Margaret Clifford: The Tudor Heiress Who Was Too Close to the Throne

Margaret Clifford was born into royal blood and raised under the shadow of the Tudor throne. As the granddaughter of Mary Tudor and grand-niece to Henry VIII, she stood eighth in line to the English crown—a position that made her both privileged and dangerously close to power. Though she never rebelled or schemed, her family ties and proximity to succession put her at constant risk.

From potential marriage alliances with the Dudley family to accusations of treasonous astrology under Elizabeth I, Margaret Clifford’s life was shaped by suspicion, politics, and survival in one of England’s most dangerous courts. In this post, we explore the rise and quiet downfall of a Tudor heiress whose only crime was being born too close to the throne.

Transcript of Margaret Clifford: The Tudor Heiress Who Was Too Close to the Throne

She was the granddaughter of Mary Tudor, grand-niece to Henry VIII, and eighth in line to the English throne. At one point, there were plans to marry her to Guildford Dudley, the same man who later married Lady Jane Grey. Her bloodline was dangerously close to power, and under Elizabeth I, that made her a problem.

Today, we are going to talk about the story of Margaret Clifford, Countess of Derby, a Tudor woman born into royal favor and buried under royal suspicion. I have this longer deep-dive podcast on Eleanor Clifford coming out tomorrow, and I wanted to do a shorter video on her daughter Margaret. Margaret is a really interesting woman as well, so we are going to talk about her today.

Margaret Clifford was born in 1540. She was the only surviving child of Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Cumberland, and Henry Clifford, heir to the Clifford earldom in the north. Her mother, Eleanor, was the younger daughter of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister.

This made Margaret a direct descendant of Henry VIII and placed her in the Tudor line of succession. In fact, when Henry VIII drafted his final will in 1546, he named Margaret’s mother as one of the heirs to the throne, after his three children and her older sister Frances. That made Margaret eighth in line, just behind the Grey sisters—not exactly a throne-watcher, but close enough to make people nervous.

Her two brothers, Henry and Charles, both died young. So from childhood, Margaret carried the entire dynastic weight of her branch of the family. Her mother died in 1547. Margaret was only about seven, and much of her early life was spent on the Clifford estates at Skipton or Brougham Castle. While her cousins at court jockeyed for power, Margaret grew up quietly in the north: educated, titled, and comfortably well-born.

Not a lot of drama for her early life. Now, she may have grown up far from London, but that did not stop people in power from taking notice of her. In the early 1550s, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, began negotiating for her to marry his son Guildford. This was the same period when he was orchestrating a marriage between his son and Lady Jane Grey, Margaret’s cousin.

So for a brief moment, it looked like Margaret might be absorbed into the Dudley-Grey plan to control the Tudor succession. Those plans collapsed. Guildford married Jane instead, and Margaret was then betrothed to Andrew Dudley, Guildford’s uncle. That match also disintegrated after the Dudley family’s spectacular fall from grace.

In 1553, Margaret eventually married Henry Stanley, Lord Strange. In 1555, he was heir to the powerful Stanley family. This is the same Stanleys who hedged their bets at Bosworth. So, you know, we are several generations later, but they still held sway over much of Lancashire and Cheshire.

Their wedding was a high-profile event, as it would be. It was actually attended by Mary Tudor—Mary I—and her husband, King Philip of Spain. They themselves came to the wedding. On paper, it was a solid alliance, a union of northern nobility and royal blood, blessed by the reigning monarch.

While the ceremony may have been grand and impressive, the marriage itself would prove to be much more complicated. The couple had four sons, including Ferdinando Stanley. We have done an episode or a video on him. He would later become the 5th Earl of Derby and was himself considered a potential heir to Elizabeth I.

On paper, Margaret had done exactly what a Tudor noblewoman was expected to do. She produced male heirs. She secured a powerful alliance. She stayed loyal to the crown. Go her. But her marriage began to fall apart. She and Henry Stanley became increasingly estranged. They lived separately for years, and Margaret maintained her own household, including a network of servants and attendants. That level of independence was quite rare, and it was also quite risky.

Margaret’s proximity to the throne remained a lingering issue for her. Even though she was not making a play for power, others knew just how easily the succession could shift. This is also, of course, when Elizabeth I is not married and does not have an heir. So here is Margaret. She is a Tudor by blood, and that alone in Elizabeth’s court, without an heir, was enough to make her dangerous.

In the early 1580s, Margaret was accused of something that in Tudor England was taken incredibly seriously: using astrology to predict the death of Elizabeth and identify her likely successor. Astrology today does not seem dangerous. A lot of people use it for themselves as a form of meditation. The paper even lists your horoscopes and all of that.

But under Tudor law, predicting the monarch’s death, especially through supernatural means, was treason. Now, whether Margaret herself consulted an astrologer or was simply implicated by someone in her household, the result was the same. She was placed under house arrest, cut off from court and from influence. No formal charges were brought. No trial was held. But there she was, under house arrest and under suspicion for years.

Her Tudor blood, once a source of prestige, had become a liability. Margaret died in 1596 at Clerkenwell, near the end of Elizabeth’s long reign. She never returned to favor, and though her son Ferdinando became a prominent nobleman himself, he died suddenly—possibly poisoned—in 1594.

Her granddaughter, Anne Stanley, was actually technically next in line to the throne under Henry VIII’s final will. That claim was never pressed, and by the end of the Tudor era, Margaret’s branch of the family had been edged out completely. She had all the ingredients of a major Tudor player: royal blood, a political marriage, surviving children, and dynastic potential. But she lived in a world that had zero patience for potential. You were either useful, or you were suspicious.

Margaret Clifford did not stage a rebellion. She did not publish any pamphlets or marry anyone scandalous. She was still punished for being just a little bit too close to the crown. And in Tudor England, that was enough. So often we tell these stories of women who were close to court, and men who were close to court, and had court ambition, and it ended really badly for them—like it usually did.

And I see the comments. You all kind of agree as well, that if it were up to us, we would just live far, far away. Like, send me so far north. I really love York. Yorkshire is beautiful. I love Scarborough. It is one of my favorite places. That little walk along the edge of the cliffs there to Whitby is just gorgeous. I have been to Bamburgh and to Lindisfarne, and it is just gorgeous up there. I would be so happy living up there, so far from all the drama.

But Margaret’s story reminds us that even in Tudor England, sometimes what you did was not even the problem. It was just who you were. Poor Margaret Clifford was never free from suspicion, just because of who she was. We know a lot about the Clifford family because of her daughter as well, who was a great chronicler of the Cliffords and wrote a lot down, giving us a chronicle of the Clifford family. So sometime we will have to do an episode on her as well. So we will leave it there for Margaret Clifford for now.