Margaret Bryan - Marriages

Marriages

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. As Lady Bryan, she was a Lady-in-Waiting to Catherine of Aragon and was present at Catherine's wedding to Henry VIII in 1509. Known as Lady Bryan initially because of her husband's knighthood, she 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.