Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/1008

Rh been sent home sick after the siege. He returned with the “viage” of 1417, leading thirty men-at-arms and ninety archers. Henry V. made him admiral of Normandy, and until the crowning of Henry VI. in Paris in 1431 he served in France without, by his own account, coming home or seeing England. He held the chief command before Orleans after Salisbury had fallen to a cannon-shot from the city, but was forced to surrender to Joan of Arc at Jargeau, where his brother Alexander was killed, another brother, John, being taken prisoner with the earl A fourth brother, Thomas, a clerk, became hostage to Dunois until the vast ransom of the earl was paid down. After 1431 Suffolk turned to English politics. Like his grandfather, he found a king’s uncle, another Gloucester, the chief of his enemies. Defeating Gloucester's project of an Armagnac match, Suffolk arranged for the young king’s marriage with Margaret of Anjou, and brought home the bride to Portsmouth in 1445. In the year before he had been created marquess of Suffolk, being the fourth Englishman to take the style of marquess. His party and the queen's were on the point of overthrowing, their opponent, Gloucester, when the “good duke” died suddenly in the hands of those who had arrested him. This death, followed by that of Cardinal Beaufort, left the field to Suffolk. Under a patent of 1443 Suffolk became earl of Pembroke at, Duke Humphrey's death. His honours were capped in 1448 with a dukedom of Suffolk, he being then admiral of England, governor of Calais, constable of Dover, and warden of the Cinque Ports. But it seemed that long service in the foreign wars had not purged the offence of the name of Pole. All the old enmity which had driven his grandfather into exile was gathering against Suffolk. His peace policy had cost the cession of Maine and Anjou, while the blunders of his ally, Somerset, as lieutenant in France, lost Normandy to England. Early in 1450 the Commons, in spite of Suffolk's appeal to his years of loyal service, accused him of treason and he was sent to the Tower. A long indictment was reinforced by new accusations, and the king could do no more for his minister than set him free under a sentence of five years' banishment. He sailed from Ipswich on the May Day of 1450, but before he could enter the port of Calais he was cut off by a royal ship, the “ 'cholas, ” whose master had him put overboard into the cockboat, where his head was hacked off by an Irish knave's rusty sword. His body, cast headless upon Dover beach, was carried by 1he king's orders to the Poles' vault in Wingfield church, where his effigy may still be seen. Who sent out the “ Nicholas, ” and by whose orders Suffolk died, are questions which remain unanswered. He was the third husband of Alice Chaucer, whom he married as the widow of Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, slain before Orleans. She was the daughter and heiress of Thomas Chaucer, of Ewelme, and, although direct evidence is wanting, the granddaughter, without doubt, of Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet. She lies at Ewelme, under a magnificent tomb.

John Pole (1442–1491), only son of the murdered duke, should have succeeded to the dukedom, his father having died unattained. But the honours were apparently regarded as forfeited, and the dukedom was formally restored to the boy in 1455, the earldom of Pembroke being allowed to lapse. Although three generations of warrior lords lay between him and the Hull warehouses, the origin of his house was still fresh in men's memories. John Paston, writing in 1465, could tell every name in the duke's pedigree back to “ William Pool of Hull, ” who had been “ first a merchant and after a knight, ”, and " what the father of the said William was ” John Paston knew “ right well ” The duke's father was an upstart for the crowd, whose ballads pelted him with the name of “ Iac Napes, ” suggested by his familiar badge of the ape's clog and chain. Nevertheless a wife of royal blood was found for the young duke, King Edward IV.'s own sister Elizabeth. The marriage confirmed him a partisan of the White Rose. The son of Margaret's faithful minister rode against her man at the second battle of St Albans. Before he was of age he was steward of England at his brother-in-law's crowning, and at Queen Elizabeth's crowning he bore her sceptre. Having held many offices under Edward IV. he was ready to bear a sceptre at Richard's coronation, and, after Bosworth, to swear fealty to the Tudor dynasty and to bear another sceptre for another Queen Elizabeth. He died in 1491, having safely kept his lands, his dukedom, and his head through perilous ears.

But each advance in rank had brought danger and misfortune to the Poles. Before the death of the second duke they had begun to pay the price of their matching with the royal house. In the next generation their name was blotted out. John Pole, eldest son of Duke John and the Lady Elizabeth, had been created Earl of Lincoln by his uncle, Edward IV. Before he followed Richard to Bosworth, the young man had been chosen as heir to the throne, Clarence's son Warwick being put aside. He survived King Richard and Henry VII. spared him. But he egged on Simnel’s plot, joined the rebels in Ireland, and was killed at Stoke in 1487, leaving no issue by his wife, the daughter of the earl of Arundel. Edmund, his younger brother, (c. 1472–1513) should have succeeded in 1491 as duke of Suffolk, but on coming of age he agreed to satisfy himself with the title of earl of Suffolk, the king grudgingly restoring some portion of the estates forfeited by his brother. In 1499 he suddenly left the kingdom, but was persuaded to return. But the death of the imprisoned earl of Warwick may have suggested to him that Henry’s court was a dangerous place for those of the blood of York, and in 1501 he found his way to the emperor Maximilian in Tirol with a scheme for the invasion of England. Although the kaiser at first promised him men for the adventure, nothing came of his promises. Maximilian, persuaded by a gift of English money, bound himself not to suceour English rebels. Suffolk, who had re assumed the ducal style, was at tainted in 1504, and in the same year was seized by the duke of Guelders. From the duke’s hands the prisoner was taken by Philip, king of Castile, who surrendered him to England on a promise that his life should be spared. But in 1515, when Richard, his brother, was in arms in the French service, Edmund Pole was taken from his prison in the Tower to the block.

Richard Pole, who in 1501 escaped from England with Edmund, had been received by the king of Hungary, and afterwards by Louis of France, who assigned him a pension. Commanding German Lanzknechts in the French service, he was the friend and companion in arms of the chevalier Bayard. At the death of his brother Edmund, he took the title of the duke of Suffolk, claiming the throne of England. In 1514 Louis gave him the leading of 12,000 riotous German mercenaries to essay the conquest of England. The treaty of peace stayed the adventure, but Louis refused to sur'°ender Richard, and allowed him to depart for the imperial city of Metz. Francis I. continued the payment of his allowance, and gave him employment. In 1522 the anonymous writer of a journal describes the coming to Paris of “Richard de la Poulle, soy dis ant duc de Suffort et la Blanche Rose.” In 1525 the White Rose was killed by the French king’s side at Pavia. With him died the last descendant in the male line of William Pole, the Hull merchant.

By one of the strange chances of history, another family of the name of Pole, having no kinship with the house of Suffolk, owed, like the Suffolks, their advancement and their fall to a match with a princess of the royal house. Sir Richard Pole, a Buckinghamshire knight, was the son of Geoffrey Pole, a squire whose wife, Edith St John, was sister of the half-blood to the mother of Henry VII. About 1490 or 1491 he married the Lady Margaret, daughter of George, duke of Clarence. He died in 1505, and in 1515 King Henry VIII. created the widow countess of Salisbury, as some amends for the judicial murder of her brother, the Earl of Warwick. Four years later, the barony of Montague was revived for her eldest son Henry. Until the king’s marriage with Anne Boleyn, the countess of Salisbury was about the court as governess of her godchild, the Lady Mary. When her son, the famous Cardinal Pole, published his treatise.