Sir William de la Pole (1478 – sometime between October and November 1539),
[Weir, Alison. ''Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy'' London, U.K.: The Bodley Head, 1999. p. 135] was an English nobleman, and
Knight
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
of
Wingfield Castle
Wingfield Castle in the parish of Wingfield in Suffolk, England is a fortified manor house which was the ancestral home of the Wingfield family and their heirs, the de la Pole family, created Earls and Dukes of Suffolk. It is now a private hou ...
in
Wingfield, Suffolk
Wingfield is a village in the English county of Suffolk. It is found east of Diss, signposted off B1118, near Eye.
Wingfield Castle, which is now a private house, was for many centuries the home of the Wingfield family and their heirs, the De ...
. He was the son of
John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk
John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, KG (27 September 1442 – 14–21 May 1492), was a major magnate in 15th-century England. He was the son of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Alice Chaucer, the daughter of Thomas Chaucer ...
(1442–1492) and
Elizabeth Plantagenet (Elizabeth of York, Duchess of Suffolk) (1444–1504). Through his mother, he was clearly in the line of succession to the
English Crown
This list of kings and reigning queens of the Kingdom of England begins with Alfred the Great, who initially ruled Wessex, one of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which later made up modern England. Alfred styled himself King of the Anglo-Sax ...
, with ultimately disastrous consequences for himself.
Around 1497, he married
Katherine Stourton, daughter of
William Stourton, 2nd Baron Stourton and Margaret Chidiocke, but they had no issue.
[ Katherine, twice widowed and aged about 42, was more than 20 years older than William, so the motive for the marriage was probably financial (her second husband, Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, had left her much of his property).
He was brother to ]John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln
John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (c. 1460 – 16 June 1487) was a leading figure in the Yorkist aristocracy during the Wars of the Roses.
After the death of his uncle Richard III of England, Richard III, de la Pole was reconciled with the new Tu ...
, Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk
Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, 6th Earl of Suffolk, KG (c. 147130 April 1513), Duke of Suffolk, was a son of John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk and his wife Elizabeth of York.
Although the male York line ended with the death of Edw ...
and Richard de la Pole
Richard de la Pole (died 24 February 1525) was a pretender to the English crown. Commonly nicknamed "White Rose", he was the last Yorkist claimant to actively and openly seek the crown of England. He lived in exile after many of his relatives w ...
. As nephews of Edward IV
Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England ...
the de la Pole family had a much stronger hereditary claim to the throne than Henry VII, who was descended through his mother from an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (6 March 1340 – 3 February 1399) was an English royal prince, military leader, and statesman. He was the fourth son (third to survive infancy as William of Hatfield died shortly after birth) of King Edward ...
. Even if William, unlike his brothers, had no personal ambition to seize the throne, his ancestry would have made it impossible for Henry to trust him. The discovery of a plot involving the de la Pole brothers in 1501 sealed William's fate.
He was held prisoner in the Tower of London
The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separa ...
for 37 years till his death, longer than anyone else in the Tower's history, for allegedly plotting against King Henry VII
Henry VII (28 January 1457 – 21 April 1509) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizure of the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death in 1509. He was the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
Henry's mother, Margaret Beaufo ...
with his brothers Edmund and Richard, who fled the country in 1501, after their conspiracy
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...
was detected. The fact that William did not flee with them might have been seen as evidence that he was innocent, but the King was clearly taking no chances about his loyalty.[Chrimes, p. 93]
Ancestors
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:De La Pole, William
1478 births
1539 deaths
15th-century English people
16th-century English people
William
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
People from Mid Suffolk District
English knights
Younger sons of dukes