Edmund de la Pole

Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, is Margaret Pole’s cousin, a favored courtier of Henry VII, and a striking emblem of the attempted coexistence of the House of York and the House of Tudor. His flight from England and arrest after trusting a royal guarantee turn that emblem into a warning: even conspicuous service to the king cannot protect a Plantagenet claimant from dynastic suspicion.

Courtly Position and Dynastic Symbolism

Margaret remembers Edmund as a Plantagenet who had made loyalty to the Tudor king visible. His brother had led rebels against Henry VII at the Battle of Stoke and died on the battlefield; Edmund, by contrast, was fiercely loyal and close to the king. He was Duke of Suffolk, a leader of the jousters, and a member of the innermost royal circle. His standing made him a public sign that a Plantagenet could serve a Tudor and that the two houses might appear joined rather than opposed.

The contrast between the brothers gives Edmund’s position particular force. His family history marked him as a potential dynastic danger, yet his service and prominence offered a different image: a Yorkist kinsman welcomed at court. Margaret recalls that image through the red-and-white rose, a symbol of the two houses apparently living together. Edmund’s importance is therefore not only his rank or favor, but what his presence seems to promise about the kingdom’s divided inheritance.

Flight and the Broken Guarantee

That promise collapses when news reaches Margaret and Elizabeth of York that Edmund has fled. He has gone to Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, intending to raise an army against Henry VII. Margaret is overwhelmed by the news, but insists that she knew nothing of his plan and that he had not confided in her. Elizabeth presses her to swear to this, making clear that Edmund’s flight immediately places even his relatives under suspicion.

Margaret later learns how Edmund was brought back. Henry VII had paid Maximilian I over a period of years to betray the Yorkist claimant and send him home to his death. The emperor took the money, then showed Edmund a royal safe-conduct letter bearing the king’s own signature. Edmund examined the seal and trusted the guarantee of safe passage and welcome. Because he wanted to return to his country, he accepted the assurance. As soon as he passed beneath the portcullis of Calais Castle, he was arrested. The safe conduct thus becomes the instrument of his capture: the visible marks of royal authority that appeared to promise protection instead delivered him into the king’s hands.

Kinship under Suspicion

Edmund’s case exposes the political cost of the Plantagenet family’s far-reaching ties. Margaret describes a network of cousins and kinsmen connected by blood and marriage, extending across England. The relationships that could support family loyalty and mutual protection also made the family look, to a suspicious observer, like an organized faction. The same kinship that had helped make Edmund a credible courtly symbol could now be read as evidence of collective danger.

After his return and arrest, accusations spread through this network. Relatives were questioned or suspected on the basis of their connection to him; one cousin’s past dinner with Edmund, years before his flight, becomes grounds for suspicion. Men of the family are taken to the Tower of London or sent to Calais Castle, where isolation and fear are used to make them identify other people they had met. Margaret’s fear that the king’s watchers will find everyone Edmund spoke with is borne out in this expanding pattern of arrests. His fate is not presented as an isolated punishment but as the beginning of a wider assault on his relations.

The White Rose and the Later Family Crisis

Edmund’s story also gives historical weight to the later political language of his family. Under Henry VIII, Margaret’s son Montague proposes action to defend the queen and princess: Geoffrey is to travel with him to Calais, slip away to meet Reginald, and carry news and appeals intended to bring pressure from the Pope and the queen’s relatives abroad. This is a later plan, not a continuation of Edmund’s own actions, but it returns to the same geography of exile, communication, and Plantagenet kinship as political resources.

Montague describes the family acting together as the white rose and claims that the Plantagenets are England’s natural rulers, while insisting that the king is their cousin and should be brought back to his proper course. That language echoes the earlier tension in Edmund’s life: he had once seemed to prove that Plantagenet blood and Tudor service could coexist, yet his promised safe return ended in arrest. Through Margaret’s recollections and the later family crisis, Edmund becomes a measure of how quickly royal favor can give way to suspicion—and how a network of kin can be treated first as a bond of loyalty, then as a conspiracy.