Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was an English peeress. She was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, and the niece of kings Edward IV and Richard III. Margaret was one of two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right with no titled husband. One of the few surviving members of the Plantagenet dynasty after the Wars of the Roses, she was executed in 1541 at the command of Henry VIII, who was the son of her first cousin Elizabeth of York. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Catholic Church on 29 December 1886.