Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/29

 the English king's request, an oath to observe the treaties, and gave a reluctant promise to expel Suffolk from Aix by proclamation. He merely wrote, however, to the burgomaster and town council that, as he had sent the unhappy nobleman thither, and was forbidden by his treaty with England to grant him further aid, he had arranged to pay them three thousand Rhenish florins, to enable him to quit the town free of debt. But it does not appear that Maximilian kept his word, for Suffolk remained at Aix, still in debt, for several months after.

In January 1504 he was attainted by the English parliament (Rolls of Parl. vi. 545 seq.), along with his brothers William and Richard [q. v.], and a number of his adherents. His situation seemed hopeless. Strangely illiterate letters during the next few years reflect his wretchedness, and form a most astounding commentary on that erudition with which he was credited by his university when a boy. Just before Easter 1504 he managed to quit Aix by leaving his brother Richard behind him as a hostage. He had arranged to join George, duke of Saxony, governor of Friesland, but on entering Gelderland he was seized and thrown into the castle of Hattem, in spite of a safe-conduct the Duke of Gueldres had sent him. The duke is believed to have obtained money from Henry VII to keep the prisoner safe, and refused the demand of his overlord, Philip, king of Castile, to deliver him. But in July 1505 Philip's able captain, Paul von Lichtenstein, obtained possession of Hattem, with the prisoner in it. Much negotiation between Philip and the Duke of Gueldres followed, and during the course of it Suffolk was temporarily handed back to the duke; but in October Philip again obtained possession of the prisoner, and shut him up in the castle of Namur.

On 24 Jan. 1506 Suffolk gave a curious commission to two of his servants to treat with Henry VII for an adjustment of the differences between them, with a set of specific instructions as to the terms. He demanded Henry's aid, if necessary, for his delivery out of Philip's hands. In the same month Philip visited Henry at Windsor, and consented to surrender the unhappy fugitive. At the end of March Suffolk was conveyed through London (, Négociations, i. 114), and committed to the Tower.

Henry gave Philip a written promise to spare his life (Cal. State Papers, Spanish, vol. i. No. 456), and the rumour that he recommended his son and successor to put Suffolk to death is probably a scandal (Mémoires de Du Bellay, livre i.) But at Henry VIII's accession he was excepted from the general pardon, and in 1513, when his brother Richard had taken up arms in the service of France, with whom England was then at war, he was sent to the block, apparently without any further proceedings against him. A contemporary Spanish writer suggests (, Epp. No. 524) that he had given fresh offence by writing to urge his brother to promote a rebellion in England. But as a prisoner in the Tower he had little opportunity of doing so, unless it were purposely afforded him (cf. Calendar, Venetian, vol. ii. No. 248).

Pole married Margaret, a daughter of Richard, lord Scrope, and by her he had a daughter named Anne, who became a nun at the Minories without Aldgate. He left no male issue.

[Polydori Vergilii Historia Anglica; Hall's Chronicle; Fabyan's Chronicle; Dugdale's Baronage; Sandford's Genealogical History; Wood's Annals of Oxford; Napier's Swyncombe and Ewelme; Memorials of Henry VII (Rolls Ser.); Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII (Rolls Ser); Ellis's Letters, 3rd ser. vol. i. Nos. 48–59; Cal. State Papers, Spanish vol. i., Venetian vol. i., and Henry VIII vol. i.; Chroniques de Jean Molinet, vol. v. (Buchon's Collection des Chroniques Nationales Françaises); Le Glay's Négociations; Busch's England unter den Tudors.] 

POLE, GEOFFREY (1502?–1558), a victim of Henry VIII's tyranny, born between 1501 and 1505, was brother of Henry Pole, lord Montague [q. v.], and of Reginald Pole [q. v.] the cardinal, being the youngest son of Sir Richard Pole (d. 1505), by his wife Margaret, afterwards Countess of Salisbury [see ]. He was one of the knights made by Henry VIII at York Place in 1529 (, Book of Knights, p. 61; Cal. Henry VIII, vol. iv. No. 6384). Soon afterwards he married Constance, the elder of the two daughters and heirs of Sir John Pakenham, by whom he became possessed of the manor of Lordington in Sussex. Local antiquaries assert that this manor belonged to his father; but this has been fully disproved by Father Morris (Month, lxv. 521–2). From 1531 his name is met with in commissions of various kinds, both for Hampshire and for Sussex.

Like the rest of his family, he greatly disliked Henry VIII's proceedings for a divorce from Catherine of Arragon. In 1532, when the king went over to Calais with Anne Boleyn to meet Francis I, he crossed the sea in disguise, and keeping himself unseen in the apartments of his brother, Henry Pole, lord Montague [q. v.], who had gone over with