! MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Sarah Elizabeth Donelson Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________ Director Dr. Judith P. Zinsser ______________________________________ Reader Dr. Renee Baernstein _______________________________________ Reader Dr. Charlotte Goldy ______________________________________ Reader Dr. Stephen Norris _______________________________________ Graduate School Representative Dr. Katharine Gillespie ! ! ABSTRACT BY NO ORDINARY PROCESS: TREASON, GENDER, AND POLITICS UNDER HENRY VIII by Sarah Elizabeth Donelson Using the treason statute of 1534 and the Pole/Courtenay treason case of 1538, I explore how the intersection of treason, gender, and personal politics subverted and then changed the gender paradigm for traitors in the sixteenth century. The Poles and Courtenays were descended from the Plantagenets, the ruling dynasty in England before the Tudors, and as such were a threat to Henry VIII and the stability of his throne. After one member of the Pole family, Cardinal Reginald Pole, was declared a traitor by the king, Henry VIII and his principal minister, Thomas Cromwell, embarked upon an investigation of his family and friends. What they found convinced them that these two families were guilty of high treason and planning to replace him on the throne. The Pole/ Courtenay case shows the instability of customary gender assumptions both in English politics and the legislation and prosecution of treason. Though the process of the investigation, prosecution, and sentencing, the state changed what it meant to be a traitor in terms of gender. ! ! BY NO ORDINARY PROCESS: TREASON, GENDER, AND POLITICS UNDER HENRY VIII A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History by Sarah Elizabeth Donelson Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2012 Dissertation Director: Dr. Judith P. Zinsser ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! © Sarah Elizabeth Donelson 2012 ! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 1 2. Historiography 12 3. The Development of Treason Laws and Earlier Treasonous Women: Elizabeth Barton, Anne Boleyn, and Margaret Cheyne 31 4. Two Noble Families of Henry VIII’s England 54 5. The Royal Hunt for Reginald Pole 71 6. The Autumn of 1538 and Case against the White Party 89 ! #$!The Aftermath: Trials, Sentences, and Executions 124 8. Conclusion 148 9. Bibliography 155 10. Appendix A: People Index 168 11. Appendix B: Interrogation Timeline 172 """! ! ! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with any project, this dissertation owes its existence to the help and guidance of many people. My thanks to Mary Robertson at the Huntington Library and Hilda L. Smith at the University of Cincinnati for the invaluable suggestions and advice. I am grateful to Janice Liedl at Laurentian University whose emails were both encouraging and thought-provoking, as well as for allowing me to cite her conference paper. Thank you also to Amy Erickson at the University of Cambridge for the tea and conversation. The staff at the United Kingdom National Archives, the British Library, and the Devon Record Office were so helpful and I owe them a debt of thanks for assisting an overwhelmed graduate student with guidance, locating the documents and the occasional microfilm reader and camera maintenance. Without travel grants from Miami University Department of History, this project would not have been possible and so I am grateful to the Department and Jeri Schaner, in particular, for guiding me through the intricacies of bureaucratic and administrative duties. This dissertation is a very different and much improved work than it was at its inception. This is due to the diligence and assistance from a great number of people. First, my theories were tested and enriched by supportive and helpful panels at two separate conferences, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians in June 2008 and the Rethinking Politics in Sixteenth-Century England conference in April 2009. Second, my dissertation committee’s careful consideration and close reading made this project much stronger. I am thankful to Renée Baernstein, Katharine Gillespie, Charlotte N. Goldy, and Stephen Norris for their comments, suggestions, and edits. A very relieved thank you to my copyeditor, Abby Love Smith, whose patience, knowledge, and meticulous attention to detail saved this dissertation’s punctuation and footnotes from its author. Finally, to the group of people without whose encouragement, support, and help I would not have a dissertation, I express my deepest gratitude. A special thanks goes to my advisor, Judith P. Zinsser, for the years of encouragement, patience, and hard work. She never doubted that I would get this done and was unfailingly supportive and good humored. Along with her partner, Roger Millar, she opened their home to me and devoted much of her free and non-free time to this dissertation. Thank you to my in-laws, Jackie and Pat Ambuske, for the hours of babysitting and understanding as I disappeared at holidays to work. To my parents, Susan and David Donelson, who have supported and encouraged me my whole life, an immense debt of thanks, in particular to my mother who has given up months of her time to babysit so that I could finish. Without the support, encouragement, and love of my husband Jim Ambuske and daughter Eleanor, none of this would be possible. From library errands to helping me work out problems with research and argument, to cooking dinner so I could spend time with our daughter who has never known a time when she did not have to share me with a dissertation, Jim has helped me in innumerable ways. I will always be deeply grateful to Jim and Eleanor both and it is to them that I dedicate this dissertation. "%! ! ! Chapter One: Introduction In May of 1541, Henry VIII was planning to go north with his retinue to quell unrest and manage some of the after effects of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the northern rebellion of 1536-1537. It was a trip he had been delaying for four years, but in 1541 the king felt secure enough in his authority in the south to leave London and travel north. To that end, he had determined that any threat in the Tower of London must be eradicated. Charles de Marillac, Francis I’s representative in England, wrote to the French king and informed him that before Henry left, he had ordered the Tower to be cleared of prisoners either by execution or absolution.1 Given his proposed absence from London and his purpose for traveling north, Henry VIII wanted to prevent any of the prisoners from serving as inspiration for another insurrection. On May 27, Margaret Pole, the countess of Salisbury awoke early in the morning to the news that she would be executed for treason that day. She had been imprisoned for two and a half years since November 1538, first in a private manor, then in the Tower beginning in the spring of 1539, and she had become accustomed to her surroundings and daily routine. Expecting to be in the Tower for at least another year, she had recently asked the Privy Council for, and had received, a new “furred” nightgown and twelve other items of warm clothing from Queen Catherine’s own tailor. That they acquiesced to her request the month before her execution indicates that this decision to execute her was a hasty one.2 The two long years of imprisonment had not prepared the countess of Salisbury for such an abrupt decision. She was sixty-seven years old and frail after years in the drafty Tower lodgings and having survived her own attainder, imprisonment, and the execution of her son, friends, and servants. She had lived in the Lieutenant’s house surrounded by his family and servants and shared their daily lives despite her official status as a prisoner. One can imagine the scene. It was late May in London, early in the morning. It was usually overcast with a breeze coming off the Thames; not yet muggy and probably still cool as she left her quarters in the lieutenant’s house and walked the short distance to the block on the Tower green where she was to be killed. In a state of shock, the countess was likely escorted by Sir Edmund Walsingham, the Tower lieutenant who had been in charge of her care since 1539. The Tower was home to hundreds of people: officials, guards and their families, servants, the proprietors of the Tower tavern, and the priests at St. Peter Ad Vincula, the Tower church. Even early in the morning, there would have been a steady hum of noise and whirling of activity as these people went about their daily lives. A state execution was exceptional and worthy of interest and perhaps many stopped to watch the proceedings. Eustace Chapuys, ambassador for Henry VIII’s archenemy Holy Roman Emperor Charles V wrote to Mary of Hungary3 that over one hundred and fifty people were witness to her execution, though Marrilac, perhaps referring !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! &!Charles de Marillac to Francis I quoted in Calendar of Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII. Volumes 1-21. ed. J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie (London: Vaduz Kraus Reprint: 1965), Volume XVI, no. 868. (Hereafter L&P)! '!British Library (hereafter BL) Arundel MS 97 f. 185; Sir Harris Nicholas, editor, Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England Volume (London: Record Commission, 1837), 147; The National Archives of the UK SP1/140 ff. 219. (!Mary