Margaret Bryan, Baroness Bryan (c. 1468 – c. 1551/52) was Lady Governess to Henry VIII's children: Princess Mary, Princess Elizabeth, Henry FitzRoy and Prince Edward. The position of Lady Governess in her day resembled less that of the popular modern idea of a governess, more that of a nanny.
She was born Margaret Bourchier in about 1468 in Beningbrough, Yorkshire, England. Her mother was Elizabeth Tilney and her father was Sir Humphrey Bourchier, who was killed at the Battle of Barnet on 14 April 1471 during the series of dynastic civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses. Humphrey Bourchier was heir to the title Baron Berners but having predeceased his father, Margaret's brother John instead succeeded to the title as second Baron Berners. Humphrey Bourchier and Elizabeth Tilney had one further daughter who survived to adulthood. Margaret's younger sister was Anne Bourchier (1470–1530) who married Thomas Fiennes, 8th Lord Dacre in 1492. Their son, also Thomas, was the 9th Lord Dacre who was executed for murder in 1541.
Margaret Bourchier was married three times. Her first husband, with whom there may only have been a marriage agreement (a ‘pre-contract’), was Sir John Sandes (or Sandys). The marriage agreement was signed when Margaret was 10 or 11 years old on 11 November 1478. Pre-contracts were not unusual among the Tudor period aristocracy and gentry, and it need not have resulted in a consummated marriage.
She married Sir Thomas Bryan sometime before 1490. Margaret Bryan was a Lady-in-Waiting to Catherine of Aragon and was present at Catherine's wedding to Henry VIII in 1509. Margaret Bryan claimed to have been made Baroness Bryan suo jure on 18 February 1516, upon the birth of Princess Mary, when she was appointed as Mary's Lady Governess.
Sir Thomas Bryan died sometime before 1517, and Margaret Bryan married her final husband, David Souche (or Zoche) in or before 1519. In July 1519, there is a record in the archives of Henry VIII's court that notes the payment of an annuity of 50 pounds to "MARGARET BRYAN, widow of Sir Thomas Bryan, and now wife of David Soche." The annuity paid "for services to the King and queen Katharine" included "one tun of Gascon wine yearly, out of the wine received for the King's use." David Souche may have died in 1526 or in 1536.
Margaret Bryan became the Lady Governess for Princess Mary in February 1516. More well known primary evidence exists to connect her with Princess Elizabeth and Prince Edward. From August 1536, there is a widely quoted letter from her to Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister, in which she complains of the economic difficulties of the household of "lady Elizabeth" since the change in her status (from legitimate to illegitimate) following the annulment of the King's marriage to her mother Anne Boleyn, and Anne's execution in May.
Now, as my lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was in, and what degree she is at now I know not but by hearsay, I know not how to order her or myself, or her women or grooms. I beg you to be good lord to her and hers, and that she may have raiment, for she has neither gown nor kirtle nor petticoat, nor linen for smocks, nor kerchiefs, sleeves, rails, bodystychets, handkerchiefs, mufflers, nor "begens."
(The more obscure items in this list are identified by the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn) as: rails = nightdresses; bodystychets = corsets; begens = nightcaps.)
She also reports that: "My lady has great pain with her teeth, which come very slowly." (Elizabeth was to have serious difficulties with her teeth on and off for much of her life.)
Margaret Bryan passed over responsibility for Elizabeth to Catherine Champernowne in October 1537 following the birth of Prince Edward, who became her new charge. A second letter to Cromwell, dated 11 March 1539, describes the Prince.
My lord Prince is in good health and merry. Would to God the King and your Lordship had seen him last night. The minstrels played, and his Grace danced and played so wantonly that he could not stand still ...
A late mention of Margaret Bryan in the archives is a note referring to the payment of a 20-pound annuity to "Lady Margaret Bryane, the King's servant" in 1545.
Margaret Bryan could boast royal Plantagenet bloodlines for herself through her paternal great-grandmother, Anne of Woodstock, Countess of Buckingham, who was herself the granddaughter of King Edward III. Closer in time, after the death of Sir Humphrey Bourchier, Margaret's mother, Elizabeth, married Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, becoming Duchess of Norfolk. Elizabeth had a number of children in her second marriage, including Lady Elizabeth Howard, mother of Anne Boleyn; Henry VIII's second queen, and Lord Edmund Howard, the father of Katherine Howard; the fifth queen of King Henry VIII. This connection made Margaret an aunt to both Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard as well as a member of the wider circle of kin and dependents around the Howard family.
The only children Margaret Bryan had were from her marriage to Sir Thomas Bryan. Three of their surviving children were: Margaret Bryan, who married Sir Henry Guildford, Elizabeth Bryan, who became the wife of Sir Nicholas Carew, and Sir Francis Bryan, who became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Through her daughter, Elizabeth, she was the great-grandmother of Elizabeth Throckmorton, Lady Raleigh, wife to Walter Raleigh and chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I.
Margaret Bryan makes an appearance in Kathryn Lasky's novel for young readers, Elizabeth I, Red Rose of the House of Tudor. In the book she is nicknamed "Muggie" by the four-year-old Princess Elizabeth. She also appears in The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir.
In the TV series The Tudors, the role of "Lady Margaret Bryan" is played by Jane Brennan. Like many of the characters in the show, she is a composite of the woman on whom she was based and also of Anne Shelton, who was in overall charge of Princess Elizabeth's household. Unlike Margaret Bryan, Anne Shelton had a very difficult relationship with Mary Tudor when she was living in Elizabeth's household.
- She was also Lady Governess to Henry's illegitimate but acknowledged son Henry FitzRoy, assuming her words of "When my lady Mary was born it pleased the King’s grace [to make] me lady mistress, and made me a baroness, and so I have been a m [other to the] children his grace have had since" are correct and her grammar is not incorrect as Henry VIII had no children between Mary and Elizabeth. If she had responsibility also for Henry FitzRoy that would have made her tenure as Mary's Lady Governess fairly short. Henry was born 15 June 1519, less than two and a half years after Mary. She was Lady Governess to Elizabeth for four years.
- L. G. Pine, The New Extinct Peerage 1884–1971: Containing Extinct, Abeyant, Dormant and Suspended Peerages With Genealogies and Arms (London, U.K.: Heraldry Today, 1972), page 9.
- Kathryn Lasky, Elizabeth I, Red Rose of the House of Tudor (Scholastic Inc. 1999). See page 24.
- Susan Brigden, ‘Bryan, Sir Francis (d. 1550)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, January 2008) , accessed 28 August 2008