Margaret Giggs

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Margaret Giggs, copy after Holbein

Margaret Giggs (* 1505 or 1508 in London , Cheapside; † July 6, 1570 in Mechelen ), married Clement, was a member of the English gentry and a learned Catholic exile . As the adopted daughter of the English humanist Sir Thomas More , she received an education in his house that was otherwise reserved for men. Through her knowledge she was able to make a diagnosis for the enigmatic illness of her adoptive father, on which two doctors had failed. After the death of her foster sister and pioneer Margaret Roper , Margaret Giggs continued editing Thomas More's works - some of them in exile in the Burgundian Netherlands - and finally published them in 1557. After Elizabeth I ascended the throne , Margaret went with him once more as a devout Catholic her family into exile, where she died in 1570 with her family.

Life

Youth and marriage

Margaret Giggs was born in Cheapside, London. Your date of birth is controversial. While the historian John Guy puts it at 1505, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives 1508. It is similar with their origin. According to John Guy, her father was Thomas Giggs, a servant of a textile merchant who often sent him abroad with orders. In the Oxford Dictionary, however, her father is referred to as a gentleman from Norfolk. On the family portrait of the Mores there is the writing cognata above Margaret Giggs , which is why some historians consider her a distant relative of the Mores. Her mother's name only appears as "Mistress Giggs" and she died early. Little Margaret was then taken into his household as an adopted daughter by Thomas More, a neighbor of the family and a member of parliament .

When a parent died, it was not uncommon for the orphaned child to be placed under the tutelage of friends. In the case of girls in particular, emphasis was placed on placing them in a household headed by a woman, in this case Thomas More's first wife, Joan Colt. Joan's daughter Margaret was to remain Giggs' close friend for the rest of her life. With her and the rest of the children Elizabeth, Cecily, and John More, Giggs was tutored by private tutors . Her education included Latin, Greek, mathematics, geography and astronomy. In 1514 Giggs met her future husband John Clement in this way for the first time. Former page Thomas Mores taught her and Margaret Roper for a while in Latin and Greek before taking up a position as a lecturer at Oxford thanks to the placement of Cardinal Wolsey .

Margaret Giggs (far left) in Rowland Lockey's copy after Hans Holbein

In 1521, Margaret proved to her foster father that his experiment to train his daughters in the same way as his son had been successful. Thomas More, just returned from a trip to France, suddenly fell seriously ill. His symptoms puzzled the doctors called in. He described:

"Suddenly I felt very hot and very cold all over my body at the same time, not cold in one area and hot in another, but both in the same areas, so help me God."

Both doctors believed that he was delirious and that his symptoms were imaginary as a result. The sixteen-year-old Margaret, on the other hand, who read the original Greek texts, found her adoptive father's symptoms and therapy in Galenos' works. More's pride in his foster daughter culminated in the remark that she was “very wise, very educated and also very virtuous” and on top of that “smarter than both doctors combined”. Exactly from which illness he suffered and which therapy cured him can no longer be determined today.

In 1526 Margaret married her former teacher John Clement, who had meanwhile completed a medical degree and had become a doctor. The wedding took place in St. Stephen Church, about a week after Epiphany . The young couple then moved into the old Mores house, Barge in Bucklersbury, the lease of which they received as a wedding gift. Giggs' first daughter Winifred was born in 1527, and their son Thomas was born about a year later. Details of these two children and their daughters Bridget, Helen and Dorothy are unknown. The youngest surviving daughter, Margaret Clement, was only born in 1540. Following the example of Thomas More, the Clements taught their daughters Latin and Greek. Margaret also took a nephew Thomas Mores, William Rastell, into her household, the future husband of her daughter Winifred. During Thomas More's time as Lord Chancellor , Margaret acted as his almsman and looked after his silicon .

Fall and death of Thomas Mores

When King Henry VIII proclaimed himself head of the English Church in order to enforce his divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon , More resigned the office of Lord Chancellor on May 16, 1532, which meant a great financial loss for the More family. Margaret Giggs and John Clement therefore took over the rent for their house, which Thomas More had previously paid. Unlike Margaret and William Roper , who still lived with Thomas More, the Clements were not dependent on More's salary and therefore escaped the poverty that the Mores now experienced.

