Margaret Lee (lady-in-waiting)

Margaret Wyatt
Margaret Wyatt, by Hans Holbein
Spouse(s)	Sir Anthony Lee
Issue Sir Henry Lee Robert Lee Thomas Lee Cromwell Lee Anne Lee Lettice Lee Katherine Lee Joyce Lee Jane Lee
Father	Sir Henry Wyatt
Mother	Anne Skinner
Born	c.1506
Died	c.1543

Lady Margaret Lee (née Wyatt) (1506(?) – 1543(?)) was a sister of the poet Thomas Wyatt, and a favourite of Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII of England.

Margaret Wyatt was the daughter of Sir Henry Wyatt by Anne Skinner, the daughter of John Skinner of Reigate, Surrey. She had two brothers:

Margaret is best remembered for having been a companion of Anne Boleyn, whose family estates lay near the Wyatts' and who later employed Margaret as one of her ladies-in-waiting. A portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger shows a woman presumed to be 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 around 1507.)

Few question that there was some form of friendship between Lady Margaret and Queen Anne. There is also a strong tradition which states that Margaret's sister, Mary, was also part of the Queen's social circle and that Margaret's brother, Thomas Wyatt, fell passionately in love with Anne in the 1520s. Another female favorite of the Queen's was Lady Bridget Wingfield, who died in childbed in 1531.

Margaret was one of Anne's chief ladies-in-waiting, and accompanied her to Calais, France 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 it has been suggested that this lady was Margaret. She was certainly part of the Queen's circle of favorites. As Mistress of the Queen's Wardrobe, she would presumably have played a leading part in the decadent social life at court in the mid-1530s, which was fuelled by the extravagance of Henry and Anne.