Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/151

1538.] grandson of Edward IV., stood next to the Tudor family in the line of succession. The Courtenays were petty sovereigns in Devonshire and Cornwall; and the marquis, though with no special intellectual powers, was regarded as a possible competitor for the crown by a large and increasing party. Lady Exeter we have already seen as a visitor at the shrine of the oracle of Canterbury; and both she and her husband were on terms of the closest intimacy with the Poles. The Poles and the Nevilles, again, were drawing as closely together as mutual intermarriages would allow. Lady Salisbury was regarded as the representative at once of the pure Plantagenet blood and of Warwick the Kingmaker. Lord Montague had married a daughter of Lord Abergavenny; and as any party in the State in opposition to the Government was a formidable danger, so a union between Lord Exeter, Lady Salisbury, and the Nevilles was, on all grounds, religious, political, and historical, the most dangerous which coidd be formed. It was the knowledge of the influence of his family which gave importance to Reginald Pole. It was this which sharpened the eyes of the Government to watch for the first buddings of treason among his connections.

Exeter's conduct had been for some time unsatisfactory. He had withdrawn for an unknown cause from his share in the command of the royal army on the Pilgrimage of Grace. He had gone down into Devonshire, where his duty would have been to raise the