In order to legitimize his marriage to Anne Boleyn and their daughter Elisabeth , Henry VIII passed the 1st Act of Succession in 1534 . In it, Heinrich declared his controversial marriage to Anne Boleyn valid and changed the line of succession in favor of his future descendants with her, as he was still hoping for a son. The act required the oath of every subject to recognize the king's second marriage as final and Elizabeth as his legitimate heir to the throne. His daughter from his first marriage, Maria , became a royal bastard through this act. Because Thomas More refused to recognize the act of succession, he was arrested and taken to the Tower of London . Margaret sent him small presents and regularly housed her foster sister Margaret Roper, who often visited her father. By this time John Clement had established himself as a doctor at court and also regularly visited the Tower to treat More's fellow prisoner, the disgraced Bishop John Fisher .

On July 1, 1535, Thomas More was found guilty of treason for refusing to take the oath and sentenced to death. In the Tower he wrote one last letter to Margaret Roper, in which he said goodbye to all of his children and also lovingly mentioned Margaret Giggs. "I am sending back her algorithm stone to my good daughter Clement, and I am sending her, my godchild, and her loved ones God's blessing and mine."

By the time the time for Thomas More's execution was announced, it was too late to bring the family from Chelsea, so Margaret Giggs, who lived in London, was the only member of the family to attend the July 6, 1535 execution. Through a deal with Lord Seal Keeper Thomas Cromwell , More obtained permission for Margaret Giggs to receive his decapitated body for funeral. After More's death, Giggs helped her foster sister Margaret Roper with her project to collect her father's writings and prepare them for publication. Roper intended to publish all of her father's letters and tracts, and Giggs helped her in the process.

Religious belief and charity

Marked by her time with the Mores, Margaret Giggs was a very devout Catholic who Henry VIII could not recognize as head of the Church. Like Margaret Roper, she avoided the trap of the act of succession that cost her foster father his life, but she found her own way to demonstrate her true loyalty. In the course of the English Reformation , all the monasteries had been closed over the years, and Margaret Giggs housed 1539 English nuns who were now left with nothing.

Much more important, however, was Margaret's secret work in Newgate Prison . Between 1535 and 1537 there was violent persecution of the English Carthusians by Henry VIII, because the monks like Thomas More refused to take the oath. The first members of the order had been executed shortly before Thomas More, and in 1537 a second wave of executions followed. Four of them were chained and hung from the battlements in York on May 11th until they died. On May 24th, more friars were brought to Newgate, where they were chained upright and left to starve.

The Newgate prison to Margaret Clement's lifetime

Margaret Giggs bribed the jailer to have her secretly taken to the monks' cell. Her daughter Margaret Clement said:

"Disguised as a milkmaid with a big bucket of meat on her head, she fed this blessed company by putting meat in their mouths because they were bound and unable to move, and then she freed them of their natural filth."

Margaret went to prison several times to keep the monks alive in this way. However, the king became suspicious that the prisoners were going to survive that long and ordered the jailer to guard them more closely. Margaret was still able to convince him to let her climb onto the roof of the cell. There she cleared the shingles aside and gave the monks food in a basket. The shackles prevented the prisoners from taking care of themselves, however, and the jailer finally forbade Margaret to come back, which ultimately resulted in the death of the monks. Thomas Cromwell, who learned of the incident, hid it from the king, but now suspected Margaret Giggs and Margaret Roper of the conspiracy, especially since both continued to work on their father's legacy. When interrogating Geoffrey Pole during his investigation into the Exeter conspiracy , he explicitly asked about the two of them and how often they had met him.

“How often have you met Mrs. Roper or Mrs. Clement in the past twelve months or two years, and where did you meet them? What communication was there between you and them regarding Sir Thomas More's death and others, and the reasons for it? Have you heard of any letters, papers, or books that have been sent to you or your friends? What was the content of these letters? "

Margaret Giggs got off scot-free, Margaret Roper, however, was "seriously threatened" by Cromwell.

