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Few of our most ancient and most noble houses have had a more sadly
checquered and pathetic history, and few can boast a higher antiquity or
greater nobility than the De Is Poles, who were merchant-princes at
Kingston-upon-Hull, in Yorkshire, as far back as the reign of Edward III.
They probably derived their name from Pole, in Montgomery, close to which
was the abbey of De la Pole.
They were at a very
early time connected with the wool trade, as appears from the fact that in
1271 Henry III. issued a precept ordering to
William De In Pole and others the payment of twelve pounds nine shillings,
in payment for cloth purchased at St. Giles's Fair, in Winchester.
In the same year we are told that an embargo was laid on fifty sacks of
skins of wool, the property of William De la Pole, merchant, of Rouen, in
order that they might not be removed out of the kingdom; and in the
following year we read of an allowance of forty marks made to Nicholas De
la Pole and others, agents for the Flemish merchants, for losses sustained
by English merchants in Flanders.
One of this family,
John Pole, was the first Mayor of Hull. His son Edmund had a son, William,
who became a London citizen, merchant, and wool stapler; and, in
consideration of a subsidy offered to the king at a time of special
necessity, 'when money stood him in more stead than one thousand
men-at-arms,' he was enriched by his sovereign
with various estates, and made a knight barreret,
a dignity then next to the baronage. In 1358, two years after the battle
of Poictiers, the abbot of a house in Normandy conveyed to him four
English manors, which still belong to the hospital at Ewelme, Oxfordshire,
founded by his descendants a century later.
Michael, son of William
De la Pole, rose into favour with Edward III. during his wars with France.
By Richard he was made a Knight of the Garter and Earl of Suffolk, and, in
the end, Lord High Chancellor of England. His son Michael, the second
earl, died like his father in France, and was brought to England to be
buried at Ewelme, leaving the title to his brother William, third earl As
the latter stood beside his brother's grave, a youth of nineteen, his
future bride, Alice Chaucer, was a child of four; she lived to become his
wife, after burying two other husbands-first Sir Thomas Philip, and,
secondly, Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, who was killed at the siege
of Orleans, when, we are told, the battle-cry of the English troops was'
Salisbury and De Is Pole.' Soon after her third marriage, she joined with
her husband in building and endowing the church
of Ewelme, with its adjoining hospital and grammar-school; and she lies in
alabaster on a noble altar tomb in that Church,
wearing on her arm the blue Riband of the Garter, once worn by her second
husband, a privilege almost unique.
But the Earl of Suffolk
was not content with a mere share in a work of charity. He would also do
something, as from himself alone, for the northern town where his
ancestors had first risen into note. Accordingly, he resolved to found and
endow at Kingston-on-Hull a religious house called the Chartreuse, or
Charter Horse ; and it is not a little singular that, whilst other similar
endowments and charities have been wasted and confiscated, both this
hospital at Ewelme and the Charter Rouse at Hull remain to this day as
witnesses to his name and his work.
But the earl was
destined to achieve farther greatness. Though only twenty-seven years of
age, ho held the command of the English forces in France at the siege of
Montague in 1423. Six years later he was made prisoner-taking, however,
the precaution of bestowing knighthood on his captor, in order that he
might not fall into the hands of a I villain'-but was speedily released
from durance vile. He was afterwards employed on diplomatic missions, and
was sent. abroad by Henry VI. as prosy to receive his bride, Margaret of
Anjou; and lie also had charge of the boy king when he was crowned at
Paris in 1430. For these and other services he was created a marquis, and
ho was raised to the dukedom of Suffolk in 1448.
But the goodwill of the
Court and of the great lords aroused very different feelings in the
breasts of the nation at large, who became more and more embittered
against him as he rose step by step in favor at St. James's and
Whitehall. He was charged with having handed over the provinces of Maine
and Anjou to Rénier
King of Sicily, on the marriage of his daughter, Queen Margaret; with
having betrayed State secrets to the French; with pacing equipped the
castle of Wallingford with warlike stores for the service of the French in
case of an invasion; and with other high misdemeanors-all probably alike
untrue. He was accordingly arraigned before his peers by the Speaker of
the House of Commons, and committed to the Tower; but he managed to escape
from his keepers and the stone walls of the Tower, and took ship to
France. He was, however, stopped in the Downs, where he was greeted with,
'Welcome, traitor!' A mock trial followed, as every reader of
Shakespeare knows. He was taken within a few furlongs of the shore by his
captors, and beheaded off Dover, his body being carried for burial to
Wingfield Chunch, in Suffolk, where them is a
monument to his memory. He, doubtless, fell in
reality a victim to the faction of Richard, who then was thirsting for the
crown, which he subsequently obtained.
His son John became, by
his death, second duke when only eight years old. Ho married Elizabeth
Plantagenet in the year of the death of her father, Richard Duke of York,
on the bloody battle-field of Wakefield, and was therefore brother-in-law
of Edward IV, and Richard III;
and as his mother's great-aunt, Catharine Swynford, the third wife of John
Duke of Gaunt, was aunt by marriage to Richard, he stood sufficiently near
to the throne to make his obi at all events, an object of jealousy to the
censors of Richard III. The latter, on the death of his own son in 1481,
declared John Earl of Lincoln, son of the second Duke of Suffolk, heir to
the crown. In fact, the Duke of Suffolk stood so high in the favor of
King Richard III. that he born the sceptre and dove at his coronation,
while the Earl of Lincoln carried the ball and the cross.
John Earl of Lincoln was killed at the battle of Stoke, whilst
endeavoring to make good his claim to the Crown. His brother Edmund
succeeded to the title of Duke of Suffolk-an empty honour, seeing that the
Suffolk estates had been escheated to the Crown. A portion of these,
however, was restored to him, on condition that he should merge the title
of duke in that of earl. But even these estates were seized, and finally
forfeited in 1499, when he was forced to flee the kingdom as an outlaw, as
it was said and believed, for having 'slaine a
meane person,' for which he was excommunicated
by the Pope. The earl was induced to return to England by promise of an
indemnity from Henry VII; but, in spite of this,
he was committed in 1505 to the safe keeping of the Tower of London,
where, after a captivity of seven years, he was beheaded by order of Henry
VIII, who, ever false and Tudor-like, declined to be bound by his father's
promise. All the Suffolk estates, both those in the eastern counties and
those at A life-interest in the Ewelme property was considerately granted
by the King to Margaret, wife of Earl Edmund, and daughter of Sir Richard
Scrope; the remaining estates were conferred, on Charles Brandon, who
later on was created Earl of Suffolk, and who, it happened, was maternally
descended from the Sir Edmund De la Pole who died in 1419. Edmund and
Margaret left, happily, only one child, a
daughter, who died a professed nun in a convent
in the Minories in London; and with her perished at the last of the once
powerful race of De la Pole.
Chapters From the Family Chests, 1887
Chapters From the Family Chest |
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