Margaret Cheyney & Margaret Tyrrell

Drunk Friday and I was gonna tell you about Hildegard but fuck it, instead we’re gonna talk about two women who came up against Henry VIII and paid for it with their lives.

No, not those two.

Margaret Cheyney was born. We don’t know when, or where. But she lived, and people loved her.

She was married twice, the second time to a man named John Bulmer. You may notice that I called her Margaret Cheyney, not Margaret Bulmer; that’s because her second marriage wasn’t recognized by the people who killed her. In the records she’s noted as John’s wife, his concubine, and his whore. Side note, like, fuck Cromwell.

In 1536, her husband participated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a northern uprising against the king and his counselors. Notably, surprise! Fucking Cromwell. The uprising was quelled, and Henry made a lot of promises to the men who participated. Promises he never kept. So the men planned to rise again.

Margaret heard, and told John that if he was that unhappy they should just leave. Say fuck it and go to Scotland. Somehow the parish priest found out, and reported them both – to be fair, probably to spare his own ass if anybody else narc’ed, but still, fuck that guy. (Also? Cromwell.)

Margaret and John went to the Tower. Their child, still breastfed, disappears from the records. John, along with other men, was hanged and beheaded. Margaret Cheyney was taken to Smithfield, and on May 25, 1537, she became the first woman in England to be burnt alive at the stake.

Anne Askew is often touted as the first, but she was not. Margaret was. Anne became a Protestant martyr. Margaret Cheyney was forgotten.

But now you know her name.

Margaret Tyrrell was born. We don’t know when, or where. But she lived, and people loved her.

Margaret was married to William. They lived in London. At some point in 1538, they went to a bar together. After drinking, Margaret said that Prince Edward, Henry VIII’s only son, was not the rightful heir to the throne.

Why? We don’t know. Maybe she was Catholic, and believed that Lady Mary, Catherine of Aragon’s daughter, should be queen. Maybe she was a Reformer, and believed that the rightful heir was Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Lady Elizabeth. Maybe she didn’t believe that the king was still capable of fathering a child; the government tried to suppress George Boleyn’s testimony that the king was impotent, but wasn’t successful. Or maybe she was fucking drunk.

Whatever the reason, somebody reported her. (To who? Fucking Cromwell.) The records I’ve seen are silent as to who ratted. But Margaret Tyrrell went to the Tower, and William with her. And in the spring of 1540 – the exact date isn’t recorded – Margaret became the first (and only?) woman in England to be taken to Tyburn and hanged, drawn, and quartered.

The English version of this was different from the French. The French used horses to pull people apart – to ‘draw’ them. In England they strung you up until you were nearly dead – once, twice, maybe three times – and then they revived you. They strapped you to a board, or held you down, and cut off your genitals. They disemboweled you. They cut off your head. And then they divided your body into four parts, and sent them off to be displayed as a warning to others.

If the executioner was ‘good,’ you were still alive when the beheading finally happened.

Margaret Tyrrell’s death was slow, and agonizing, and utterly unprecedented. It went against everything people believed about respecting women’s modesty, and how one should treat a woman’s body. It was public, and designed to invoke fear. All because a man and the government he controlled (aka fucking Cromwell) were weak and afraid.

After her execution, William was released. And then, like so many other women, common women, ordinary women murdered by insecure men, Margaret Tyrrell was forgotten.

But now you know her name.

I don’t tell you this to horrify you. I don’t tell you this to make you hate Henry VIII, although I certainly hate that fucking guy. (I also hate Cromwell. Shocking, I know.) There are sober arguments I could make, have made, regarding their deaths and what I think they mean in terms of a larger movement of resistance among women in England during the Henrican Reform, but I’m too drunk for that. No.

I tell you this because Margaret Cheyney lived. And people loved her.

Margaret Tyrrell lived. And people loved her.

And then, swept away by bigger names and more powerful people, they were forgotten. But I found them, in the records, which say so little, and so much.

And now, if you read this far?

Now you know their names.