Episode 2 History: Margaret Douglas, Tom Truth & Norfolk Ambitions
In Episode 2 of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, Thomas Cromwell was tapped by King Henry VIII to clean up a royal scandal between his niece, Margaret Douglas, and Thomas Howard the Lesser, aka the poet “Tom Truth.” There’s a whole lot of drama (and some truly bad poetry!) that arrived in the story without much introduction, so we asked the production’s researcher, the author and Tudor historian Kirsten Claiden-Yardley, to shed some light on why this forbidden union mattered and how it fit into Norfolk’s own ambitions for a Howard on the throne.
So who is Margaret Douglas, and why was she forbidden to marry Thomas Howard (Tom Truth)? Claiden-Yardley explained, “Margaret Douglas is Henry VIII’s niece. Henry VIII had two sisters, Margaret and Mary. And we don’t see either of them in Wolf Hall. Mary married the King of France, and then after his death, she married Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk.
“Margaret Tudor married the King of Scotland, Henry James IV, who died in 1513. And I’m mentioning this because in one of the later episodes, Norfolk and Cromwell have an argument about Thetford Priory. Norfolk makes a reference to the “Flodden Duke,” or Flodden Norfolk, at being buried at Thetford Priory, and that is in reference to the Battle of Flodden, which took place in 1513. The Howard family led that battle, and our Duke of Norfolk’s father, Lord Thomas Howard, led the army there, and in the battle, James IV of Scotland was killed. That’s why they’re so proud of the Flodden Duke, because it’s this huge military victory. It created chaos in Scotland for quite a while after the king was killed because James V, Margaret and the king’s son, was just a toddler. Margaret remarried, though, and had another child: Margaret Douglas. She was brought up in England and was actually originally looked after by Cardinal Wolsey.
“Though Margaret Douglas was not descended from the King of Scotland, she was Henry VIII’s niece, so she was important. And again, we return to this male heir issue. She was within the Tudor dynasty, so wasn’t a threat, but she was in the line of succession, particularly when Henry VIII took his daughters Mary and Elizabeth out of the line of succession. Suddenly, his next heirs were Margaret’s children, and her eldest child was James V, which created problems because while he was technically next in line, he was king of another country. That made Margaret Douglas next, because while Henry’s other sister, Mary Tudor, had children with the Duke of Suffolk, they were daughters. So there were lots of nieces around, and as Henry VIII kept changing his mind about his line of succession, they bumped up and down a bit. He later specifically excluded Margaret Tudor’s line, but at that point, she could have been.
“And that’s why who Margaret Douglas married was important—she could be used to try and claim the throne of England, particularly if Henry carried on not having a male heir. And that’s why she, as a member of the royal family in the line of succession, should not be getting married without the king’s permission.”
When Cromwell interrogates Margaret about her marriage in Episode 2, her friend Mary FitzRoy acts as a witness, and it turns out that, historically, there’s a lot more to this character than a supportive, more savvy friend. Claiden-Yardley explained that Mary FitzRoy, called Lady Richmond, was previously Mary Howard—the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter. “And she was called Lady Richmond because she was married to Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond! In the time frame of Episode 1, Henry FitzRoy was actually alive, and there was discussion about whether or not to declare him legitimate. It didn’t happen, but it would have been another possible solution for Henry if he didn’t have a son with a wife, had not Henry FitzRoy died at a very young age in the summer of 1536. So in the story about Norfolk and his family plotting for the throne, they just go with Thomas Howard and Margaret Douglas.
“That brings us to to Tom Truth, or Thomas Howard the Lesser—the Howards really like the name Thomas. The Flodden Duke was Thomas Howard, the second Duke of Norfolk. He married twice, and he had 11 children. By his first marriage, he had Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, the one we know from the series.. And by his second marriage, which is much later, he had another son, who he also called Thomas Howard. In the series, he’s Thomas Howard the Lesser—a name I’ve never seen him referred to before, but I think as much as anything it was Hilary Mantel trying to come up with a way to tell these two people apart. He was Lord Thomas Howard. His brother was the Duke of Norfolk, and there was an age gap of about 30 years between them.
“So Thomas Howard the Lesser, the younger half-brother of the Duke of Norfolk, did have an affair with Margaret Douglas. They both were arrested. She was let out into house arrest, and he died in the Tower of London in about 1537. Whether Norfolk was deliberately plotting that affair, which is the implication in the show, is less clear. To a certain extent, in real life at the time where their affair would’ve started, he maybe didn’t need to, because his daughter was already married to Henry FitzRoy. We didn’t get that side of it in the show. So maybe he was aware of it and didn’t mind too much because it was yet another connection for the royal family. But there was a lot of intermarriage going on. Everyone was interconnected in Episode 2. And the Howards got everywhere. My rule of thumb with anything in the Tudor period is that there is probably a Howard, or someone who’s married to a Howard, around.”
