Margaret Lee

Margaret Lee (nee Wyatt)

Sister of Thomas Wyatt the poet, and favourite of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, king 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 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 in 1507.)

Margaret was one of Anne's chief ladies-in-waiting, and accompanied her to Calais 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 realms of possibility that this privilieged 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 wild 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.

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 other siblings who was favoured by Queen Anne.