Profile of Margaret Lee on Famous Like Me

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Margaret Lee (nee Wyatt) (1506(?)–1543(?)) was a sister of poet Thomas Wyatt, and favourite of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII of England.

Margaret is best remembered for having been a childhood friend and companion of Anne Boleyn, whom she served devotedly for most of her adult life. A portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger shows Margaret at the age of thirty-four, and it is assumed that it was painted around 1540. It is therefore probable that Margaret was very close to Anne in age, being born close to 1506 (whilst Anne is assumed to have been born around 1507.)

Few question that there was some form of friendship between Lady Margaret and Queen Anne. There is also a strong tradition which states that Margaret's sister, Mary, was also part of the queen's social circle. Certainly Margaret's brother, Thomas Wyatt, fell passionately in love with Anne in the 1520s. Another female favourite of the queen's was Lady Bridget Wingfield. Hints of what Anne was like as a friend emerge from a heartfelt letter that she penned to Lady Wingfield in 1532. The letter was written after Anne had erupted in a furious temper at Lady Wingfield, who had responded by leaving court. The touching letter written by a repentant Anne reveals a woman who was well aware of her own faults and deeply committed to her friends.

"And, madam, though at all times I have not showed the love that I bear you as much as it was, yet now I trust that you shall know that I loved you a great deal more than I made feign for; and, assuredly, next to my own mother, I know no woman alive that I love better..."

Subtly, however, the letter does not explicitly apologise for what Anne said to Bridget in the heat of their argument. Anne may have been emotional, but she was seldom moved to apologies. Margaret Lee seemingly had a similarly deep friendship with Anne, but there is no record of any similar arguments.

Margaret was one of Anne's chief ladies-in-waiting, and accompanied her to Calais, France in 1532, where it is presumed Anne and Henry VIII made secret plans to marry in the immediate future. It is known that Anne had a lady-in-waiting who "she loves as a sister", and given Margaret's later role in the more tragic events of Anne's short life, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that this priviliged lady was Margaret. She was certainly part of the queen's circle of favourites, and would presumably have played a leading part in the decadent social life at court in the mid-1530s, fuelled by Anne's artistic brilliance and royal extravagance.

Lady Margaret was sent to attend her royal mistress in the Tower of London in May 1536 when the Queen was arrested on false charges of adultery, treason, and incest. Margaret also attended Anne on the scaffold on May 19, and even received the last gift of a prayer book from her. After Anne was beheaded, Margaret acted as chief mourner at her funeral. Anne had written a short farewell to Margaret inside the prayer book:

"Remember me when you do pray,

that hope doth lead from day to day."

A sketch by the famed court artist Hans Holbein has been mistakenly identified as being a sketch of a Queen Anne Boleyn when she was pregnant, but current research seems to suggest that it might have been one of the Wyatt sisters—either Margaret or one of her other siblings who was favoured by Queen Anne.

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