Pole's treason had naturally drawn suspicion on his family. The fact of his correspondence with them from Liège could hardly have been a secret from Cromwell's spies, if the contents of his letters were undiscovered; and the same jealousy extended also, and not without cause, to the Marquis of Exeter. Lord Exeter, as the 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, I have said, was regarded as the representative at once of the pure Plantagenet blood and of Warwick the King Maker.[387] 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 could 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 connexions. [Sidenote: Unsatisfactory conduct of Exeter during the Pilgrimage of Grace.] [Sidenote: Irregular influence exerted by him in Devonshire.] 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 He had withdrawn for an unknown cause from his share in the command of the royal army on the Pilgrimage of Grace.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 musters of the county; but, instead of it, he had courted popularity by interrupting the levy of the subsidy.[388] The judges on circuit at the same time complained of the coercion and undue influence which he exercised in the administration of justice, and of the dread with which his power was regarded by juries. No indictment could take effect against the adherents of the Marquis of Exeter; no dependent of the Courtenays was ever cast in a cause.[389] [Sidenote: The Marquis of Exeter high steward on the arraignment of Lord Darcy.] [Sidenote: He quarrels with Cromwell.] [Sidenote: He defends Lord Montague.]