Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury

Blessed Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury , was an English peeress. She was the daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV and Richard III of England. 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 cousin Elizabeth of York. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Catholic Church onDecember 1886.

Margaret was born at Farleigh Hungerford Castle in Somerset, the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, and his wife Isabella Neville, who was the elder daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and his wife Anne de Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick. Her maternal grandfather was killed fighting against her uncle, Edward IV of England, at the Battle of Barnet. Her father, already Duke of Clarence, was then created Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick. Edward IV declared that Margarets younger brother Edward should be known as Earl of Warwick as a courtesy title, but no peerage was ever created for him. Margaret would have had a claim to the Earldom of Warwick, but the earldom was forfeited on the attainder of her brother Edward.

Source: Wikipedia