The last few years

In 1540 Margaret's daughter Winifred married Thomas More's nephew, William Rastell. Margaret Roper died shortly afterwards. She bequeathed Margaret Giggs' copies of her father's works and his silicon. Margaret continued her foster sister's work, aided by Winifred and William. When after Heinrich's death Edward VI. ascended the throne and, under the influence of his advisors, had Holy Mass prohibited, the still Catholic family fled to Leuven in Flanders . Here Thomas More's works were re-examined, as his attacks on the Lutherans were given new meaning in view of the conditions in England. All of the family's property in England was confiscated. Margaret's daughter Winifred died in July 1553 at the age of 26, just as the family was about to return to England after Mary I ascended the throne .

The Cathedral of Saint Romuald in Mechelen , Margaret Giggs' final resting place

Despite the bereavement, Margaret, John Clement, their children and their son-in-law returned to their homeland, with the exception of Margaret Clement, who stayed at the monastery in Leuven at her own request. In England, Margaret Roper's daughter Mary, a lady-in-waiting to the new Queen, helped them publish Thomas More's works four years later. Queen Mary was benevolent of the family and ordered that all of the confiscated lands be returned to John Clement and William Rastell. When the Protestant Queen Elisabeth succeeded her half-sister Maria to the throne in 1558 , Margaret Giggs was again forced to go into exile. Once again she went to Flanders with her family, where her son-in-law William Rastell died in 1565 and was buried next to his wife Winifred. In Mechelen , where the family finally settled, their household became a meeting place for religious exiles.

In 1570 Margaret fell seriously ill. According to reports from her daughter Margaret Clement, she had a high fever for several days and received the sacraments in the presence of her children. A day before her death, she asked if her daughter, who was on her way to see her, had already arrived. Her relatives said no and Margaret stated that she could not stay longer. She told her husband, John Clement, that the monks she had helped in prison stood by her bedside and encouraged her to come with them. She died the next day, Thursday July 6th, and was buried in the cathedral of Saint Romuald in the tomb behind the altar. She bequeathed Thomas More's silicon and his rosary to the monastery, which her daughter Margaret had since joined. Her husband died just two years later and was buried by her side.

progeny

The marriage to John Clement produced six children known by name:

  1. Winifred Rastell (1527–1553), married to William Rastell
  2. Thomas Clement (born approx. 1528), married, son Caesar
  3. Bridget Redman, married to Robert Redman, son John
  4. Helen Prideaux, married to Thomas Prideaux, daughter Magdalen
  5. Dorothy Clement, Sister of the Poor Clares
  6. Margaret Clement (1540–1612), Abbess of the Ursulines in Leuven

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Margaret had a total of 11 children.

Historical meaning

Margaret Giggs' greatest achievement is the publication of the collected works of Thomas More. They appeared under the title The Works of Sir Thomas More, Knight, Sometime Lord Chancellor of England, written by him in the English tongue . In addition to the already known works of her foster father, it also contained the previously unknown treatises and letters that had been written during his time in the Tower and that Margaret Roper had withdrawn from Thomas Cromwell's access. Through her exile, Margaret Giggs preserved More's writings from the Edward VI Protestant regime. and brought it to a printable format in Flanders. The first issue contained 1,458 pages.

In her last home, Mechelen, Giggs enjoyed a high reputation among the clergy, partly because of her help for the captured monks, partly because she and her family had gone into exile for religious reasons. The nuns of the Ursuline Order respectfully referred to her as “a very holy woman” and called her “our good grandmother” as the mother of their abbess. Giggs brought relics such as Thomas Mores Cilicium and, for a short time, his rosary into the possession of the monastery and thus to the continent.

