mantle of the activity in the family and one of the most famous incidents involving one of her children is her ninth son Thomas Stafford. Thomas was the second surviving son and apparently around 1550, he went to Rome where he studied with his uncle Reginald Pole and then he spent 3 years in Italy, and traveled to Poland.
When he was in Poland, he got a recommendation from King Sigismund II Augustus who requested that Mary I restore him to the Dukedom of Buckingham. So he was traveling around and meeting kings and doing that kind of thing as one does, but then when he came back to England in January 1554, he joined the rebellion led by Thomas Wyatt which came out of course a worry that Mary was going to marry Philip of Spain and turn England into a Spanish colony.
Essentially the Rebellion failed. Thomas Stafford Ursula’s son was imprisoned in the Fleet Prison, then he fled to France. There he got into even more drama with other English exiles and he actually thought that he had a claim to the English throne and that he would be a good candidate for the English throne.
In 1557, he sailed to Scarborough with two ships and 30 men and he walked into Scarborough Castle and proclaimed himself the Protector of the Realm. He tried to incite a new revolt. He denounced the marriage to Spain. He railed against increased Spanish influence and he said that if he was made king he would return the crown “to the trewe Inglyshe bloude of our owne naterall countrye”.
He claimed that he had seen letters in Europe showing that Scarborough and 12 other castles were going to be given to Philip II and garrisoned with 12,000 Spanish soldiers before the coronation. This did not last long. 3 days later the Earl of Westmorland recaptured the castle and arrested Stafford and his 30 companions. Stafford was beheaded on May 28, 1557, on Tower Hill and 32 of his followers were also executed after the rebellion.
So let’s imagine Ursula. In the beginning of her life, her Uncle Edward was executed then she saw her mother executed, she saw her family being seen with a huge amount of suspicion, her brother Reginald was writing these letters, her father-in-law was executed, and then her son was executed. Then Elizabeth comes to the throne, the Protestants are back in power. It seems as if Henry and Ursula, both tried to just live a quiet life.
Henry was still commissioning translations in 1559. He commissioned a translation and influenced the publication of Mirror for Magistrates and Ursula was likely following suit, trying to live a quiet life. In 1563, Henry Stafford died. He managed to die of natural causes and avoid the fate of so many of the rest of his family.
He was succeeded in his titles by his eldest surviving son Henry Stafford, 2nd Baron Stafford who then himself died only three years later. Ursula herself died in 1570. She was about 66 years old at the time. Her oldest daughter Dorothy was actually one of the most influential people at the court of Elizabeth I. She served Elizabeth as the Mistress of the Robes.
Another little tidbit about this family is that Dorothy Stafford, Ursula’s daughter was the second wife of Sir William Stafford. Sir William Stafford was the widower of Mary Boleyn. So after Mary Boleyn died, Sir William Stafford married Dorothy Stafford. They had actually gone to Geneva as part of the Marian persecutions and the Protestant reformer John Calvin was the godfather to her youngest son.
So Ursula is this very interesting woman at the heart of all of these different pieces of Tudor history. She had the Plantagenet connection, she had this treason taint with her family and then you have the issues going on with the faith. Her brother is a cardinal and is writing against Henry and against the Church of England. Meanwhile, her daughter is fleeing to Geneva as part of the Marian persecutions.
I think it’s this kind of microcosm of where people would have found themselves in this period with their loyalties pulled, not sure where to put their loyalties, not sure how to navigate this tightrope that must have been so difficult for them to figure out how to just survive.
The fact that Ursula kept her head and her husband kept his head while we don’t know a whole lot about the specific details of her life, I think we can get enough information just with that fact alone to know that the two of them were intelligent and managed to navigate all of this political mess astutely. Her son not quite as much.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.