his imprisonment; he later confiscated them after his trial. However, her brother's Warwick and Spencer [Despencer] estates remained in the hands of the crown. As Countess of Salisbury, Margaret managed her lands well and by 1538 she was the fifth richest peer in England. She was a patron of the New Learning, like many Renaissance noblewomen; Gentian Hervet had translated Erasmus' de immensa misericordia Dei (The Great Mercy of God) into English for her. Her first son, Henry Pole, was created Baron Montagu, another of the Neville titles, speaking for the family in the House of Lords. Her second son, Arthur Pole, had a generally successful career as a courtier, becoming one of the six Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. Arthur Pole suffered a setback when his patron Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was convicted of treason in 1521, but he was soon restored to favour. He died young (about 1526) having married the heir of Roger Lewknor. Margaret and her son, Henry, pressed Arthur's widow to take a vow of perpetual chastity to preserve her inheritance for her Pole children. Her daughter Ursula married the Duke of Buckingham's son, Henry Stafford, but after the Duke's fall, the couple were given only fragments of his estates. Margaret's third son, Reginald Pole, studied abroad in Padua. He was Dean of Exeter and Wimborne Minster, Dorset, as well as a canon of York. He had several other livings, although he had not been ordained a priest. In 1529, he represented Henry VIII in Paris, persuading the theologians of the Sorbonne to support Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Her youngest son, Geoffrey Pole, married well to Constance, daughter of Edmund Pakenham, and inherited the estate of Lordington in Sussex. Margaret's own favour at Court varied. She had a dispute over land with Henry VIII in 1518; he awarded the contested lands to the Dukedom of Somerset, which had been held by his Beaufort great-grandfather, and were now in the possession of the Crown. In 1520 Margaret was appointed governess to Henry's daughter Mary. The next year, when her sons were mixed up with Buckingham, she was removed from that appointment, but later restored to it by 1525. When Mary was declared a bastard in 1533, Margaret refused to give Mary's gold plate and jewels back to Henry. Mary's household was broken up at the end of the year, and Margaret asked