Portraits and sketches

Margaret Giggs (2nd from left) in Holbein's sketch

In 1527, one year after the Clements' marriage, Hans Holbein's famous painting of the More family was created. The painter had been recommended to Thomas More by his friend, the humanist Erasmus von Rotterdam , and his works contain the only surviving representations by Margaret Giggs. On the sketch, Giggs is second from the left of Thomas More's father John, and her clothes are different from the final version.

In the final portrait, her original position was taken by her foster sister Elizabeth, so that Elizabeth now stands next to her grandfather John More. Giggs, on the other hand, is on the far left in the painting. Positions in portraits were crucial at the time to show the rank and social status of an individual. The historian John Guy therefore assumes that "Giggs, as an adopted family member, did not expect to usurp the position of a blood relative."

In addition to the sketch of the entire family, Hans Holbein also made individual sketches, Margaret Giggs among them. The inscription "Mother Iak" was later added to her sketch, presumably due to a false identification with a nurse of Edward VI. According to the Royal Collection , this label was added in the 18th century.

Margaret Giggs in literature

Margaret Giggs appeared in 1860 under the nickname Mercy Giggs in the novel The Household of Sir Thomas More by Anne Manning, a fictional diary of Margaret Roper. She is portrayed as a close friend of the protagonist and is very interested in medicine.

In Vanora Bennett's novel Portrait of an unknown woman (German title: Bildnis einer Junge Frau ) from 2007 Margaret Giggs herself is the protagonist and an illegitimate daughter of Thomas Mores. Her husband John Clement, however, is Richard , one of the missing princes in the Tower , who survived under a new identity. Margaret is torn between her love for him and her affection for the painter Hans Holbein.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Guy: Genealogical Tables In: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. Xv
  2. ^ A b c d Margaret Bowker: Clement, Margaret . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press 2004
  3. ^ A b The Chronicle of the English Augustinian canonesses regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain (now at St. Augustine's priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548 [-1644] , p. 10: “Margaret, who died 6th July 1570 "
  4. ↑ John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 15
  5. ^ A b John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 136
  6. ↑ John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 169
  7. ^ A b The Chronicle of the English Augustinian canonesses regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain (now at St. Augustine's priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548 [-1644] , p. 25
  8. ^ A b John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 237
  9. ↑ John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 266
  10. ^ A b The Chronicle of the English Augustinian canonesses regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain (now at St. Augustine's priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548 [-1644] , p. 5
  11. ↑ a b Saint Margaret Giggs : "[...] disguising herself as a milkmaid, with a great pail on her head full of meat [...] she fed that blessed company, putting meat into their mouths, they being tied and not able to stir, nor to help themselves, which having done, she took from them their natural filth. "[...]" calling her husband she told him that the time of her departing was now come, and she might stay no longer, for there were standing about her bed the Reverend Fathers, Monks of Charterhouse, whom she had relieved in prison in England and did call upon her to come away with them, and that therefore she could stay no longer, because they did expect her "
  12. ↑ John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 267: “How often within these twelve months or two years have you been in company with Mrs Roper or Mrs Clement, and at what places have you met with them? ... What communication have you had with either of them touching the death of Sir Thomas More and others, and the causes of the same? Have you heard of any letters, writings or books sent to them or their friends? What have been the contents of such letters? "
  13. ^ A b The Chronicle of the English Augustinian canonesses regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain (now at St. Augustine's priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548 [-1644] , p. 3: "a very holy woman"
  14. ↑ Clement Pedigree . In: The Chronicle of the English Augustinian canonesses regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica's in Louvain (now at St. Augustine's priory, Newton Abbot, Devon) 1548 [-1644] , appendix
  15. ↑ John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 4
  16. ^ A b John Guy: A Daughter's Love . Harper Perennial 2009, p. 174
  17. ^ "Inscribed in an eighteenth-century hand: Mother Iak."  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.royalcollection.org.uk  
personal data
SURNAME Giggs, Margaret
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Clement, Margaret
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Member of the English gentry and learned Catholic exile
DATE OF BIRTH 1505 or 1508
PLACE OF BIRTH Cheapside, London
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 1570
Place of death Mechelen